Something beautiful

Some favorite pictures. Enjoy. Get in contact if you have any questions, if you want to help, if you just want to talk: mom4life@shaw.ca

Some favorite pictures.

A Return

Home. Yes, we've returned to Canada, it's been about two weeks now. All the things we left behind, the paperwork and the rest of the work, things pile(d) up. It's been two weeks of adjusting back to the day and night difference, which took much longer than expected, it's been two weeks of just adjusting.

I've often heard travellers talk about the post-culture shock, the one that comes after returning home, especially from a place they have loved as much as I loved India.  Coming home was hard, it's colder, quieter, and I obsessively convert all of the money I'm spending into rupees and think about what I could be doing with that same money, in Maher, in India. It's silly and it's painfully obvious, to my friends, and to my family, how much I'm missing the place.

Things here are just starting up, Starlight Montessori is running out of the living room, the next step is getting properly licensed, something I've been working on for some time now, to tap into some government funds and get on the list, the kids who need it most. 

India keeps in touch, and the teachers in the Montessori classroom we left behind are busy, they take multiple classes for the classroom daily, and the children's excitement is infectious. They are all excited, all positive on the phone, listing the improvements of their students and their enthusiasm for learning. We did some crafts in the classroom while we were there, and those crafts were used as decorations a multi-center celebration for Sister Lucy's birthday. Sister Lucy being the founder of Maher.  

It's encouraging, I'm encouraged and you should be too.  Here's their website (http://www.maherashram.org/?q=node/131), and a list of their most urgent needs.  Can you help?  

The Days Wind Down

These days we are in South India, Madurai, to check on last year's project, making plans to improve the school we set up.  The children have grown older and their needs have changed, what worked last year is not sufficient for the age of these girls anymore.  So now the planning, moving material, shifting to suit the range of the girls.  I'm trying to get back the material I left there last year to utilize in the project I'm working on with Maher in Pune.


The women who run the orphanage were so happy to see me, normally volunteers come and go in places like this, promise to return, and don't, so a familiar face from abroad is a big deal.  I had time to feed the girls some lunch and then spend some time playing with them.  Things at the orphanage are much improved and this is heartening.  I am full of hope.

Maher

It's half way through our journey now, and although we have accomplished much, the time feels very short.  We've put together a little school in one of the Maher centers, trained 5 teachers, but it still feels somewhat impermanent.  Space is always an issue, Sister Lucy is very kind and working hard to find us adequate room and time.  Next week shelves are being built in another room in the same compound, they're tearing out their kitchen for our school. 

The children are beautiful and they adore every minute they spend with the material, some sneak in for double classes.  The older children, even if the material is somewhat too childish or easy for them, also ask for time in the classroom.  When we first opened up the material, even the teachers and house mothers were taken and became distracted with the colors, the objects and the curiosity.

Further than the school it has been wonderful to spend time not only with the children but with the teenagers, the mothers, the seniors, the mentally challenged women and the volunteers staying at Maher.  This place is as good as it looks on paper.

India

We're here.  As much as I can, I'll be updating this blog while we're here.  It took 2 days to make it to the country I am sure I will be calling home very soon.  It's monsoon season, the heat is still thick and abates at the first sign of winds and rain.  The first day was all sleeping and eating, unpacking, cleaning.  Today we were taken to the projects this organization runs.  Truly, Maher is an amazing organization, the work that it does, that the men and women who run it do, fills my heart with hope and love...mostly love. 

Now to make plans, my mind is constantly running...how much potential this organization has for expansion, how can I be a part of this and more importantly, how can we all be a part of this? 

There are big things, wonderful things, love things in the air. 

ACTIVATE!

July 14 will always be a day etched in my memory. In the midst of raising funds for India, my daughter, Anushka, had an idea.  She always has an idea.  A fundraiser.  Poets, artists, mics, performance. She had the idea, but I figured, she didn't have the time. There were summer weddings she was attending, cities she was traveling to and friends across the country she was visiting, but she was insistent, in the mass chaos that is her general M.O., she was going to put together a show that people were going to attend and love. 


She called it "ACTIVATE" as in activate the human impulse to band together, activate to support one another, activate to make this trip happen.  It happened, we painted trees gold and made signs late into the night before the big day. She booked a poetry troupe from Ottawa, she booked Eau Claire Market, we found vendors to set up, my cousin helmed the henna and body art booth, we found an audience.  It was wonderful, my daughter is a poet, spoken word performer herself and we've had the opportunity to see her perform but had never taken such a deep venture into her world of performance and artistry.  I, and the rest of the audience were loving it, there were poets from Montreal, Vancouver, Victoria, Calgary and Ottawa and they were, each of them, powerful and thrilling to watch. 

The main attraction of the night was "The Recipe", the Ottawa troupe, and they were phenomenal. A mixture of jazz, poetry, beats and the sounds of my country, Africa.  I hadn't heard anything like it, many members of the audience hadn't heard anything like it, but all of us, we were still and silent.  Then singing along and dancing. 


While the night didn't raise us a whole lot of money, it did raise our hopes, people were interested, people were talking, everyone was enjoying themselves, happy, and that was more than enough.  


There are a list of people I need to thank for making this happen, so, here we go:


1. Jen Kunlire for hosting and performing.
2. Ian Keteku, Komi Olafimihan, Brandon Wint and Ikenna Onyegbula, together who make the Recipe for performing and winning the audience.
3. Morley Tuttle for doing sound.
4. Shelina Hassanali for volunteering her Henna art skills.
5. Mahi Printers for putting up with my daughter's pestering and ensuring we had posters and info sheets at our show.  
6. Eau Claire Market for hosting us, free of charge, in a fantastic space.
7. Steve Miller, Andre Prefontaine, Shayne Avec I Grec, Anne Petitclerc and Johnny MacRae, for performing.
8. For all those friends, family and audience members who showed up and made the event such a success, thank you.
9. Last, but certainly not least, to my daughter, thank you for making this happen.

YMCA Peace Medal 2010

I was lucky enough to have been nominated for the YMCA Peace Medal Award last year and even more humbled to have won in the Humanitarian category.  The video outlines my work here in Calgary and further, abroad.  I can't watch it myself, it's a little ridiculous, but take a peek, take a minute and let's talk about making a difference, donate some money, donate some time.  All Acts of Love are important.  Shoot me a line: mom4life@shaw.ca or use the donate button under here.  

-M.

Selling the Cause

This is all new for me, the blogging, the raising funds, the awareness.  It's much easier to go about doing what you do without any attention and added processes, although it's important to share the passion, the "cause" just like you'd share anything.  If it's to inspire, to gain support or to increase an awareness of the goings on of a community struggling and the solutions we've found and the the things that have failed.


The work I do in Calgary is just a part of my chipping away at the mountains of trouble our society, whether in the microcosm of community or in the larger context of national and international tangles, has produced. Children have always been where my heart has gravitated to, so I've started a tradition to travel abroad yearly, when I have a summer's month or two off from teaching at my home-school, and open classrooms in orphanages.


It's India, the children, especially the girls, who are in the most need. They are in orphanages, in crowds, given away because it's the boys everyone want.  They get a nominal education in government schools, they don't learn English. Upon finishing their basic education, learning the appropriate way of carrying out common household chores, they are married and go to the homes of their husbands to continue the cycle of poverty and disadvantage. There's a chance for change here, there's a chance to get these girls when they are young, there's a chance to teach them, before they get told otherwise, that they are worth more than the dusty schools and crowded thatched roof classrooms that are in the business of producing wives not women. Last year, I opened a classroom in an orphanage on the tip of the continent, Madhurai, Ballar Illam, I trained a teacher, I brought material and I made a classroom.


The original intent of my trip was to provide the girls with a playmate, someone to help with chores, and while this sounded worthwhile when I was here, planning my trip, it soon turned into a short term and useless endeavour when I reached my destination.  The girls didn't need help doing their chores, they needed a spark, a light in the otherwise dreary world of 5:30 am chores to all day school to evening chores, waiting for a husband or some other way out of the place they were in.  They were beautiful, the material I brought was just enough, they were smart, they loved every minute of it.  The at first hesitant hands, exploring new colors, new letters, new numbers became excited and confident, curious and insistent.  It was the most inspiring thing I'd ever seen.


This year, I'd like to focus my efforts on a different part of India, specifically, Pune.  In Pune, there's a place called Maher, meaning "Mother's Home" in Marathi.  It's a place for women escaping domestic violence and abusive or life threatening situations.  Most of the time, these women have no place to go and children in tow as well.  It's these children I want to draw out, to alleviate the trauma they are suffering at the hands of an unforgiving and violent chain of events.  They will break the cycle of anger and poverty that has brought them to Maher if given the chance.  In the month I'm at Maher, I'd like to train a teacher in Montessori method, set up a classroom and give these children a chance to hope and dream.  At this time, I've been able to put together material for the school through private donations and just need to cover my travel costs there.  India is very far away and it costs a pretty penny to get there, I'm talking to a few companies, looking for some kind sponsors who are interested in the work I do, enough to support it and send me across an ocean.  If you are interested, and I hope you are, in helping, there's a donate button at the end of this.  Any amount means the world to me, eventually every such Act of Love will pool to become waves of change.  So let's make some change.

-M.

Me Myself and Everything

Welcome, welcome.  First to my heart and then to my blog.  Here you'll find a little bit about who I am, what I do and why I've chosen to dedicate as much time and effort as I can to carrying out small Acts of Love.


I'm Munira, I'm a proud Mother, a dedicated learner, a passionate teacher, an advocate, a maker, a doer. I reside in a big, busy city, Calgary, on the prairies, home of year round winters and short, glimmering summers.  In these recent years, in this nervous city, I've discovered a specific and unique love and joy in teaching young children.  In my community there are droves of young children who are being left behind by the public education system, languishing in their own perceived failures and differences in households that do not understand and are uncomfortable with the culture and lifestyle they exist in.  The children I teach come mostly from Central Asia, Afghanistan, and belong to families that have migrated to Canada in search of better jobs, better houses, safer streets and safer politics.  Now it's a period of adjustment, now their children are being caught with one foot in their homeland, homeculture, and the other foot hesitantly planted in this country, where the language is not theirs, the food is not theirs and the mannerisms or cultural cues are certainly not theirs.


These children are the children I open my doors to daily, pro bono, I catch them young. My living room, with all the furniture given away to families needier than mine, is now their classroom.  It's red and blue and full of the pattering of little feet and the hum of little voices.  All industrious, all excited, all learning.  This system will not break them, will not forget them.  Through the program I teach, the Montessori methods I impart, they will be ready to negotiate the public schools that so often leave their kind behind, in dusty corners and too-full rooms.  My students are 3 to 6, I teach 7 days a week, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, and my students learn to read, they learn to write, they learn grace and diligence and most importantly, they learn patience, they learn not to give up.  This is an exciting thing to watch and facilitate. 


All the school material as well as crafts and other learning tools are all paid for out of pocket and from any private donations I receive.  My school is in the process of certification, licensing with the city and soon I will be able to take 6 children for 3 hours every morning and 6 children for 3 hours every afternoon.  Soon I'll ask the government for subsidies for the ESL students I teach.  The need is more than I can fill but I'm plugging away anyway, one act of love is worth its weight in gold.  What if we all took the time to teach a needy child in our community or contribute to their education, in monetary or material means, what would the world look like?  Get in touch with me if you can offer something, material, monetary support, words of support, anything, I'm open and I'm looking:  mom4life@shaw.ca


-M.