all fortunate people living here in the
u.s. I know that high school can be
stressful or applying to college can be
stressful or even having your name is
spelled on your Starbucks Coffee is
pretty annoying but truth is for most of
us in this room problems and stress that
we encounter our first wall problems
that are scoffed at in comparison to
third wall problems that a lot of people
around the world face when I was seven
my dad was transferred to India and we
ended up moving to Bangalore a city in
southern India for three years the
standard of living for me in India
wasn’t much different from what I’d
known in the u.s. I went to an
international school and I made new
friends I did have to worry uniform
though that part I never liked what was
different though was the chasm of
difference between my private school and
the rundown yellowing government school
across the street what was different was
the quality of medical care I had access
to for just a cold or a stomach
infection and the infection ridden
crowded government hospitals that often
didn’t have life-saving treatments that
many people there needed what was most
different was that people seemed to
resign to the idea of inequality no one
seemed to care and that took me by
surprise I grown up on the American
Dream that anyone from any walk of life
could make it anyone from any social
class any race any income has a chance
to follow their dream it may not be
equally difficult for anyone but it’s
possible and to my eight-year-old brain
it was hard to understand that that idea
of social mobility just didn’t exist in
countries like India especially when it
came to education perhaps my experience
living in India wasn’t entirely
authentic
because though I can stand here and I
can cry and I can complain for what I
saw people suffer with I lived in a
secured bubble away from the
difficulties a lot of people there
encountered I existed within the safety
net of my American citizenship three
years later I moved back to the US to
Connecticut and I brought back with me
my strong Indian accent my love for
Indian food and memories of the
struggles I saw there
I remember my apartment complex a
security guard who had to pull his son
out of school because his family needed
the additional income or the local
vegetable venders daughter who died
because the government hospital couldn’t
diagnose her with tetanus as I grew
older these memories stayed with me and
I really wanted to go back to India
Tobago and leave the bubble I used to
live in and make a direct difference in
the lives of young children so in the
summer of 2015 I had the chance to work
at a school in India this school petty
criminal profit organization aiming to
provide free high-quality education to
children living in local zones to try to
lift them out of systemic poverty I
worked in the remedial remedial
department and I try to help students
who fell behind their peers in math
science and English to catch up I enjoy
coming to petty criminal day because all
my students there had an immense
gratitude for the opportunity that they
got at Karma and they were so
affectionate towards and fascinated by
the girl with the weird accent I loved
coming in every single day to petty
criminal
because most of my students came from
families earning less than 75 dollars
and their only exposure to English was
at school so many of the teachers there
asked me to come into their classes and
talk a little bit about my life in the
u.s. as a sort of motivator to get kids
to work on their English
that way I was able to interact with
students from all different grades and
get to know them from the capacity of a
friend rather than just as a teacher one
of the first kids I met there was Monika
she was a really smart 2nd grader and I
think she was the first person there to
remember my name
she had a voracious appetite for
learning she’d asked me to bring her any
books I had at home so she could read
more and learn new words during lunch
she tried to have extended conversations
with me in English to practice speaking
as a second grader I think she was
acutely aware of her family’s financial
status and was driven to take full
advantage of petty karma to lift her
family out of the cycle of poverty one
day when I asked her what she wanted to
do when she grew up this is what she
I truly hope to see her become a
scientist one day because I know she can
do it another one of my favorite kids
there was Karen Karen was a first grader
and he really struggled with English as
his tutor it was really difficult to get
through to him because neither of us
understood each other I only knew enough
of his language to tell him that I can’t
speak it and he struggled with the
English alphabet
I remember one of the days we were
working on writing the alphabet and
sounding it out and I remember him
looking more and more confused
eventually I pulled out my phone and I
try to play one of those alphabet videos
that get you to sing along to it and to
my surprise a couple a bee season he
started singing along with the video and
eventually he was able to spell out the
whole alphabet all by himself eventually
I know it’s not a big deal for someone
to be able to say father or mother or
brother but for someone like Karin with
no background in English no one at home
to reinforce what was taught in school I
was incredibly proud of the progress
that he made in four short weeks and it
wasn’t just in content
he looked happier and more confident in
himself that he was on par with the rest
of his class so let’s take a moment here
to look at this diagram it was published
by the United Nations Food and
Agricultural Committee on the cycle of
poverty in India at the top we have
poverty leading to poor food intake
malnutrition and stunted development and
on the other side we have low earning
capacity and impaired productivity
leading to poverty now most government
programs in countries like India tend to
tend to focus on the result of poverty
like poor food intake and malnutrition
but what petty crime I did that’s
entirely different is that it broke the
cycle at low earning capacity at
impaired productivity and it attacked
the very root of poverty perhaps this is
why so many students at petty karma are
the first in their family to graduate
from college or the first in their
have experience in two radically
different education systems here in the
US public schools are well funded and
they encourage academic and intellectual
diversity in India and in other
developing countries in Asia Africa
South America educational opportunities
are unequal when these opportunities are
sectioned off based on income how do we
bring kids died fooled by cyclic
pretty the chance to dream kids all over
the world have aspirations and dreams
are we doing enough to empower them and
it’s not just in India or developing
countries to a certain degree the same
problem exists in the u.s. in states
like Louisiana with poor educational
infrastructure in cities like Hartford
schools like the Byrnes Academy the same
problem exists perhaps on a smaller
scale petty crime Amato’s for us an
education system where kids no matter
their income no matter their
socioeconomic status no matter their
race have the chance to dream and have
the chance to be whoever they want to be
some of my most valuable life lessons
were taught to me by second graders in
broken English and I’m forever indebted to them for that thank you