A. An AID volunteer's trip to India to visit the groups AID works with. And also what I did this winter.

A group of women from Chhoti Nai, Nainital dt., Uttaranchal in their village forest

Meeting with Kumaoni women in Uttaranchal on March 8^th - International Women's Day - I found that they had as many questions for me as I did for them. They had traveled several kilometers, some of them on foot the entire distance, to come to the CAC (Community Action Center) field office. CAC works with rural women and men in Nainital and Almora districts on food security, forest regeneration and use and other issues. (Reetu Sogani, an AID Saathi, is a staff member of CAC). When asked about the role CAC plays in their lives, one woman replied, "Hum bahut kuch samajhte the, CAC waalon ne humein bolna sikha diya." - "We used to understand a lot of things, but the CAC people taught us to speak."

And speak they did. They told me about their hardships, and their struggles to combat injustice and their accomplishment of positive change in their lives. Gradually, the focus of the conversation moved to me and Sara, an American undergrad who was there on a 'Study Abroad' program. We were both questioned quite intensely about our personal lives, our motivations, and the cost of India -US travel among other matters. One woman asked us if there are cows and buffaloes in America. Fresh off an earlier discussion, I told them about the gruesome conditions of livestock in the US. The women were horrified at this grave injustice to the cow, their mother. When you go back, fight for them, they said. I, for one, was happy to mark International Women's Day in an honest and open discussion.

And this is not the only dialogue I had in communities throughout India. I found myself explaining time zones to women in Chitrakoot district, Uttar Pradesh, discussing US farm subsidies with organic farmers in Erode district, Tamil Nadu and analyzing the causes of communal tensions in a D.Ed. (Diploma of Education) college in Mumbai.

A few days after leaving Uttaranchal, I met the members of Sangtin, a women's collective in Sitapur district, UP. This group of women, most of whom are field workers for a local organization, have experienced activist attention and media frenzy during outrage, such as a particularly gruesome rape or an attack on a Dalit community. But after the attention shifts, there is often no relief for the survivors and field staff are left picking up the pieces. During our 16-hour 'manthan', we had an intense discussion about where genuine collection of information ends and exploitation begins.

While I argued on behalf of activist organizations and the media, Vibha, Surbala and Richa (who is an AID Saathi) pointed to our conversation as the contrast. With me, they argued, their information exchange had been two-way. We had established a relationship. They now knew that they could question me repeatedly in case I did not answer to their satisfaction; that there were a lot of things they could teach me, and things also that they could tease me about. "The personal connection makes all the difference," was the consensus.

Why should these personal connections matter to us? Learning to communicate across language, educational and entitlement gaps generates new ideas and opportunities and challenges us in unexpected ways. Not only do we learn more about the people whose lives we want to help change, we also discover new ways of thinking about the problems in their lives and ours - laying thus the foundation for meaningful and lasting partnerships.