After experiencing such poverty in both Bodhgaya and Sarnath, Buddha’s Smile School was a completely enriching and perfect experience. Meeting Rajan, we spoke of love and in her I saw a heart too big to fit in her chest. Sure enough her generosity of spirit and deep love for all the children (including her desire to develop a hostel for these desperate little ones and perhaps begin a sister school in Kolkata) was in full swing at 2007′s Independence Day Celebration. Rajan and her teachers work tirelessly to give these children a better chance in life, beginning with respect, love and an education. This experience changed my travel plans (I leave tomorrow for Kolkata to visit other schools and hostels Rajan has told me about) and she and her family’s hearts are an inspiration to all. The work here deserves huge support and many prayers.

Thank you Buddha’s Smile School for being such an incredible part of my journey.

Angela-Claire Cole

You can see more of Angela-Claire’s photos here | Link

Being in Rajani’s presence has a calming and encouraging effect. She is such a loving, golden-hearted, hard working and sacrificing woman. She takes children who have no hope, and gives them her heart and teaches them.

Often the children who Rajan receives into her classroom can only sit blank-faced at first, because they cannot read their lessons. Through encouragement, patience and little goodies tucked into their tiny hands as rewards, before long she has her classroom full of children who can read at a level two grades higher than they did upon entering her school earlier in the year. Many of these children are taught at home that begging on the street provides a better opportunity for them than learning in a classroom, but Rajani strongly believes she has an obligation to change that way of thinking. ‘We don’t know which child will be a diamond in the future; but it is our responsibility to send them to school to find out.’

I saw firsthand how Amistad’s donors make a difference for these children. Amistad provides the money for four auto-rickshaws to bring children from their slums to her school five days a week. It provides salaries for seven teachers including Rajan herself (who pays herself only two-thirds of what she pays the others, and probably works twice as hard). Occasionally there is enough money to buy new shoes and warm sweaters. Once a week, a meal is provided for the children. Unfortunately, Rajani does not have funds to provide daily meals but nonetheless she opens so many other doors for children who have no one else to care for them.

I offered what insights I could to Rajan, but mainly encouraged her to carefully budget the small amount of funds she receives, explained to her what donors’ expectations are, and encouraged her to devote herself to the children rather than spreading herself too thin trying to reach all the children her generous heart aches to teach.

I am in Denver now practising law again. While my venue has changed to a more serene environment, my attitude toward life has also changed. I am now fully aware of how blessed I am to have benefited from education and career possibilities that most women in the world can’t even fathom.

My biggest struggle is rationalizing our nation’s material wealth compared to much of the rest of the world. It is nearly impossible for me to have dinner out, see the endless variety of stuff we sell in our malls, or flip through a glossy catalogue without being reminded of the number of children who could be educated, fed and kept from a life of prostitution with the money we so frivolously spend daily.

Special Note: Amistad especially want to thank Ann Down and the Good Works Institute, Donna Peters, Dr. Sundeep Rathore and Dr. Lawrence Chizen for their life-giving help to Rajani’s school.

Amy Symons

Today, that bare patch of land is a two level school-building (co-built by Sukhdev) with 200 small students. One just has to see the children, see their faces, to know just how important this school is for their lives. Here, they learn to count; to read; to write; mathematics; spelling, and basic life skills such as how to care for their clothing, how to respect their friends and class mates, how to give to others and what it is to be members of a community rather than outcasts. In the morning they say their prayers (in Sanskrit, English and Hindi). On Saturdays, music is played over speakers and they dance and play. Amsitad International provides enough funding so that, once a week, all of the students are fed.

But more personally, one just have to see the children pulling at Rajan Saini’s salwa kameez to show their injuries so that she can clean them, nurture them, care for them to see the impact Raj is making on the lives of these children. Their parents quite often laugh that they treat Raj like their mother. And, in many crucial sense, she is. As Raj likes to say, “They are my children, my responsibility, I must do this.”

But the situation of the school is still quite difficult. The teachers find it an uphill battle trying to convince the children and their families of the value and importance of coming to school. Once a week, on Saturdays, they visit the families of the children to check on their welfare, their health, and to try to convince the parents who have withdrawn their children of the importance of their education. Moreover, a sad story: while my husband and I were there, we were told of a small girl whose mother told Raj that the father was planning on selling her for prostitution. In response, the school teachers were extra vigilant of this small one, making sure that if the father came to take her home that they held onto her. But there is only so much they can do, they don’t have the funds to take her in and protect her permanently, and given it is heresay it’s not quite on the level to get the police involved. But these things happen. Sarnath is in Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorer states in India, the most populated state, and one where the caste system is still deeply entrenched, where dowry murder still occurs, where corruption still prolific at all levels.

But, even in such a difficult space, there is room for much inspiration. Before the sponsorship of Amistad International, Raj had to meet costs for transporting the children to the school. To meet this cost, she sold one of her most precious possessions, her gold wedding necklace (the Hindu version of a wedding ring). When we visited this time, my husband and I happened to bring her a gold-plated locket from New Zealand as a gift. Initially, she thought it was artificial gold, and accepted it graciously. However, when her teachers suggested that it glittered as though it was real, she took it off and placed it on her altar. Later that evening she approached me and asked whether it was real gold. I told her it was gold plated, and I could see the emotion building in her face. When I hugged her, she broke into tears, and spoke of the pain she had felt in having to sell her necklace. Summoning her inner resolve, she held the locket and committed to putting a photo of Mother Theresa inside and to wear it always. This one she will never sell. And I believe it to be true. Such is the inner strength and resolve of this amazing woman.

How do such things emerge in the world, from absolutely nothing but an idea, to bloom into such entities as the Buddha’s Smile School that impact on hundreds of people’s lives? They emerge from the imagination, courage and sense of inner purpose of such amazing people as Rajani Saini; of such humble, courageous, fallible people who never lose faith that this is their responsibility in life, to love and care for those around them in the ways in which they can.

Bronwyn Finnigan

I met Rajan and Sukhdev 2 year ago after a small crisis in my own life. Through my dear friend Mattia I was introduced to the family, and hardly knew them, yet, I was instantly treated like one of them, they took me into their home into their life and into their hearts. I remember Sukhdev telling me never to say thank you as it was an insult, thank you is for strangers….family needs no thank you. I recall endless stories of struggle and that the couple endured in order to be together, in order to live their dreams, and in order to help others. There’s is a marvellous tale of the potential to be generous and the ability to change the lives of others.

Sometimes when I tell the story of their lives I feel like I’m exaggerating because there is such inherent beauty in it that it sounds to good to be true and yet it is all fact.

Risking a love marriage in a part of India that still extols arranged marriage Rajan was disowned by her family and friends. Alone in the world left only only with her precious Sukhdev she never looked back and stood in the shadows of her own sorrow, but rather rejoiced in her great love and dedicated her time and energy to helping others, rather than worrying for herself. A teacher by training Rajan once a resident of the booming Calcutta upper middle class came to one of the poorest regions in the country known as Uttar Pradesh in a town called Sarnath. There she began teaching the poorest of the local children for free. What started as a simple act of generosity soon burgeoned into a life long project. Through word of mouth…something that moves faster then the speed of light in the beggar towns of India, Rajan teachings became heralded throughout the village. Shortly thereafter she was teaching children on her front lawn……and letter moved into a small flat where she began an official free school for untouchable children, while Sukhdev opened a small local restaurant to support the family.

As time has passed the school became more then a place of simple education for a few children and transformed into a house of learning for over 100 hundred needy students. A place were paucity turned into opportunity and starvation satisfied by the school’s healthy meals metamorphosed into a thirst for knowledge that Rajan continued to nurture. In living amongst Rajan and her school for over two months, I can honestly say she is the closest thing I know to a living saint. She is humble, kind, and full of life. She gives as though she has an endless receptacle of energy and yet accepts hardly anything in return. I remember how completely she would insist I buy her nothing not even simple commodities like shampoo and soup if I used them, the only thing she would readily receive would be joy. She simply gives and gives and loves.

I am sure the Buddha is smiling at her and upon her hundreds of children. I am honoured to know Rajan and her family.

Heather Mason