Crossing borders to pursue a passion

She came to India in 2002. Seven years later, 38-year-old Karen
Doff is absolutely at home in the bylanes of Dharavi.

A US resident, Karen along with her colleague Jenn had first came to Mumbai on a business trip and was taken on a tour to Asia’s largest slum Dharavi. She visited Sharanam, a shelter home project of CORP (Community Outreach Programme) which houses 30 girls aged 5 to 18 years.

Inspired and touched by the effort of the NGO, Doff decided to do her bit for these children.

In 2005, Doff quit her well paying corporate job in the US to settle down in Mumbai. Living for close to seven years now, she along with Jenn has co founded Aasha, an organisation that raises funds for Sharanam. “My role at Sharanam is to help the girls achieve their dreams in whatever way I can,” says Doff. While education and other basic needs of the young girls are provided by CORP, Doff undertakes the recreation of the girls through Aasha.

“We go out for movies, shopping, eating and even air trips to Delhi and Agra,” she says.

While she doesn’t stay at Sharanam, she spends a better part of her day there. “I do sleep over sometimes,” she discloses. The confidence of the children, their belief that they no longer belong to the streets, only reinforces Doff’s determination to stay on.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about helping and reaching out to people who are less priviledged and more vulnerable, be it in any part of the world,” says Hayley Bolding, 26, founder of Atma Mumbai. An Australian, Bolding founded Atma in 2007, an organisation that offers aid to several local NGOs in the field of children’s education. Coming from Australia, Bolding thinks that with Atma, everything just fell into place and today she is glad that her organisation is able to help many local NGOs. Ask her what triggered her to plunge into this and she says, “It was more like why not rather than why,”  she says. And she is glad that she took the plunge. “Today we are like one big family.”

Initially, when 24-year-old Katia Savchuk from San Francisco came to India to work with SPARC (The Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers), she admits that she was a bit apprehensive. “I thought it might be difficult to adjust but it just happened and today I am very content with my work,” says Savchuk. SPARC, which works in the area of housing, infrastructure and sanitation issues for the urban poor takes Savchuk for many field visits to the dingy pavements and Mumbai’s many slums. And the many slums but obviously includes Dharavi. “To me Dharavi is like a city within a city. It’s not right to call it a slum. It is actually an economically productive place,” says Savchuk, matter-of-factly.

While none of them have any plans to pack their bags, at least not in the near future, they say it’s the contentment and satisfaction which they get from their work that holds them put. Like Doff says, “For me it’s been a life changing experience. I don’t have a salary or anything but my most treasured possession is the relationship that I share with the girls,” she states.