On femicide and missing women II

In the last post I discussed how women are being systematically killed all over the world and the negative consequences this has for the health of society. I ended with a question: what does the concept of missing women look like on the ground?

It’s a strange phenomenon that’s actually hard to see. It’s not like there’s an obvious lack of women walking around the villages or households that are devoid of a female presence. If anything, women stand out in rural Rajasthan with their brightly coloured suits, smiling faces and vibrant personalities. I’ve also barely seen the type of overt, often state-sanctioned violence against women that’s common in places like Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Where I am in India, femicide is more hidden behind closed doors and sanitized through sex-selective abortion – killing your daughter before she can smile at you undoubtedly makes it easier. Living and working here for the better part of a year, as I have now, has allowed me a peek behind the veneer.

Mostly, the missing women phenomenon is perceptible only through rumour and echo. Several months ago there was news of an honour killing in a village about an hour away from us in 35BB. There are hushed stories of people who have had multiple sex-selective abortions (including stories of accidentally aborted male fetuses). During our village surveys, many mothers expressed their grave fear of giving birth to a second or a third girl, especially if they hadn’t yet had any sons yet. And then there are the extra wide smiles of the family-members blessed with a baby boy compared to the muted joy of those blessed with girl.

All of this is obviously intangible and what I’m hearing and seeing is most likely influenced by what I know. But there is one concrete, undeniable thing that has really brought this issue home for me: Of the over 200 babies that have been delivered through our facility, boys far outnumber girls by a ratio that’s far worse than those listed in government surveys. The district of Ganganagar, where our hospital is located, has a sex ratio of 861 girls to 1000 boys (much worse than the overall Indian average). Our ratio at birth, meanwhile, is 640 to 1000.

What does this mean? First of all, it must be said that not a single person on our team condones sex-selective abortion or would facilitate it in any way (they wouldn’t be on our team if they did). We are firm in our beliefs on this principle and fully attend to Indian laws which forbid revealing the sex of a foetus to parents or family members. The problem is that despite these laws there’s just too many places people can go to get the information they need. As I alluded to in the last post, even the most reticent of medical practitioners can succumb to parents willing to pay a lot of money to get the information they need. The problem is, people are coming to our prenatal clinic and then going elsewhere for sex-selection services.

So what do we do about this issue? To be a truly impactful maternal and child health centre – and to aspire to big societal changes – this is a complex issue that we’ll have to contend with.

Unfortunately, there’s been a lot that’s been tried already and not a lot has worked. Both the Indian government and civil society groups have been involved in this issue for some time. The government, for example, has passed strict laws forbidding dowries, sex-selective abortion or the use of ultrasound and amniocentesis technology to reveal the sex of a foetus. None of these laws really work because they’re very hard to enforce. The government has also enacted programs such as the National Plan of Action for the Girl Child (1991-2000), The National Policy for the Empowerment of Women (2001), and several others which try to address the issue. Local and international non-governmental groups have, with some success, tried to increase the perceived value of women.

The bottom line is that boy-preference is culturally ingrained and remains fairly immune to laws or NGO’s trying to impose a different point of view. The upside is that the conversation has started and it’s important for us to keep this issue in the forefront of our minds as our project expands and becomes more established. It will be important for us to actively be a part of the conversation – to enact awareness programs, conduct research and even do some advocacy – to hopefully nudge a tipping-point in the mentality of at least among the families that come to us for care.

These are not strictly clinical or medical solutions to achieving our objective of improving maternal and child health outcomes in Ganganagar. They are absolutely vital to achieving those objectives nonetheless. I think it’ll be important to build on what’s already here – not everyone, not even most people, believe in sex-selection and most value the presence of daughters, sisters and mothers in their lives. Perhaps we can take my grandmother, Kartar Kaur, for whom our prenatal clinic is named, as our inspiration. She bore 10 children on the very spot the Mata Jai Kaur hospital is being built – 5 girls and 5 boys.  The perfect ratio.

@AneelBrar

All photos copyrighted

Tags: abortion, Afghanistan, Aneel Brar, femicide, Ganganagar, gender equality, gendercide, HealthBridge, India, infanticide, Iran, Mata Jai Kaur, Mata Kartar Kaur, Maternal and child health, missing women, Pakistan, Prenatal Clinic, Rajasthan, Saudi Arabia, sex ratio, sex-selection, sex-selective abortions, value of women, Yemen

On femicide and missing women I

Virtually all societies treat their women, in some way, as second class citizens. Whether it’s economic opportunity, social status or involvement in politics, if you look into the available data it’s clear that “no nation, religion, class or ethnic group has the monopoly on misogyny.” With that proviso in mind, in the next two posts I’d like to discuss one of the most insidious forms of misogyny that’s prevalent in many developing countries (but especially China and India): Femicide.

Femicide – one version of Gendercide – is the systematic killing of women due to domestic violence, rape, murder (including so called ‘honour killings’), sex-selective abortions, infanticide and insufficient access to health care. The last three issues directly relate to our project’s objective of improving maternal and child health outcomes. As difficult as it will be, addressing them will be a vital part of us achieving any success.

The tendency of societies to kill their women has resulted in 3.9 million excess deaths of girls and women each year – that’s over 100 million missing women since the 1970s. Referring to these women as ‘missing’ is a good way to think about how societies are contending with their many problems without the help of uniquely impactful agents of change. Empowered women enhance economic competitiveness (women have contributed more to global GDP than China as a whole), ensure state security and stability and even help societies overcome oppression (see the prominent role of women in the Arab Spring). In development discourse it is well established that healthy, educated women correlate with healthy, educated children. In other words women are essential for breaking intergenerational cycles of poverty. Without women, solving society’s ills is like pulling a bullock cart that’s missing a wheel. It’s no wonder then, that gender equality and maternal health constitute major parts of international development objectives like the Millennium Development Goals.

Unfortunately, progress on gender issues has been very slow especially in countries where a societal preference for sons is high. An estimated 250,000 and 1 million girls in India and China, respectively, were killed before birth in 2008 through sex-selective abortions. Infanticide and neglect seals the fate of hundreds of thousands more before the age of 6. This results in societies that have dramatically skewed sex-ratios. According to the 2011 Indian Census, there are 914 girls for every 1000 boys, down from 927 to 1000 in 2001. Rajasthan’s child sex-ratio is even worse at 870 to1000. The district of Ganganagar, where our hospital is located, has a ratio of 861 to 1000.

So why are boys preferred over girls? There are a number of complex cultural and economic motivations involved. In both China and India, boys are seen as an economic asset and girls a liability (exacerbated in China by its one-child policy). Boys will inherit land and family wealth and stick around to take care of their aging parents. Girls, on the other hand, will leave the family at marriage and, in India, take a large dowry with them (despite the fact that male-only inheritance and dowries are now illegal in India).

Ironically, the increase in sex-selective abortions globally is partially due to increasing wealth and access to technology. This is especially true for India, which has seen a decade of unprecedented economic growth. Sex-selective abortion has become easier to do and families are often willing to shell out big money – often to the most dubious of practitioners – to have the procedure done. Since sex-selective abortion is illegal in India the entire industry is pushed underground and the procedures are often performed in unhygienic conditions by un-skilled hands. Multiple abortions under these conditions – often a decision made by a women’s husband or family – increases the risk of complication and death for the mother.

Beyond that, boy-preference is just something, like the idea of caste in India, that’s become ingrained through generations of conditioning. It persists even where the economic incentives for sex-selection no longer exist. For example, even though my father’s family emigrated from India over fifty years ago and is not subject to the Indian pressures of dowry or inheritance, my paternal grandfather prayed incessantly for my parents to have a boy – he got a granddaughter instead (my older sister, and happily it must be said!) before he got me. As harmless as his wishes were, and as common as they are among people from any society, the sentiment becomes much more insidious in India where sex-selective abortion is more common and socially accepted and where women have less agency over their own bodies.

So what does a society that’s missing so many women look like on the ground? In the next post, I’ll describe what femicide looks like here in Rajasthan and try to get at some ideas on how it can be overcome.

@AneelBrar

All photos copyrighted

Tags: abortion, Aneel Brar, Arab Spring, China, domestic violence, femicide, Ganganagar, gender equality, gendercide, honour killings, India, infanticide, Maternal and child health, MDG 3, MDG 5, Millennium Development Goals, missing women, murder, one-child policy, Rajasthan, rape, sex-selection, sex-selective abortions, women

Due diligence – village surveys

This was a busy week at the Mata Jai Kaur hospital. At our weekly antenatal clinic, Sandeep – our volunteer nursing student – gave our patients a basic presentation on pregnancy and nutrition. On top of that, we started surveying the approximately 200 mothers that delivered through our facility. With the extra people at 35BB on Sunday, and the various villages and towns across the Ganganagar district that we visited, it proved to be intense and challenging week.

To help us with our task Banth Bhaji and I recruited Sandhya, a nurse working in the nearby village of Arayan, and my niece, Arshdeep to join us for the week. So far, we’ve been averaging about 200 km a day tracking down our patients in towns and villages to gather vital information that will tell us how we’re doing and to inform our expansion. Not everything went smoothly – Bhaji’s trusty Bolero jeep lost a fan-belt in a remote village near the India-Pakistan border, and often we’d have to scour villages for patients whose full names and contact information we didn’t have (“like finding a needle in a haystack”, as Bhaji would say).

Sandhya and Arsh hard at work

As tedious as it’s been, we’ve been having good success and the experience has been very rewarding. So far we’ve surveyed over 70 patients, all of whom were very tolerant of our intrusion into their daily lives. As per local hospitality we have drunk enough cha (tea) or thunda (usually Fanta or Mountain Dew) to keep our sugar and caffeine levels high enough to make an elephant’s heart palpitate for a week.

Fortunately, we also had the privilege this week of hosting Dr. Hillary Lawson – a Canadian physician currently living and practicing in Delhi – who was kind enough to join us on clinic day and lend a hand with our survey on Monday. Hillary has been a tremendous advisor for the project and it was a pleasure to have her out here getting her hands dirty.

Hillary being devoured by a hungry baby

We’re still hoping to reach a lot more villages and there’s a lot of analysis yet to be done, but in this post I’d like to present a few initial impressions of what we’ve seen during the survey.

First, more accessible and higher quality postnatal care is very much needed. A large number of the women we interviewed reported health problems among themselves and their infants including things associated with premature maternal and child death such as infant diarrhea, fever and various postpartum complications. Significantly, a large percentage of women also reported not getting a single postnatal check-up for themselves or their babies six months after delivery. The gap in postnatal care that exists is likely due to a lack of awareness of its importance as much as a lack of availability. With proper planning, we hope our Mata Jai Kaur Hospital can fill this gap.

Second, it was interesting to observe the variety of households from which families came to seek our services. Although it’s hard to determine how wealthy families are (unless they’re very poor) it is obvious that our patients come from a range of income levels (interesting side note: poorer women are far more bedecked with gold and silver ornaments – they wear their wealth because they don’t have bank accounts). We visited patients in crumbling, mud-walled huts as well as in nice concrete-and-brick homes. India is known for its rigid social stratification so the fact that people of different backgrounds are willingly coming to us may be a sign that we’re offering something that many people, not just the poor, need and want. It would be great if we can serve both rich and poor, possibly having the former subsidize the latter using some kind of fee structure – something we’ll have to decide on later.

Third, I’d like to comment on how utterly satisfying this process has been. Although it’s hard to ensure unbiased responses to the question – “how did you like us?” – there’s so far been universal gratitude for our efforts among those we’ve talked to. Hopefully we can keep it that way. The main criticism we’ve received so far is that we should provide delivery services on-site in 35BB – something we’re already working towards. It’s also been very gratifying to see the concrete outcomes of the hard work being put into the Mata Jai Kaur project. I defy you to look at the pictures of the babies and moms in this post and not have your heart melt a little bit.

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Before I sign off I’d like to pull back and offer a bigger picture observation on what this week means for us. The survey and our discussions with our patients is an important part of our due diligence in ensuring our project does more good than harm. It’s also a humble, early step towards making the Mata Jai Kaur project an evidence-based health initiative – an idea that I think everyone buys into but something that will take a lot of effort and time to perfect.

@AneelBrar

All photos copyrighted

Tags: 35BB, Aneel Brar, Antenatal, Arshdeep, Banth Bhaji, Bolero, Dr. Renu Makker, Ganganagar, Hillary Lawson, India, india pakistan, Infant mortality, Kartar Kaur, Mata Jai Kaur, Maternal and child health, maternal mortality, needle in a haystack, Postnatal, Rajasthan, Sandhya, Survey, Teju Cole, The White Saviour Industrial Complex

Are we helping?

There’s been an interesting debate going on regarding the Kony 2012 viral video released a few weeks ago. The video is part of an advocacy campaign by the group Invisible Children to bring Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and an internationally recognized bad guy, to justice. Without getting too much into it, the debate is basically about whether good intentions and oversimplification of a complex issue helps or hurts the chances of achieving a positive outcome in Northern Uganda (where, as the video fleetingly mentions, Kony does NOT hang out anymore and where other problems seem more pressing).

Regardless of the merits of the Kony 2012 video campaign, the debate it’s fostered is a good one. Not often does the news media talk about the complexity of international development or how hard it is for those in developed countries to do good in developing ones; or whether that’s something that should be done at all. Indeed, there have been plenty of stupid development ideas over the years that have all been very well intentioned but very ill-informed.

As you can imagine, this is a tricky discussion with all kinds of issues to consider. But the overall lesson is simple enough: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

This maxim has constantly been on my mind while working on our maternal and child health project here in Rajasthan. Yes, our intentions are good, but, as my cousin Sherri put it to me lately, are we actually helping? Well, until and unless the indicators on maternal and child health improve in the district of Ganganagar AND these changes can be attributed to us AND we can be sure that our very presence isn’t having unintended negative consequences – something that will takes years to do, if it’s even possible – then we can start feeling good about ourselves.

Having said that, in this post I’d like to briefly highlight a few of reasons I am confident that we are helping and that we’ll be able to continue helping in the future.

First, there’s the issue of access to quality care. The gold standard in India is to have pregnant mothers get at least three antenatal checkups before delivery. Getting less than three checkups is associated with poor maternal and child health outcomes. Rural areas in India, and especially in Rajasthan, are not conducive to getting pregnant women to health care facilities where they can get the antenatal care they need. Here in the Ganganagar district, only 13 percent of pregnant mothers got the gold standard of antenatal care (which includes three checkups, a tetanus vaccination and iron supplementation to prevent anemia). Our Kartar Kaur prenatal clinic provides all of these services and more, such as ultrasounds, and is located in a rural area along a main road that’s fairly accessible to women in the region. So far women have been voting with their feet – we get usually between 40-70 patients at our weekly clinic and we’ve helped deliver over 200 babies. It seems like we’re providing something people want.

Second, as mentioned in the last post – this project relies on the involvement of locals and this is a philosophy we’ll stick to moving forward. In the future we hope to further involve village midwives, hire a local staff, and provide much needed training. We also hope to work in concert with the Government of Rajasthan to achieve its health objectives. Working with the local health system, and not parallel to it, is an important lesson from Paul Farmer’s seminal work withPartners In Health in Haiti.  So far, local government officials are unperturbed by us and the district’s Chief Medical and Health Officer (CMHO) seems pleased. As he put it, he likes us because we’re not asking for anything and we’re making a contribution.

Third, we are doing our best to combine our good intentions with good information. We want all our initiatives to be evidence based. This will start with a survey I’ll be commencing next week to follow-up on the patients we’ve cared for. We want to see how the mothers who have come to us are doing and gather information to help us scale up the project appropriately.

The bottom line is we want to back up our good intentions with solid planning, good ideas and sound implementation. We’re moving into an exciting phase and I look forward to letting you know how things proceed.

Stay tuned!

Follow me on twitter @AneelBrar

Some picture here

Tags: #Kony2012, Aneel Brar, Antenatal care, Chris Blattman, Ganganagar, Haiti, India, Invisible Children, Joseph Kony, Kartar Kaur, Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA, Mata Jai Kaur, Maternal and child health, maternal health, Nodding disease, Partners In Health, Paul Farmer, Rajasthan, Uganda

Cast of Characters

One of the objectives of our prenatal clinic in Rajasthan is to have the local community engaged in its implementation and operation. We are extremely fortunate to have some of Ganganagar’s finest helping our clinic run as efficiently and effectively as possible; without them, the entire project would still be an idea floating around in Canada. In this post I’d like to introduce you to our local team. These people are helping us realize our dream. They have also become a big part of my life here in the village.

Balwant Singh Kaler – Managing Director

Balwant – known affectionately as Banth – is the heart and soul of our operation. He’s been quite the boon for the project and, as our Managing Director, wears many hats. At any one time he can be supervising construction, managing accounts, designing hospital plans and navigating the roads of Ganganagar shuttling me from village to village and from village to city. Driving around with Banth has allowed me to meet many locals. Since Banth knows everyone and everyone knows him, he’s more than likely to pick up travellers along the road, getting them to where they need to be faster than they intended.

Banth has a tremendous amount of social capital and has been instrumental in getting our project off the ground. His quick wit and open heart keeps everyone on their toes and emotionally invested in the project.

At our weekly prenatal clinic, Banth’s is the friendly face greeting our patients as they arrive. When he’s not recording names in the register, showing people where to go, or troubleshooting problems as they arise he’s inevitably making people laugh (in contrast to the rather serious picture – approved by him – that I’ve posted).

Dr. Renu Makker – Obstetrician/Gynaecologist

Dr. Makker is our very knowledgeable and capable obstetrician/gynaecologist. Dr. Makker is the conduit by which needy patients receive prenatal medical care and advice. She provides our patients with antenatal checkups and performs deliveries at our partner hospital in the city of Shri Ganganagar. Dr. Makker’s commitment to the project has been tremendous form the very first day the clinic opened its doors. In addition to her very busy practice in Shri Ganganagar, Dr. Makker commits her Sundays to our clinic – braving the roads, heat and dust on her weekly commute from the city. Without Dr. Makker’s involvement our clinic would simply not run.

Rajesh Kumar – Chemist

Rajesh, seen here with his son and occasional clinic helper, Vaibhav, is officially our chemist (AKA pharmacist), but in reality he’s so much more. In addition to overseeing our clinic’s medical store and ensuring our patients understand when and how to take their medication, Rajesh oversees our accounting, makes sure bills are paid and does any number of things that need to get done. Rajesh, like Dr. Makker, has committed himself to our project despite all the other things going on in his life, which includes other charitable work and working at his day-job with the Government of Rajasthan. Rajesh has been with us since the clinic started and his commitment and job description have expanded in equal measure. His boundless energy and spirit prevents me from ever being too tired.

Every so often, when Rajesh cannot make it down to the clinic, his brother, Ashok Kumar (seen here hard at work) fills in with the same care and professionalism.

Inderjit Singh Shergill – Manager

Inderjit – more commonly known as Budh – is our resident 35BB manager. While most of the team is away during the week, Budh is the one that makes sure all is right at the hospital site with daily inspections. During our clinic days he’s also busy making sure everything runs smoothly and adds to the atmosphere with his infectious charm and personality. Budh, like Banth (both my cousins) are fundamental to having the project be locally run.

Balkish Bano – Nurse

Of course, no medical clinic runs without a nurse. Balkish started with us in November and has been a welcome addition to our team. In addition to helping Dr. Makker at the clinic, Balkish also assists with deliveries in Shri Ganganagar.

Amar Chand – Caretaker

Amar Chand – who we call Babaji out of respect for his seniority – is the caretaker of our burgeoning hospital facility. Babaji ensures everything is tidy and clean for visitors and patients. Babaji also provides security, living on the compound at night, and keeps everyone fed and caffeinated with endless cups of delicious chai. Although not originally from 35BB, Babaji comes from the area and can often be seen in the company of his children and grandchildren.

Sandeep Kaur – Volunteer

Sandeep is another 35BB resident, living just a few houses away from the clinic, and has volunteered with us for almost two years. Sandeep keeps the old guys in check and makes sure our record keeping is in order. She recently gained admission to nursing school in Shri Ganganagar. Sandeep represents another facet of our project that we hope to build on – the involvement of young volunteers and students both from the region and abroad.

That’s it for this week. In the meantime check out more pictures from the clinic on my personal flickr site at: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjynF9sJ and follow me on Twitter @AneelBrar.

Tags: Amar Chand, Aneel Brar, Balkish Bano, Balwant Kaler, Dr. Renu Makker, Ganganagar, Inderjit Singh Shergill, India, Kartar Kaur, Mata Jai Kaur, Maternal and child health, maternal health, Rajasthan, Rajesh Kumar, Sandeep, Sandeep Kaur

The Scope of our Project

Women at our clinic waiting to be seen.

On this second post I’ll give you a brief introduction to the project. The Mata Jai Kaur Hospital is actually named after my great grandmother on my mom’s side, Jai Kaur, who, along with my great grandfather, Ram Jas, and his two brothers immigrated to the Ganganagar region of northern Rajasthan back in the late 1920’s (keep an eye out for a future post on the history of this region). They settled in the village of 35BB where the project is now located (villages were named after irrigation canals – all the villages in the immediate area draw water from the ‘BB’ canal).

At the moment we have a small clinic running at the site that provides prenatal care for pregnant mothers and general gynaecological care for women. The clinic is open once a week on Sundays and patients are referred to our partner hospital, Sihag Hospital in Ganaganagar, for deliveries, lab work and tests. We are in the process of designing and constructing the main MJK hospital which will provide full maternal and child health services on site, removing the need for patients to travel to Ganganagar for deliveries.

The two-room clinic is named after my grandmother, Kartar Kaur, who delivered 9 of her 10 children in a small mud-walled room on the very spot that the clinic now stands. Kartar Kaur died from complications after the birth of her 10^th child, my uncle Baldev (Deep) Shergill, leaving the responsibility of raising him to his grandparents, Ram Jas and Jai Kaur. Both Mata Jai Kaur and Mata Kartar Kaur passed away on the very plot of land where the MJK hospital project is being set up. The project is a reflection of their love and sacrifice, and is dedicated to women of the Ganganagar district of Rajasthan, many of whom are suffering through the same childbirth-related issues that my grandmother faced over half a century ago.

Although most of the family has now emigrated abroad, we still have family that live in or around 35BB and who are intimately involved with the project. Having close ties to the community is very important and a huge benefit for us. Even though the project is funded externally (for the moment), there is a large amount of local ownership and influence on how things go – this is about as grassroots and locally-run as a joint Canadian-Indian project can be.

The hospital is meant to serve poor families in the surrounding area that would otherwise not have access to quality health services. The need in the area is great. The closest government hospital is in city of Shri Ganganagar which is about 50km away – a very difficult distance to travel if you do not have a car – and local health centres do not have adequate facilities. Consequently, pregnant mothers often deliver at home in unhygienic environments with no access to medical help in the event of an emergency. Many mothers will also not receive prenatal care meaning that many preventable issues – like anaemia and malnutrition – are not addressed.

These issues bear out in the statistics. Rajasthan’s infant mortality rate is 65 deaths of child under 1 years-old out of 1000 births (worse than the rest on India, which is about 55 per 1000 births). The rate for the poor rural women we are serving is likely even worse. In comparison, Canada’s infant mortality is 5 deaths per 1000.

Maternal Mortality Ratio is the ratio of the number of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. MMR is often used as a measure of the quality of a health care system. India’s rate is 254/100,000 and Rajasthan’s is 388/100,000. In comparison, the average MMR for developed countries is around 20/100,000. The major causes of post-partum maternal death are severe bleeding and hemorrhage, infections, unsafe abortions, eclampsia (seizures or coma that occur during pregnancy) and other complicating issues like anemia and malaria (both of which are common in the area). Again, it’s safe to assume the specific region we serve has worse rates because of the limited access to quality facilities.

In the coming weeks I’ll be discussing more about the problems women face in this region, the cast of characters working on the project, and our ideas for the future. Stay tuned!

Sign on the main road directing visitors to our clinic.

35BB at dusk looking south – the tall building in the background on left is part of the MJK hospital project

The project site – on the left is the nearly completed accommodations. The building under construction on the right is a garage and an apartment for the on-site doctor.

Women patients leaving our clinic after a visit.

Here you can see the clinic on the right and the house in the background. The open space in the middle is the future site of the MJK hospital.

Tags: Births, Charity, children, Deep Shergill, gynaecological care, India, Mata Jai Kaur, Mata Kartar Kaur, Maternal Mortality Ratio, MMR, Mothers, PHCO, Pre-natal Clinic, Prominent Homes, Rajastan, Ram Jas

Mata Jai Kaur Blog Entry 1

Welcome to the Prominent Homes Charitable Organization (PHCO) Blog!

PHCO is involved in many charities and takes pride in them all. This blog will highlight many of our efforts but will be based mostly on the clinic we have running called the Mata Jai Kaur Hospital. The Mata Jai Kaur Hospital is a maternal and child health project based in rural Rajasthan, India. It is funded by Prominent Homes Charitable Organization Ltd. which is based in Calgary, Canada.

My name is Aneel Brar, and I am currently on location in Rajasthan managing the project – a task that includes everything from overseeing construction, building up the organization, determining our objectives and how they’ll be achieved, keeping track of expenses and much, much more – and on these pages I hope to keep anyone and everyone who is interested updated and informed on our progress. We’ll also share information on what we’re learning, the stumbling blocks along the way (there inevitably will be many) and what kind of impact we’re having. My cousin Sherri (i.e. my boss) and I will be busy bringing you weekly updates with pictures, stories, anecdotes and anything else as we are inspired to put on here as we move forward.

I’m also hoping that this will be a platform to share knowledge and receive feedback and input. Implementing a project, even a relatively small-scale one like the one we have, is a complex endeavour. It is impossible to foresee all the potential problems and opportunities let alone plan for them ahead of time. Therefore, a lot of this is learning by doing and making adjustments as we go. Implementing grassroots projects like this one in small rural communities is as much an art as a science and I look forward to getting feedback, ideas, questions and comments from our followers!

Above is an image of the some of the women who visit the clinic receiving an educational lesson on healthy habits during pregnancy.

An image of some of the clinic workers. The man waving is our manager and beside him in the white is our land guard. Driving the tractor and on the other side are wonderful and helpful volunteers.

Tags: Aneel Brar, Charity, India, Mata Jai Kaur Hospital, PHCO, Prenatal Clinic, Prominent Homes, Rajasthan