Learning Empathy in India: A Dive into Design Thinking
by Kayla O’Neill
This past June, 24 undergraduate students arrived in Hyderabad, India, excited to gain hands-on experience in social enterprise and sustainable development, and to experience what the unique country had to offer. We were fortunate enough to visit successful programs that were enacting social change in south India, and apply our new knowledge to help make them even more effective. We worked in teams on consulting projects for social enterprises making an impact in ways ranging from school lunch delivery (AkshayaPatra) and education (Centre for Social Initiative and Management) to women’s issues (SAFA and My Choices) and creating opportunities for the differently abled (Vindhya e-Infomedia and Samarthanam Trust). Diving quickly into a real-life crash course on the big issues was challenging at times – in a country with diverse culture, every social issue seems to have several thousand nuances to consider. Nonetheless, our teams were to provide tangible value to our consulting partners by leveraging the design thinking process, our own diverse backgrounds, and helpful insights from the social enterprise leaders themselves.
India is known for its idiosyncrasies and unknowns, and our travels and the people we met along the way certainly never stopped surprising us! We drove out to a farm in Tamil Nadu where we learned from Dr. Sheshagiri Rao about alternative farming techniques that allowed arid land to be productive without irrigation, we watched blind players best our sighted friends at the national pastime of cricket, and we toured a business process outsourcing company located in a rural village.
In Bangalore, one of our teams conducted a social media consulting project for Vindhya e-Infomedia. This social enterprise is a business process outsourcing company that employs primarily the differently-abled and those who came from disadvantaged backgrounds. The visually-impaired, hearing-impaired, and physically-challenged are provided job training, employment opportunities, meals, and even housing where needed by an employer offering some of the most valued and coveted jobs in India. These employees, who perhaps had been dependent on their families their whole lives, are now able to gain respect and self-esteem by working white collar jobs in call centers and other business functions. Vindhya is a unique place where sign language is used by much of the staff, where everyone respectfully refers to the founder as “Madame,” and where a culture of hard work and familial friendliness flourishes – those of us who visited agreed it was a sight to behold. We were tasked with the incredibly humbling mission of communicating that distinct environment to potential employees and other interested parties through social media marketing.
Each team received feedback from Professor Sara Minard and Professor Felix Bivens, provided deliverables and presentations to our respective social enterprises, and walked away feeling not just more experienced in the world of development consulting, but also like we had made a true impact.
Whether cruising along the canals on the coast, winding through narrow one lane roads in the tea plantations in mountainous Munnar, or witnessing the splendor of human ingenuity at Golkanda Fort, there were many chances to experience the beauty of a country so maligned for its overpopulation issues, environmental degradation, and human rights concerns. We arrived planning to “fix” India, but learned that development and our own notions of what is best for a country and its people are not necessarily what they themselves would like to see. Perhaps the biggest takeaway for many of us was the importance of listening with empathy before prescribing one-size-fits-all solutions or hastily taking action. In a place where there is so much need and so much noise, yet so much inspiring local talent and so many brilliant indigenous ideas, we might do best as budding development practitioners to pause and simply listen.
