The Law of Attraction is a Nexus

 

I recently met Maysoon Zayid while attending the Nexus Global Youth Summit 2014 as a part of the Atlas Corps delegation. It was only last year when I was watching this brilliant TED talk by this graceful, witty and courageous Arab-American woman who has made beyond the 99 problems in her life and Cerebral Palsy. Maysoon is a writer, actor, comedian, co-founder of the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival. Her father's mantra was "You can do it! You Cancan". She says "if a wheelchair user cannot play Beyoncé then Beyoncé can't play a wheelchair user". She is muslim, a woman with celebral palsy, fantastically humorous and from New Jersey. For a lot of 'special' people with any kind of disability, internet can be really awful. Maysoon made this challenge her strength. If ‪#‎MaysoonZayid‬ cancan YOU cancan.

If you are thinking that how is all this connected with the law of attraction for me? Last year after watching Maysoon speak on TED Women, I was not only drawn to laughing literally to tears but I also thought for a second about learning how she made it here despite all the challenges. This was just a fleeting thought I threw in the universe and forgot about it. I didn't realise that the phrase "every action or thought has an equal and opposite reaction" which can be so true. Not only did I get a chance to meet Maysoon but I connected with many more brilliant change-makers whom I couldn't think of connecting with under one roof. I am so sure by now that the 'Law of Attraction' does work in our lives. It is a very strong factor that gets us closer to be where we want to be, do what we want to do and persevere to have all what we've always wanted to.

Just like Maysoon's story, we all have our a-ha and down moments and I believe that we create the kind of life we lead, our thoughts have the power to influence the environment around us. Our thoughts lead to feelings, feelings lead to actions and actions lead to reactions. At the Nexus Global Youth Summit 2014, various leaders spoke about how they created an idea to change lives and create opportunities. They were constantly thinking and working towards the idea till the ideas started to change lives. There were some exceptional stories shared by social entrepreneurs, leaders and investors which made me come closer to spark an idea more concretely than I'd ever imagined. It is said that if you really want to do something, do it with all your heart and the heart will never fail you no matter what comes your way.This is how the law of attraction works. It brings you closer to what you dream, what you think and what you want to do. You ought to feel confident about yourself, feel like sunshine, reflect positive vibes without feeling hesitant, keep moving and leading with courage. This is how I became a part of Nexus.

#WeAreNexus #AtlasCorpsRepresent

Untying The Knot

This post was originally published here: CARE

Sometimes girls get married because they think they are getting a better life than what they are leaving behind.  Sadly, this is not always true. It is a sobering moment when you understand how a society treats its women. In a broader sense, what defines a society is how it treats its poorest, weakest and most vulnerable members—especially women and girls. After three months of being kidnapped and held captive by the Boko Haram militia, more than 60 out of the 200 Nigerian school girls escaped. These brave girls’ escape reminds me that millions of girls go missing every year—forced into or sold for marriage—and most of them would like to escape, too. This incident has also brought to light the similarities of young girls at risk. It is not just Nigerian girls who face the threat of early and forced marriage. My work with girls at risk in South Asia has made it clear to me just how vulnerable girls can feel  in other parts of the world as well as the high prevalence of early marriage in South Asian countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

I was on a fact finding mission in Mewat, a district in the State of Haryana in India, to collect first-hand information about young girls who were forcibly married by their parents in the Middle East. Girls are not just at risk from their parents looking to get rid of a burden; there are high rates of young girls from different regions of India who agree to go abroad to get married in search of better options than what they see at home.  With no opportunity to finish school, and facing being a burden in their parents’ home, sometimes a marriage—any marriage—seems like the best way out. There may be promises of money, having her own home, or being an adult in their society.

Paro, in Rajasthan, was one of those girls.  She was very hesitant to tell her story, but opened up as she saw other girls participating in community workshops I organized on a monthly basis. Paro, who is now 22 years old, was sold as a bride at the age of 15 to a 50 year old man. A man who regularly came to her home village, convinced her to run away to the big city because he promised her a job and a better life in a big city.  I asked Paro why she agreed to flee from her home state to Rajasthan. She replied, “I needed a better life and money. I had no other option. After coming here I got caught in the cycles of exploitation, I worked as cheap labor.” She told me that there were many other girls like her who were deceived on promises of getting a better life, and were taken to places far away from their homes and loved ones.

Caught between the circles of extreme poverty, low literacy rates, early drop-out from schools, hunger, poor family planning, high mortality rates, thousands of such girls go missing and fall prey to getting married early. Unfortunately, the current laws do not do justice to seeking protection, rehabilitation or re-integration of these girls and women.Despite the laws against early and forced child marriage, the rates remain extremely high. Human rights activists and legal experts believe that the only way to end underage marriages is to make school education compulsory. In my mind, education is not the only solution to protect girls or delay their marriage. Until families realize that the root cause of the problem lies within their homes and cultures, this will continue to haunt the lives of young girls, who will continuously be taken for granted.

Some crucial next steps are educating and raising awareness levels of their families, communities and the key actors at large about the repercussions of early marriages.  We also need to create livelihood opportunities for girls and train them on life-skills. Economically empowering young girls so that they can create better lives for themselves gives girls options other than child marriage or running away to the big city based on false promises of a better life.  This would bring more meaningful changes in the life course of a young girl.

 
About the Author: Karuna Dayal is an Atlas Corps Fellow from India serving at CARE USA.  As a Policy Fellow she is engaged in supporting the Tipping Point team in research and analysis around implementation of donor and government policies addressing child marriage in Bangladesh and Nepal, strategic planning and project implementation including activities aimed at capacity building, communications and knowledge management, and contributing to the development of an advocacy strategy to influence key stakeholders at global and national levels.

India Plus Social Good – Promoting change through Social Media.

“We have to not just open our eyes to what’s going on in other places; we need to open our eyes to what’s going on right in front of us.”
 —Forest Whitaker, artist and UNESCO goodwill ambassador

Last month, I attended the post India +Social Good briefing and brainstorming meeting organized by the United Nations Foundation in Washington DC with many others from the civil society, who passionately work towards making new innovations using the new media but also  find solutions to the growing challenges to the world’s most burning issues. It was extremely stimulating to hear stories of success and questions full of curious calibrations on the measurement of such an impactful form of development. The India +Social Good Summit took place in Mumbai, India on April 9th 2014. It brought together influencing voices from a country with more than 1 billion people who are passionate about creating the hardest to find innovations. It is inspiring to see how the journey of Social good has reached its feat in its present avatar. Connecting the dots with the bits and bytes of modern day technology, the digital media is doing good for individuals around the world. There is also a good amount of those who are still neo’s or have no access to technology. That’s where the idea of social good comes in.

As an example, India had reached it’s peak on the social media platform back in 2011, right after the triple Mumbai bomb blasts. The city of Mumbai in India was made target of triple bomb blasts by terrorists. Seventeen people were killed and 130 were injured in these blasts. All three blasts took place within a time period of 10 minutes. What followed the blasts, apart from the loss of many lives, injuries and a loss of assets, was a complete state of panic and chaos in the entire city of Mumbai. There was extreme commotion on streets, telephone lines were jammed and people were left stranded and helpless. At such an hour, when telephone and mobile lines were jammed, Internet and social media came to the rescue of many. Soon after the explosions, the activity on online social websites increased manifold, users on Facebook and Twitter posted updates about news, the information about their whereabouts, news of their well-being and helped those in need.

Amidst this conundrum, a Twitter user, Nitin Sagar created a spreadsheet on Google to coordinate relief operation among people who needed it most. Within hours hundreds of people registered on the sheet via Twitter. People asked for or offered help on that spread-sheet for many hours ahead. Similarly, a Twitter user created a disaster tracker map that enabled users to crowd-source information for crisis management from mediums like Twitter. Most recently, the Delhi Rape case brought mass rage throughout the globe over social media and on the ground. Many of us in New Delhi the capital of India were creating awareness online about this brutal attack on a 23 year old girl. The social media was our way to reach thousands of young people over the digital platform to come out on the roads and protest against government negligence and slackness to get out to seek a strong reform in the criminal justice system. The result of this is now measured as the most successful outcomes in the social media history. Voices online and on the ground became fiery, lawmakers were pushed to act upon taking stronger decisions and make amendments to the Criminal Amendment Act. A new law which has somewhat started taking things seriously!

The Social media platform, emerged as a vast data source of information and support about what followed as an aftermath of the events not only in Mumbai but all over the world by an individual who took the responsibility to get together masses. There were real time spreadsheet for closest blood banks in Mumbai. Examples such as this boost impact, boost research, boost capacities offline to what lacks currently is the documentation of the work offline done by India’s large development sector. With social media leading and driving the pace for digital development  the need of the hour is to build a movement of creating such documentation and awareness.Social Media can be a big game changer, as a social media enthusiast and a social development leader, I can strongly vouch for it. It is like the speed of light traveling around the universe opening up new avenues for change and development.

“The Internet is allowing for us to really experience people in some of the most distant places in the world — as other people just like us. So get to know people, seek out bloggers from a country you’re kind of curious about. It’s about building empathy and breaking through to the point of recognizing people as people.”
 — Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia

One last thought: We should remember to keep it real with the competitive nature of technology. It is to have a clear vision with focus on the right kind of messaging that will make an idea sustainable.

#PlusSocialGood #SocialGood #India #atlascorpsrepresent

Did you know? - AMBER Alert and other Inter-Country responses

 This post was originally published on April 14th 2014 at http://www.atlascorps.org/blog/?p=4426

In the last 3 month in Washington DC, I have received four AMBER Alerts on my phone. For a while the AMBER Alert made me wonder of all possible doubts about my phone being infected by a virus. This thought lingered since the time I received this anonymous, continuously vibrating message on my phone which popped up on the phone screen from nowhere and disappeared after a while. In fact, it was strange to know that some of my colleagues at work were surprised too on a day we received it together. Initially, for a couple of minutes at work, I misunderstood this abbreviated term as a virus alert on my phone till this curiosity led me to do a quick web search over the mystery behind it. Nothing could have left me more amazed about what I figured out in the next 5 to 10 minutes. I was quite impressed to know about the organized technical and practical response set by the United States Department of Justice. Through all these 7 to 8 years of experience in the Indian Non-profit sector and devising strategies for and working with Task Forces on finding missing, trafficked and exploited children I never saw such an example and far-sightedness of technology.

 The US Department of Justices’ AMBER Alert Program is a voluntary partnership between the law-enforcement agencies, broadcasters, transportation agencies, and the widest reachable wireless industry, to activate an urgent bulletin in the most serious child-abduction cases. It started back in 1996 in Dallas – Fort Worth. It is a nation wide system which is now active in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The AMBER Alert system has also been adopted in the Canadian provinces and continues to expand into the Mexican border states.

The primary goal of an AMBER Alert is to instantly stimulate the entire community to assist in the search for and the safe recovery of the child who has gone missing. In case citizens or commoners have queries and clues they asked to direct calls to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) who are managing the secondary distribution of AMBER Alerts.

I worked with the famous Childline network in India on more than 100 cases of missing and trafficked children and women across India, Nepal and Bangladesh. Childline is an India based network which ensures a integrated child protection response. The Childline’s 1098 service is India first toll free tele helpline launched back in 1996 for street children.  The same year when AMBER Alert was launched. Similarly in Europe, the European Child Alert Automated System (ECAAS) was started in 2007 with the support of the European Commission to start the ‘Child Abduction Alert’. This is an automated system for child alerts that will enable law enforcement in the partner countries to quickly notify the public when a child goes missing and ask for their assistance. Equally significant, the partner countries: Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Portugal will be able to communicate with their partners to launch the alert in cases where there is information that the child has been taken to another country.  

 

In China, which is a home to a centuries old scourge of buying and selling of children, abduction appears to be less lethal but no less painful. There seems to no system in place to find missing, abducted children, parent with a very less amount of help by police are forced to find their children on their own. More than 60,000 children are estimated to go missing each year. Children from China are less expensive to buy for adoption than South Korea. These children are mostly abducted and put up for adoption. A lack of coordinated child alert systems in these countries makes it harder for parents to track their children for years. United Kingdom uses the Child Rescue Alert System (CRA) which started in 2007 based on the AMBER Alert system. The CRA is managed by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre.

Back in 2012, the abduction of April Jones triggered the first nationwide Child Rescue Alert ever used in the UK as investigators started weighing up the risk to the child in the hours after her disappearance.

Child Alert systems such the AMBER have proven to be beneficial for a well coordinated response in saving lives of many innocent children. In my experience of tracking, rescuing and reintegrating missing children in India, i can validate this with a firm belief that there is a high amount of coordinated intelligence, presence of mind and a proactive community and inter-agency response needed to make it happen, keeping in mind all legal and sociological grounds to protect a child.

Celebrating many firsts!

 This blog was originally published at http://www.atlascorps.org/blog/?p=4427

To begin with, this celebration started with the very first step forward to experiencing my first trip to the U.S., moulding my chain of thoughts, combining and collecting my knowledge of experiences to be prepared for the plethora of firsts ahead of me. Only to realise that it will be a fascinating mission to serve in a foreign country. And mind you, I define it as instilled by the core training principles of Atlas Corps that you are here to ‘serve’ for positive development, to do the best of your ability to give your best and take back the better with you.

The year 2014 started with so many firsts. Ever since the selection from India for the Atlas Corps Class 14 Fellowship or my arrival in the United States of America – it has been an unstoppable journey of many firsts. My first ice-skating experience and the first fall in the ice-skating rink were thrilling. From experiencing my first falling snow, making a snow family in the extreme winter to springing forward with daylight saving of time and preparing to fall forward in anew.

The first month had been full of initial explorations and learning about American culture, communication, as what Dr. Gary Weaver told us fellows during the first orientation week of Class 14′s arrival in DC.  As I see it, cultures cannot be understood when locked inside the vicinity of different rooms they are better understood when experienced outside of those rooms”.  The first week gave me different levels of experiencing many firsts. Right from So, that was my first composed cultural shock!

As clichéd as it may sound there is a saying from my country that – you can take an out Indian out of India but you can never take India out of an Indian, as colourful, diverse and awesome it appears to be, serving at one of the best international non-profits is the most amazing experience I can look for coming from the field of social development. This experience, reinforces confidence, sense of freedom and identity, anticipation of getting to know leaders from across the world and the heightened pleasure of contributing to such a big year ahead of me. It is one of those many firsts that gives my conscience a boost to grow more as a global development leader.

Coming from a background of social movements, In an activist terminology, it has been an empowering journey till now!

Engaging Men and Boys this IWD!

This blog was orginally published at http://bit.ly/1e6zZEb
and on Atlas Corps Service Inc. Blog at http://www.atlascorps.org/blog/?p=4455


The world revolves around a woman and her courage. Her Courage is my inspiration.
But then there are men and boys who are the most important part of her life. Men often are closely linked to all the phases in a woman’s life. As a mother, a she nourishes him makes him stand strong on his feet. As a sister, she gives him the companionship of a play-mate, a care-giver, a strong pillar of support. She respects him, loves him endlessly and devotes her life to him as a wife and his better half. She tries to make both ends meet with all the courage she can gather as a ‘Woman’. Her courage and inner strength keeps her going.

I am fortunate to have experience working with Tribal women in the most remote locations in India, trafficked adolescent girls from the neighborhood countries, women from the red light areas and most recently working with Muslim women and girls. There wasn’t a better experience gave me the courage to lead the change and draw inspiration from some great village women leaders. As part of the change process, legal empowerment of women and girls is the strongest tool for making them aware of their rights. There have been thousands of such change agents who came across my path towards this journey while working with the Multiple Action Research Group (MARG) which is an NGO working on legal empowerment based in New Delhi, India. This inspiration gave me the courage in abundance to empower women, girls and men about laws on education and gender based violence. A major shift was reflected in the participation of men and boys in our programs to take lead in promoting education of girls in their community.
At the international level, my current organization, CARE, inspires me to see women colleagues who have support from spouses to take care of their new born’s while they equally divide time between work and home. CARE puts forth an outstanding model for young leaders like me to learn from a transparent and value based approach. It truly shows that gender equality and women’s empowerment is at the heart of its programming, as is reflected in its Vision for 2020. Working with women’s empowerment implies working to shift gender norms too, which necessarily involves men. The work culture makes me reflect on the fact that while we work on gender equity across our projects, we need to be appreciative of each of our staff. Working abroad poses a lot of challenges for working couples especially women
Here I quote two examples from CARE’s work and approach on gender stereotypes, relation to partners, as well as their professional work.
“The Abatangamuco approach is an important part of CARE Burundi’s program approach to social change towards gender equality. Abatangamuco (“those who bring light”). CARE is supporting the Abatangamuco to convince more men in Burundi to challenge traditional practices and influence others to change their harmful behavior against women. Abatangamuco is a social movement of men who speak out to their communities about their personal transformation that supports a more egalitarian society. CARE is now supporting a growing number of Abatangamuco to convince more men and women in Burundi to challenge traditional practices and influence others to change their harmful behavior against women.”
CARE Balkans: “The Young Men Initiative – The program that started in 2007 targeted boys and young men between 13 – 19 years old in Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia. With a goal to reduce gender-based violence (GBV), CARE implemented a ground-breaking program that worked with young men aged 13-19 to deconstruct masculinity in their cultures and determine how gender norms and male socialization lead to inequitable attitudes and behaviors. The program was successful in changing attitudes in a more gender equitable way.”
These two examples reinforce a global response on changing mindsets not just in our programme areas but also in our workplace by building capacities, promoting education and instilling confidence through awareness and empowerment. Women and girls together with men and boys have been revolutionary in bringing that social change. This year we need to make an strong effort to make efforts to make paradigm shifts. To combat Gender based Violence, it is not only a women’s issue.
It’s a men’s issue!