Invited speakers from AID India

Association for India's Development (AID) presents as part of its Distinguished Speaker Series, M Damodharan and Dharmendra Kumar, both noted social workers committed to the cause of sustainable and just development at the grassroots level in different parts of India.

Date : 9th June
Time : 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm (ADMISSION FREE)
Venue : 260 Willard Building, Penn State University

M Damodharan comes from the state of Tamil Nadu (TN) in southern India and has been with AID India for the past 9 years. He is the program head for community development, and content head for the language program at AID TN. Damu, as Dhamodaran is popularly known, has been the major driving force behind the widespread implementation of the “Padippum Inikkum” reading program launched by AID TN in 2006. AID India was awarded the Pratham 2006 Achievement Award for this reading program.

Dharmendra Kumar comes from the state of Bihar in eastern India. He was the state coordinator of All India People Science Network's (AIPSN) "Joy of Learning Campaign." Besides his interests in education, between 2004 to 2007, Dharmendraji coordinated public health initiatives such as the Hundred Block Program and Jan Swasthya Abhiyan. Since January 2008 he has been coordinating AID India’s activities in Bihar to promote social equity and development. He was also actively involved with the flood relief activities during the Bihar floods in 2008.

Please join us to hear their experiences of working in these interesting projects.

Brain Drain

15 bright students of Indian origin, sitting in a small room in one of the biggest university of USA. Any guesses what they were doing in there?

Discussing the economy? No
Celebrating the rise of India? No
Talking over the rising oil prices? No

They were concerned about the lack of interest of poor dalit children in education. They were discussing how to support a group to take initiative and teach those children in their own homes. These students were discussing the living conditions of the poor people in one of the small village of West Bengal.

I have been hearing about brain drain since I joined IIT Kharagpur. It was hard to convince people that even after coming out of country, people do think about India. A small meeting yesterday evening bolstered my belief in indian brain's worry about their country.

wanna know more?? AID India

Can breastfeeding cause HIV infection?

How much do you know about HIV infection. To my knowledge there are four ways of transmission of HIV virus

1. Infusion of infected blood
2. Sexual intercourse with HIV infected person
3. Needles
4. From HIV infected mother on birth.

What would you think of Breast Feeding?

I had this notion that body fluid contact (blood or semen) was necessary for the transmission of HIV, and anything which is taken orally wont transmit the disease. According to this theory breastfeeding wouldn't cause any harm.

I was shocked on seeing this news article, where doctors advised HIV infected mother against breastfeeding. I thought of it as one more case of random behavior of doctors. But when they showed interview with an expert and he quoted some statistics, I felt like googling about this. And the results were totally different then my perception.
There have been studies that breastfeeding do increase the chances of HIV infection in new born. According to this report by UNICEF, WHO, UNFPA etc breastfeeding has cumulative effect on chances of HIV infection. It means more the breastfeeding, more is the chance of virus transmission. There was seen an increase of about 10-20% in the cases of transmission of the disease when breast feeding for 6-24 months.

Link to Report.

Tell me if there are any more fallacies in my thinking about HIV transmission.

Daughters of Bihar

Thanx to Dilip D'Souza for highlighting this.

Bihar ki Betiya, a wonderful festival to get the poorest of poor connected to mainstream. Educating them is the best thing you can give.

Two things I want to say:
1. Will Arjun Singh and other state's chief ministers open their eyes, and try to follow this?
2. Will media stop showing Cho Seung-Hui and give some time to this kind of stories??