Bloom.

On Wednesday afternoon, I hopped on the bus to Birla slum, huddling with Elyssa (the student from UGA) under our rain jackets as water poured down outside. We jumped over puddles and sludged through manure and mud, led down winding paths by the man who runs the “medical clinic” in the slum. We weaved down narrow alley ways between cinderblock walls, over streams of sewage, under ropes and hanging clothes, finally arriving at a steep set of stairs that led up to the “clinic”, or more explicitly, a 15 by 15 foot room with a metal closet that had a few sheets of pills. I stood outside, watching the storm rage over the slum, and looked down three stories below as 60 children between the ages of 1 and 7, scurried up the black staircase, clenching metal cups in their tiny palms. The kids gathered on woven mats on the floor in the room , waiting patiently for their milk and vitamin mix that they received every Monday and Wednesday. One girl who was older than the others came over to the edge of the stairs and said, “Hi. What your name?” She shifted the baby on her hip and waited for my response. “Hello. My name is Emily. What is yours?” She smiled and said, “Em-lee. My name Seneha (Sin-eh-hah).” As we talked, I found out that the 10 year old girl brought her siblings to receive the vitamin mix each week, but since she was over 7, she was not given the nutrition mix. When asking the man who ran the clinic about the older children, he said that there was simply not enough money to give the mix to anyone else. Troubled by this reality, my heart was heavy for this precious young girl who was still growing and needed good nutrition to develop properly, and I began to pray about how I could help.

That night, I lay in bed wondering how to reach out to the teenage girls in the slum. My thoughts wandered to the many chapters and powerpoint slides from my Developmental Psychology class last semester at Vanderbilt--where I learned about the body’s critical development periods and the importance of having vitamins during children’s early years in order to be healthy. If the body did not have a strong foundation for growth, it would suffer serious consequences later on, especially during pregnancy. How could the young girls in the slum receive the crucial vitamins they need? What if there was a nutrition program for teenage girls? What if the girls were able to come for an hour each week to receive the milk and vitamin mix as well as learn a lesson about health and hygiene? What if they were given soap and a toothbrush and toothpaste and feminine pads on a monthly basis? I prayed for discernment and shared my thoughts with Elyssa that night. What if we put together a year long health curriculum and program for 20 teenage girls? The next day, we mentioned the idea to the man who runs the clinic, and he said that if we put together a program and provided the funding, he would be willing to administer the lessons and distribute the vitamin mix as well as hygiene supplies. He said that around 10 girls would attend the first few weeks, but the class size would probably grow as the year went on. My mind racing, I went home that afternoon and began planning and organizing and dreaming about the possibilities. Using a health curriculum made by the World Health Organization as a basis for our program, I began to draw up outlines for physical, mental, and spiritual health lessons tailored towards teenage girls. And within hours, Elyssa and I had put together a one-year plan for teaching young girls alternating lessons about health, hygiene, & nutrition and then character development, also supplying them with basic hygienic supplies to practice what they were learning in class.

This past Monday, the clinic had its first meeting for young women…and 26 girls showed up. I was back in Bangalore, preparing to leave to come home, but Elyssa called to tell me the news about what a success the first day had been. Tears poured from my eyes as she told me about the girls’ excitement, and their eagerness to learn, and how readily they drank the milk and vitamin mix. Though I am back in the US, I am finishing up the health curriculum and emailing it over to the clinic coordinator in the next few weeks, and I’m already looking forward to my first skype meeting with the girls in the program!! We are calling the class “Bloom Nutrition Program,” in hopes of coming alongside these girls as they bloom physically and spiritually, blossoming into healthy and beautiful young women.