Mailbag Monday
Dearest Krazy Dad,
I hope this message finds you well and that your new year is off to a wonderful start! I just made a small donation through PayPal and also wanted to write you a personal message. I was born and raised in the US and during my elementary school years in a “gifted” classroom, we started every day with logic puzzles. I will never forget the fun, challenge, or satisfaction of starting every day tackling a logic puzzle! I now live in India, where I started Kranti NGO, which empowers girls from Mumbai’s red-light areas to become agents of social change. We currently work with 20 girls, ages 13-23 who are daughters of sex workers, survivors of trafficking, or girls born and raised in Kamathipura, one of Asia’s most infamous red-light areas.
In the past five years, Kranti’s girls have: become the first girls from India’s red-light area to study abroad, received UN awards for their social justice work, given 25+ TEDx and other speeches around the world, and written, directed and performed their own play in front of 100K+ audience members. Their latest performance, at the world’s largest performing arts festival in 2017, was covered by BBC with over ten million views. In 2016 Kranti’s alternative school was named a Top 10 for the $1 million Global Teacher Prize, and three Kranti girls are currently studying in universities in Rome, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Please watch the “Global Teacher Prize” video if you have a few minutes….it will give you an idea of how our curriculum works and why you are such a vital part of it. I’ve been using your worksheets at least 2-3 times a week ever since we started Kranti School in 2014. There are some girls in our home who are completely illiterate and have never been to a mainstream school, but they LOVE your puzzles. The variety of puzzles has really given the girls a chance to see how intelligent they are and that they do love learning…quite a feat for girls who grew up their whole lives hearing from their teachers that “a whore’s daughter can only be a whore.”
As we are an NGO and I do all of the fundraising for Kranti as well as teach school full time, I can’t afford much more than $20, but I will continue to make contributions every time we get an education grant. Your website saves me so much time every week and there’s no amount of money I could possible send you that would be adequate for the amount of energy, passion, and love for learning that you’ve single-handedly brought into our classroom. I hope you’ll take a minute today to appreciate and thank yourself for the thousands of lives you must be touching around the globe without even knowing it. Personally, I’ll just say you’ve made my life as a teacher significantly more fun and manageable!
Lots of love and gratitude,
Robin