Archmere Students and Faculty Participate in Social Action Trip to India

 
Twelve students, two moms, and four teachers traveled to northern India during Spring Break to visit Pardada Pardadi Educational Society (PPES), an organization that promotes rural development through education, employment and empowerment of rural girls and women. PPES is situated in rural Anupshahr, 150 kilometers east of India’s capital of Delhi, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, an area infamous for its poverty, crime and child marriages. The trip’s main visit was to Pardada Pardadi Girls School (PPGS), a free K-12 school founded in 2000 by Sam Singh, who retired from DuPont and returned to his village to open the school. The Archmere students were paired up with 11th graders at PPGS and spent two days visiting classes, vocational centers, and even some of the girls’ homes in the village of Aahar. The students have continued to keep in touch with their PPGS friends via email. 
 
The Archmere group also learned about India’s cultural heritage via visits to the Qutub Minar and Humayun’s tomb in Delhi, the Taj Mahal and Agra Fort in Agra, the Fort in Fatehpur-Sikri and the Amer Fort and Pink City in Jaipur. They also visited Gobind Sadan, “God’s House without Walls”, a farm-based interfaith community in Delhi, as well as participated in a yoga class in Jaipur. 
 
The trip left its mark on all of the students, faculty and parents. Below are some snippets from Mr. Tim Dougherty’s blog that he wrote while on the trip:
 
…But it was what we saw along the road that was impossible not to notice. Unremitting poverty--dwellings made of crumbled rock and canvas; shoeless and ragged children playing in expanses of dirt, goats eating garbage nearby; piles of dirt or rubble as though an eternal construction project is underway with no purpose or workers. This, next to a car dealership or an apartment complex, those too having a confusing look of decay and modernity. Very hard to explain. I'm not at all doing it justice. And I'm not judging. Mesmerizing, yet unsettling. Or unsettling, yet mesmerizing.
 
A dinner buffet after a walk through a beautiful indoor mall (which, considering what we passed only one block away) made this splendor a real-life example of juxtaposition.  
 
This entry is from the day the group arrived in the village…
 
So, after we arrived and enjoyed our first of many meals of rice and lentils--darn good, I have to say--we took the bus to the village Anupshahur, spelled at least three different ways. Our destination was the Ganges. We parked the bus maybe a half-mile from the river and walked. On the way, we were treated to a veritable zoo. Who needs one of those drive-through zoos when you can walk through Anoopshahur, India? We shared the street with the following: cattle, pigs, dogs, and monkeys. Monkeys. Like they belonged there. Monkeys. Nobody from the village was alarmed, of course, so none of us were either. Did I mention monkeys? It sure wasn't a typical American scene, but then I've never been to Smyrna. 

People sitting outside watching other people sitting outside or walking past. Saying little, but content, as far as I could tell. And then there were the food carts with their fruits or candies or snacks. One man was cooking up piles of something amazing, but I resisted it, not sure how I might suffer later. I'd heard all the stories…
 
We walked past semi-crumbling buildings, stores and homes...or were they just built enough to suit a business's or a family's needs? (One corner building had no walls in the two sides but had tables and chairs. I learned it was a lawyer's office.) You could see past the front section of some houses and into a courtyard of sorts, swept and organized, sometimes with flowers or animals or vehicles.
 
If you would like to learn more about PPES, click here to visit their website.

To view all of the pictures from the trip, click here.
Back
Archmere Academy is a private, Catholic, college preparatory co-educational academy,
grades 9-12 founded in 1932 by the Norbertine Fathers.