[Editor's Note: This is the second blog post from Caroline Orr, our guest blogger on the ground at Shanti Bhavan. For more information on Shanti Bhavan Graduation festivities, check out the STF in India blog posts from last year! Here, here, here and here!]
Yesterday was a day I’ll never forget for the rest of my life: Shanti Bhavan graduation day.
Hours earlier before the ceremony, the school had a very palpable restless, excited energy. Inside the dorms, a graceful chaos ensued. Younger girls were flitting about, tying braids and bows in each other’s hair. Curling irons, hair decorations, bindis, makeup, combs, shoes, and ribbons were strewn about the beds and floor. Girls from the graduating class sat in chairs as younger ones attended to their hair and makeup.
Caroline and her prep team getting ready for the ceremony!
As eleven o’clock neared, I left the dorms to observe the action inside the school. Families filed in to take their seats. I thought about the significance of this graduation not to the students themselves, but perhaps more importantly, to the parents of the graduates. As diplomas were handed out and as each graduate walked across the stage, I resolved to soak in the moment from a new perspective. Everyone understood that something rare and precious was happening. Everybody could sense it.
The Graduation hall slowly fills as parents and siblings arrive
In the middle of the graduation ceremony, I made a pointed effort to look behind me at the parents and extended family of the graduates. When each graduate walked across the stage, these family members possessed a certain solemnness of expression. Their eyes glistened, as if tears were on the brink of falling but in fighting back tears they evinced a raw and gritty type of pride in the extraordinary accomplishment represented before them.
The night before graduation, members from the 12th grade had offered some final parting words on behalf of the graduating class. Implicit in their remarks was a deep recognition that their lives at this point in time would be vastly different without Shanti Bhavan’s intervention when they were four or five years old. The girls almost certainly would be married by now with at least one child already. Their days would most likely consist of domestic chores, fetching water, attending to animals, selling goods in the village, and cooking. The boys would either have wives or engaged in low-paying jobs. Yet at this juncture, the eleven graduating students are all headed off the college after all receiving scores above the 75th percentile on their board exams. In India, where the system is even harder than our own in the U.S., this feat is special.
The 2013 Shanti Bhavan Graduating Class! Our very own STF Scholars are there: Prathibha in pink/blue at far right, Meena in pink/yellow in center, Cathy in light pink at the left, and Vinceya peeking out behind her in the back row. Congrats, girls!
This fourth annual commencement also marked the college graduation of the school’s very first batch of graduates who now enter the workforce. Three students have jobs at Goldman Sachs in Bangalore, three at Mercedes Benz, one at Ernst and Young, and the others have equally as impressive employers inside national companies. Again, all attendees couldn’t help but see the fulfillment of Shanti Bhavan’s mission so blatantly, beautifully exposed through the graduation ceremony. As I continue to learn more about the personal backgrounds and familial trials faced by students here, I’m sure the parents’ expressions I witnessed on the day of graduation will take on deeper meaning. These students are going to graduate, accept their bright destiny, and move forward into life, always remembering and supporting their families along the way. They have a sense of compassion, personal responsibility, and generosity that far surpasses peers their age. With their first paychecks, I can guarantee you they will be returning or giving back to the villages from which they were retrieved. They will be taking care of their younger siblings and older parents. More than that, they will be working tirelessly for the good of their communities, their country, and the world at large. To whom much is given much is expected. Shanti Bhavan kids will exemplify this quotation with willing, grateful hearts for the rest of their lives.