Mike Kubzansky is a Global Account Manager in Monitor’s National Economic Development and Security (NEDS) practice.  He is currently leading Monitor India’s work on “Market-Based Solutions” to development challenges, a multi-sponsor study to identify the most promising commercially viable approaches in India.

Instead of coming home for the holidays my family - my wife and my two kids, ages 6 and 8 - and I visited western India (Goa, Mumbai, Rajasthan).   Despite the amount of international travel my wife and I do, prior to this trip, my children’s entire experience of life outside the U.S. was two days in Montreal. 

So, India was a real eye-opener for them in terms of seeing a bigger world, understanding that the US is a fairly unique and affluent place, and seeing real poverty and privation for the first time up close.  As it turns out, they loved it, and had a great time.  We even got my six-year-old son into a few Jain temples, despite the lack of interactive computer buttons to be pushed.  Naturally he preferred the auto-rickshaws on the streets of the old city of Udaipur.

The most compelling moment for us happened when we were in rural Rajasthan, about 25 km outside Udaipur.  Although we stayed at a high-end luxury hotel, we spent time exploring  so we could see life in a rural Rajasthani village.  Two things struck my kids the most: (1) the poverty of the kids there - some with no shoes and very ragged clothes and (2) the schools. The government school was small and run down - even the UNICEF-supported school was small and very basic. 

My kids go to school in the Washington, DC public schools so they are hardly used to the most luxurious Andover/Exeter conditions, but this clearly struck a nerve, with my daughter in particular.  My daughter, 8 ½, had decided in advance that the best thing to do was to make a donation to an organized, reputable group that was doing good work, rather than give away money on an individual basis. 

After seeing all this, we got out my laptop and searched for projects and organizations in Rajasthan.  My daughter selected a GlobalGiving project which was helping with non-formal education for tribal children, and is contributing some of the savings from her allowance to this (alas, she’s also keeping some to give to Heifer International). 

While this may not solve the immediate problems of the villagers we saw and met while we enjoyed ourselves in our hotel in their village, it was an amazing thing for my daughter to be able to come back - having met the issues face to face - and feel like she was doing something to help.  We felt, in a very small way, that we had, at a minimum, not let the problems go unrecognized.

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