Developing Intercultural Empathy Through Special Education in India

Greetings! My name is Terrill Malone ‘21, and I am a sophomore in the ILR School. This past summer, I traveled to India to participate in the ILR School’s Global Service Learning Program. ​The ILR India Global Service Learning (GSL) Program, in partnership with a non-governmental organization (NGO), Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement (SVYM), is a program that focuses on non-political, non-religious community development for the benefit of indigenous and rural people in India through effective education, accessible healthcare, and sustainable empowerment initiatives. The program also offers service opportunities in the areas of law and advocacy, human resources, and education. Before arriving in India, I spent the spring semester of my freshman year in the India GSL pre-departure course, which is designed to help India GSL students have an easier transition to Indian life and culture and prepare them to thrive in a different culture. When I arrived in India, I took some courses—Indian Culture and Civilization, Indian Work and Labor, Kannada Language, and Gender in India—and, with our group, travelled to many historically and culturally significant sites, like the Mysore Palace, the home of the King of Mysore, and Shravanabelagola, a Jain pilgrimage destination on a mountain that houses the world’s largest monolithic stone statue of Lord Gommateshwara. 

My project in India was teaching math to students with mental and intellectual impairments and disabilities at Sneha Kiran of Mysore Spastic Society, as well as conducting research on Cerebral Palsy. Sneha Kiran of Mysore Spastic Society, a partner of SVYM, is a school that serves a mission to “support, nurture and enable” children with cerebral palsy through offering services of special education, therapy and rehabilitation, family support, and community support and awareness to and for children ages four to 16.

My teachings focused primarily on functional and vocational math to help intellectually impaired students become familiar and comfortable with the use of everyday math concepts, like number identification, basic addition and subtraction, calculator and calendar usage, and monetary concepts. Working beside highly skilled, qualified, and experienced staff, I was tasked with creating baseline examinations, of which I would use to test the students’ prior knowledge, teaching the students during the school day at Sneha Kiran, and re-examining the students at the end of my project to measure their learning growth and outcomes. After working with the students for a few weeks, I found that multi-sensory integration, the use of concrete learning materials, and one-to-one teaching made a difference in the students’ learning outcomes. The students that I worked with, overall, achieved a 30-percent increase in their average score on the post-examination. I used this information to advise the full-time staff and teachers at Sneha Kiran to help them explore different ways to improve student learning. 

Joined by 15 other ILR and Global Health students, we composed a truly remarkable group, and I, as one of only two freshmen admitted into the program, am still beyond thrilled and humbled to have been chosen to participate in the program. The purposeful and passionate work that I am doing while in India, coupled with the experiences of India’s vast amount of culture and remarkable beauty, have allowed for many life changing experiences that will support my pursuit for academic, personal, and professional growth. I am confident that I left India with more knowledge, experience, passion, empathy, and love than with what I had at my arrival. After being back at the ILR School, I have decided to explore the field of Disability Rights, Disability Law, and Neurodiversity in the workplace. ILR has continued to support my newfound passion for these areas by providing me with courses like Disability Studies, Disability in the Workplace, and Labor Law and Employment. 

I thank ILR for its limitless opportunities, and SVYM and Sneha Kiran for their open arms, patience, and continued grace and partnership with us. It is because ILR took a chance on me that I had the opportunity to travel to India and so such amazing work, that I can now be impassioned in an area that interests me. I would also like to give a huge thank you to, and share my sincerest appreciation for SVYM, Sneha Kiran, and the wonderful donors, the Jill C. Goodman Fund and the Cornell Off-Campus Opportunity Fund, that made this experience possible for me. Your generous gift has afforded me the opportunity to take advantage of an impactful global learning experience that allowed me to contribute a great service to society. This experience has led me to the beginnings of my pursuit of the Global Scholar Distinction through the Global Scholars Program in the ILR School. I cannot express enough my sincerest gratitude for your kindness; because of your gift, I was able to touch the lives of many students, and have my life be impacted as well. Thank you! 

Now, I am beyond honored to share that I, as only a sophomore, will be the India GSL Teaching Assistant for ILR’s largest international program, India GSL! I look forward to returning to India in the summer of 2019! 

Nidhi D. BSILR'20, Human Resources in Mysore

Nidhi with her SVYM mentors at her project presentation.

This past summer, I had the privilege of returning to India after five years to work with Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement’s Human Resources team in Mysore. Unlike a lot of my peers, I am Indian-American and have been to India over ten times. Nonetheless, these six weeks gave me the chance to explore India from a new, purely academic lens and for a purpose other than vacationing in the comfort of my family’s home in Mumbai. I was very interested in the learning about how topics like healthcare, law, and employment were all interrelated in this international setting, and some of the lectures we had during the first week of the program challenged me to think critically about my own beliefs and even question them.

For me, my decision to come to India meant remaining open minded and understanding that there was much more to gain from this program than just learning about Indian food, clothing, and religious customs – it was about reorienting myself as someone from the outside serving as a member of the Indian workforce. For my project, I was essentially tasked with developing a plan to better SVYM’s recruitment. What most interested me about this project is that I would get a chance to see the administrative side of an NGO, specifically the behind-the-scenes of sourcing talent. I was to collect information about the challenges faced in recruitment, research and analyze how other Indian NGOs attract talent, and create a document detailing ways SVYM could improve their own practices. To help SVYM act on some of my recommended strategies, I also designed visual content for the website, created contact information spreadsheets for potential partnerships, and collected employee testimonials to attest to the work culture. Throughout my project, though, I was mindful of the fact that, despite my observations and research, each of my recommendations had its own advantages and disadvantages based on the resources and desires of SVYM.

Ultimately, I am grateful for the opportunity to have participated in the ILR Global Service Learning Program this summer and, upon reflecting on my experience, feel that I have grown both professionally and personally. I was able to see firsthand the needs and limitations of the social sector and contribute to SVYM’s mission in developing human capital, while learning a lot about myself along the way.