Tag Archives: India

Study Tour Offers Up Close Look at India

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I’ve really enjoyed reading Annie’s updates from her recent trip to India, where she visited Heifer projects in Rajasthan. She shared her first-hand accounts of the difference Heifer’s model of training, empowerment and Passing on the Gift is making in rural villages there. If you’re like me, you wish you could go there and see this up close.

Heifer International is offering just such an opportunity this November through our India study tour. This trip is planned for November 7-16, 2010. Enrollment is open to the public, but space is limited. You can learn more about it and download an application here.

Through organized group trips, our study tours visit the farmers and families who are working with Heifer to improve their lives. All of Heifer’s study tours let participants observe Heifer’s model of sustainable development in action. A study tour has the power to change your whole outlook on the meaning of the words hunger and poverty, and expose you to new cultures and ways of thinking. Read what study tour participant Judith Capen had to say about her experience:

“The Guatemala study tour deepened my understanding of poor farmers and global issues, and has caused me to look at what is really important in my life and realize how we are all in this together – that we can make a difference.”

Women and Politics in India

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There’s an interesting piece over on The Morning News about politics and gender in India. If you’ve enjoyed Annie’s posts from the field, you should check it out. And vice versa.

“… My visit to West Bengal comes more than 16 years after India’s parliament ordered the nation’s local governments to save a third of their seats for women. At that time, the Women’s Reservation Bill passed with hardly any discussion and no opposition, also demanding quotas for certain castes and tribes. Today, India has more women in government than any country on the planet. And yet, India’s parliament is still debating whether to pass a women’s quota for its own seats. …

According to government reports, more than a million women have positions on the local level, known as the Panchayati Raj. Fatema Sheikh is one of them. A young mother, she’s also part of the region’s Muslim minority and lives in Kalinga, a rural village in Nadia, a district of roughly five million people, several harrowing hours’ drive north of West Bengal’s capital, Kolkata. …”