NGO Visit

Walking through the streets of India the past week, and having little children working for money or begging emphasized a problem in India.  In the US the government would intervene in these children’s lives.  Our government takes responsibility to take care of the less fortunate and children in inadequate environments.  Our government is often criticized for high taxes, even though they are used for these kind of programs.  In India I thought that programs like this did not exist, but visiting the NGO made me have a different perspective and see a different way of doing things.

The NGO has a similar program as our government, but it is done by the community instead of by a government.  I felt like this way of doing this instead of our way came from the cultural background of communities helping each other out, but also passes this along to future generations by practicing it and mixing people of different backgrounds.  This type of community forces people to go out of their socio-economic niche, and put money back in the community.  Also when your community takes care of one another it produces more of a family for the kids that we met.

Another thing that I brought away from the NGO visit was that the kids and directors appreciated everything they were given more than what I see in the US, whether it was funding, talents, or education.  They talked about how they only had a small amount of money, but made it possible to still run the clinic by cutting unnecessary costs.  The kids valued their education or dancing abilities enough to enhance them by putting the effort that we don’t always see back home.  Our parents pay thousands of dollars for our education and student still skip class or studying.  These kids don’t have the resources for many things, but all of them still put the effort in to become just as educated or skilled as people who did attend costly colleges.

So both India and the US (and other countries) are similar in that they do help people in need and produce educated and skilled citizens, but just have a different way of doing it.  Looking at India’s way it seems to promise a stronger future, and hopefully communities helping each other becomes more predominant on the US culture.

PwC & Dunnhumby Office Visits

During our visits to PricewaterhouseCoopers and Dunnhumby, we were able to see a totally different section of India.  This sector has many more similarities to the environment seen in America, where  the services provided and business focuses overlapped.  PricewaterhouseCoopers explained their main focuses in India due to their differences in the economic environment.  I learned that the labor force is very young and more educated, which has created a competitive market for jobs.  As well, India has a growing GDP, but has limits in their capacity.  The main goals and problems that they were focusing on was investing in infustructure, which is not seen as much in the US, but is similar to the US with their focus on IT and eGovernance.  At Dunnhumby I also say this catering to each country or company’s similarities and differences.  This company showed the growth in India because it is very young that started out in another area, but saw major benefits in India for their company headquarters.  India has the perfect labor of force with employees that are educated in business as well as technically.