Skip to content
Apply
Stories

It takes a village to raise a writer

It had always been Erica Roberts’ dream to work in India, but the third-​​year North­eastern stu­dent never had the oppor­tu­nity. That is, until last spring, when inter­na­tional co-​​op took her to a class­room in Chan­delao, a vil­lage about 45 min­utes out­side of Jodhpur.

Roberts worked with Chan­delao Vikas Sansthan, a small orga­ni­za­tion that pro­motes women’s entre­pre­neur­ship. She con­nected with the orga­ni­za­tion through the Foun­da­tion for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment, a San Francisco-​​based non­profit focused on capacity building in the inter­na­tional community.

Roberts took respon­si­bility for devel­oping a pro­gram to teach local women how to read and write Hindi. Though she didn’t speak Hindi, the resourceful stu­dent worked with locals to iden­tify the needs of the vil­lage women as well as the best approach to imple­menting the program.

“I worked with a friend who helped me con­duct inter­views, sur­veys and group meet­ings with women in the vil­lage so we could find out what their needs were and how we could help them go fur­ther and pro­vide for their fam­i­lies better,” Roberts said.

The inter­na­tional affairs major applied what she had learned in class to the devel­op­ment of the pro­gram, which ranged from con­ducting needs assess­ments to elic­iting insight from stake­holders. Roberts wrote the course plan, making sure to include ideas that would make the pro­gram sus­tain­able, and con­nected with a local teacher who altered a cur­riculum for indi­vidual stu­dents to fit Roberts’ needs.

“A lot of the classes I have taken were def­i­nitely applic­able,” Roberts said, “and it is really cool to go on co-​​op and see that what you are learning is actu­ally going to help you once you are done with college.”

As a result of the village’s small size, word of mouth turned out to be the program’s best recruit­ment tool. By the time Roberts had returned home after 17 weeks in India, about 30 women had com­mitted to the program.

“It was a good start,” Roberts noted. “I tried to plan out a lot of ways to get feed­back for all par­ties involved so we could make sure the pro­gram is run­ning smoothly and everyone has what they want.”

– By Joe O’Connell

More Stories

Photo of the Capitol Building at night

High stakes for politics, SCOTUS in 2018

01.04.2018
Photo of the crashed truck that was used in the October 31st attack in Manhattan.

Weaponizing Language: How the meaning of “allahu akbar” has been distorted

11.08.2017
Northeastern logo

Why I love studying Spanish

05.29.20
Uncategorized