XL Pioneer Club - Hunger Project India
What was my biggest takeaway from the inaugural XL Pioneer Club?
For me, it was my experience with the Hunger Project. The Hunger Project in India is about Indians for India. The program is about empowering women, so that they can take the first step empower themselves and their village. It is about giving them a political voice in their constituencies. The intention is to empower 3,000 women leaders which will favorably impact 3 million people in the next three years.
The controversy of the name was discussed at length during the 12 day adventure through India, which saw our group of 60, including 14 wonderful children, travel through some of the wealth and riches of Mumbai, Delhi and Rajestan, through to the city of romance in Agra and the Taj Mahal, onto some of the poorer rural areas near Satna. Hunger, as explained by our two alliance partner, Jim and Cathy, is not soley about physical hunger, it is in fact, about hunger for opportunities, hunger for a voice, and hunger for rights for food, clean water, education.
This Hunger was clearly shared in the village around Satna and the surrounding communities that the inaugural Pioneer Club visited. Physical hunger which one of our honorable guest, the minister of transportation, correctly noted, is something that india has comfortable surpassed at and around the turn of the century.
In fact, the minister proudly stated that India has over two years supply of food in its reserves, two years of food stuff are stored, and india is beyond having to worry about hunger. This lead to a healthy debate to having these foodstuffs delivered, logistics enhanced and to enable the poorest of the poor access to these foodstuffs.
The Hunger Projects Initiative, which is supported by the XL Results Foundation, as a component of the Social Entrepreneur Accreditation program (www.resultsfoundation.com) and in collabortion with the Clinton Global Initiative is about educating women about available resources, training women about stepping up, and assisting women leaders to allow their voice to be heard. For XL, we use the mantra show up, step up, and give back. For the women in the villages, it is about access, access to food, access to clean water, access to education, and access to infrastructure that will connect their village to other villages so that trade, commerce and development can flourish.
In Esther Hicks wonderful book, “ASK AND IT IS GIVEN”, one of Esther main message is to simply ask and it will happen. Esther along with Abraham brilliantly share the the power of intention, the power of words, and the power of attraction. In India, it dawned on me that a similar book could be written for women leaders though perhaps it would be called “DEMAND AND IT MIGHT HAPPEN”
When I heard the women leaders from the Team India Hunger Project urge the new batch of inspiring women to DEMAND improved access to water, to DEMAND local education and to DEMAND road access for the village. My mind, body, and inner voice immediately pulled back from this very powerful directive. How combative?, i thought to myself. After years of studying words and in fact curiousily exploring, practising, and sharing the wisdom and application of “Word Medicine” as a real and practical tool of personal empowerment and transformation, it did not settle well with me for the leaders to be encouraging the new aspiring leaders to use such a word as DEMAND, especially with power and force that they were encouraging them to use. I wondered what would happen if they employed Esther’s principal and techniques of of “ASK and It Is Given” and whether this approach would be more effective in actually getting what they ask for.
As I listened and pondered my internal dialogue, I heard story after story of verbal abuse, sexual abuse, suppression, and torment that ladies leaders of this movement were faced with on a daily, weekly, and monthly. The response to these newly empowered women was not always positive. In fact, quite often the male villages would respond to loud voices, the demands and the open confrontational with the only thing that they knew and that is violence. Violence was their core response to the challenge and fear that was being triggered in them. Many men lashed out and the receipient of their violence were women. The dynamics fascinated me, as the women who were making demands, demands that they were willing to voice and demands that they knew would make a positive difference for the village, for the families, for the children, for them, and even for the men that they were now sending a sense of fear, alienation, and in some cases de-masculination of their male counterparts.
As I pondered the situation in the villages, something popped, and I wondered what in our lives, what in our western lives are we actually willing to demand? Is there anything that we care about enough to actually step up and demand? Have we been so insensitive to our surrounding that we have become so acclimatized to the injustices of our societies that we no longer have the power, the drive, and VOICE to make demands? Demand of society, of our government of ourselves?
As I stepped back, and opened my eyes, I smiled and looked up and thanked my maker. Thanked her for the learning, thanked her for the lesson and thanked her for the opportunity to reconnect with a beautiful work – a WORD that can DEMAND me to step up, DEMAND me to speak up and DEMAND me to make a difference, especially when DEMANDING is the right action to take!
As for our teachers in the villages of Satna, the women are finding their voice and USING IT. They are demanding change and they are experiencing some of the benefits and costs to change. Change will continue and i have a feeling that a louder voice by women will lead to positive changes in rural india. As they move forward, they will include men in the conversation, they will walk a middle road, and they will make strides to improve the quality of life for all indians in rurual areas, men, women and childre.
From my short experience in Satna, i am optimistic and it left me wondering, are we witnessing the end of the caste system in India?
Ladies and Gentlemen, shall we ask or demand?
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