Saturday, June 18, 2005

 

RTN Grant entry and List of Interviews

Below you will find an entry I recently submitted to the Road Trip Nation Grant Program.

Mandy,

Below you will find our grant application. I met with Brian McAllister at Purdue about two months ago. We both are very excitable people and as Jillian and I shared our ideas Brian inspired us to shoot video and track our international roadtrip to India in a blog. We did both and returned to America last week.

In short, we spent a month in southern India living with local people, interviewing NGO leaders, business outsourcing people, community developers, slum children, middle class children, street children, volunteers, a retired Indian couple, and a software developer. We both did interviews and we gave back to the community by using Jillian's artistic skills and we put on four art camps. I was in charge of setting up all our connections (via a month and a half of cold-emailing-calling), all technical stuff, and most of the video.

You've got to check out our blog to get an idea of what we did! See pictures and our raw, unadulterated thoughts: http://artview.blogspot.com.

Each team member's: name, info, and role on trip
#1: Jillian M. Longheier, Purdue Graduated with Masters in Art May 2005, she is the artist and a writer and photographer.
#2: Jonathan A. Wolter, jawolter@gmail.com, 765-532-6876, Purdue University BSIE May 2005 (engineering), coordinator, videographer, writer and guy who carries heavy bags.

Descriptive Name for roadtrip
Art View (India)
We are both creative people, Jillian is a bona-fide artist, so we are using our Artistic interests and skills to understand India from the viewpoints of children, business professionals, NGO leaders and retired people.

Destinations (approx.)
Chennai, India (Madras) May 11-18
Bangalore, India May 19-June 3
Chennai, India (Madras) June 4-8

Interviews (all were successfully completed)
Video Interview: Dr. Nirmal, founder of Exnora International, an NGO with several hundred thousand members focusing on environmental issues in India. He also is a speaker and international trainer on effectiveness and leadership. He has founded over two dozen organizations. He talked about keys to success and how he went from living in a slum to transforming thousands of lives. (www.exnora.org)

Video Interview: Krupa, co-founder of Sukrupa Community Development which feeds and teaches 300+ slum children a day. She was formerly a very successful international businesswoman, and she discusses the transition from a life of luxury to service (www.sukrupa.com)

Video Interview: Kamla Ravikumar, an artist and interior designer who formed an art institute in Chennai to meet a need left by the schools in teaching art instruction.

Video Interview: Fr. Cyriac Adayadiel, Director of Vocational Training at Bosco Mane, a residential home for street children. He formed this organization 25 years ago and it has helped thousands of boys from the street. He shared what made him successful, why he choose this over other careers and risks in going out on your own forming an NGO.

Video Interview: Ram Sinam, graphic design consultant. He formed his own design studio after graduating from the number one design school in India and discussed the journey of running his own company. Also he gave Jillian tips on entering the design field from her background of fine art, and he shared his ideas on "what is design."

Informal Interview over breakfast: Narayan Sethuramon, Managing Director W.S. Industries (India) LTD. (www.wsinsulators.com). He shared education in India, how he gives back to the community, and his experiences as a Purdue Alumni in India.

Informal Interview about outsourcing in India: Malati et. al. of Allsec Technologies, Ltd. a Business Process Outsourcing (call center) company.

Informal Interview: Vishal Talreja, managing trustee of Dream a Dream, an NGO that collaborates with other organizations to encourage children to accomplish their dreams, no matter what hardships they may face (www.dreamadream.org)

Informal Interview: Mr. and Mrs. Ramachanadran, our first host family that let us stay with them and absorb the culture of India. They are a retired couple and they discussed what transformations India has undergone as well as gave a wiser generation's perspective of India.

Informal Interview: Krishna Chandra, our second host who is a software professional. He discussed everything from the future of India to childhood education, to village life to the influence of the west. Also he shared with us how his life went from a mining engineering degree to IT and Software.

Video Interview: with an (unnamed) child who was a (forced) child laborer, but since has moved into Bosco Mane, a street-children's residential home. He now wants to become an Engineer and performs very well in school.

Many other video interviews were taken, we shot over 12 hours of video.

We also spent two days in a Yoga Ashram learning a great deal about "real yoga," not "Americanized-get-it-at-Wal-Mart-in-the-sporting-goods-isle" Yoga.

Purpose – Why do you need to hit the road? What do you hope to get out of it?
We had 4 reasons:
#1: The world is not like America--we needed to fully experience another culture, their value structures, and take their lessons back to our friends and family.
#2: Jillian just finished an art exhibition which focused on child and women human rights abuses in developing countries (including India). She had to go to the impoverished children and experience their stories first hand.
#3: Jonathan is intrigued with the economic and political transformations India is experiencing and wanted to talk to people first hand about what this third world country is undergoing. It seems that China gets most of the press about how it's the "factory of the world" and already graduates more engineers than America. The truth is that India is an established and stable democracy which is experiencing tremendous economic growth. How is that really transforming the poor and children... I had to know.
#4: This adventure combined all of our interests: video, art, teaching, business, cross-cultural experience and more.

Our (tight) budget
Airfare: US$ 1100 for Jillian, frequent flyer miles for Jonathan.
Lodging: US$ 340 total
Food: $6 per day * 32 days = US$190
Video Equipment (camera, wireless lav mic, lav mic, shotgun mic, wide angle lens, extra batteries, tapes, 160 Gb HD) $750

Do not hesitate to contact me with ANY questions or for more details. I look forward to your response.

Jonathan and Jillian

Comments:
Hi Amazing Post!!! I like this website so much it's really awesome. Nice information About ART INSTITUTE IN CHENNAI.Thanks for sharing good information with beautiful images.I hope you will be posting more like this beautiful posts.
All the best
 
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