Over the last four months, I've had the pleasure of meeting the India38 team - 15 IBMers from around the world, our amazing facilitator Shana from Brazil, our local team members Kabi and Anil in India, and our Pyrexa Global coordinator Mareika in Washington. Meet the team!
Every Tuesday we'd come together via webex to video conference about logistics, our training, prework progress, safety and travel, and of course to learn about our respective projects. It was great to meet every one of my fellow IBMers and learn that each of us comes with a very different skill set. Because our team is global (from China, Ireland, Mexico, USA, Canada, Australia, Venezuela, Chile, Brazil, Sweden, and India) it was difficult to find a time that worked from everyone. Usually our video calls would be at 6am or 7am and of course, I would snooze my alarm until 15mins before which left just enough time to wake up and cling to a cup of coffee.
My favourite call was when we learned about our individual projects and were aligned into our sub-teams. Bernadette David (from USA), Aline Kawakami (from Brazil) and I were teamed together and were introduced to READ India - Rural Education and Development India. I'm sure everyone will say their team is the best but Bernadette and Aline are amazing and I can't wait to work with them going forward with READ.
READ is an outstanding NGO that believes empowering rural communities is critical to alleviating global poverty. They partner with rural communities in India to create a sustainable model for social and economic transformation across their key programs areas: education, health, women’s empowerment and livelihood development, youth development and life skills, and Information Technology for rural empowerment. (http://www.readindia.ngo/). I soon found out that approximately 1/3 of women in rural villages don't have proper access to education and literacy making their cause, and women's empowerment, ever more critical.
READ currently operates 28 locations across India, Bhutan and Nepal are would like to double their locations over the next 5 years. Bernadette, Aline and I will be working with their key stakeholders to analyze their current operations and help develop a business plan for that growth. I am excited to be working with such a impactful organization and helping provide a framework to help extend their resources to other rural areas of India.
I head to the airport tomorrow headed for New Delhi and I look forward to meeting everyone in person and contributing to such a wonderful cause.
Here we go! :)
Robert