And we are off ...

After months of planning and getting stressed out and numerous cups of tea, finally our adventure begins.
We are going to celebrate the new year at the hottest venue in Leicester (St. Margaret bus station)!
We both wish you a marvelous new year with more success and happiness.

Atousa and Harj

The Itinerary!

Today has been one of those great days! you know, the kind when you constantly hear good news? we finally managed to make appointments with people we needed to. A very kind gentlemen from AAPNA Punjab-making a difference organization in Amritsar, and also Ms Meena from SMILE organization in Delhi. They were both eager about the project and also meeting us.
so we can now officially publish our itinerary.
please click on it to see the bigger version of it.

Thanks for your generosity!

we were contacted by a gentleman from BP who heard of our project through the National Space Centre. We met with Mr Kishor Mistry for an informal chat about his interest in trying to raise money to fund our trip. He was very excited and encouraging towards our plans and said even though he would try his best to raise money for us, he was not promising to cover all of our costs.

we would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr Mistry and the generous individuals who contributed towards this project:

Kishor Mistry
Kishor Patel
Surenda Mistry
Dhirm Mistry
Chhagn Mistry
Bhiku Bhai Mistry
Sunil Radia
Khundy Mistry
Arvind Mistry
Parshom Mistry

many thanks once again, we certainly appreciate your generosity.

The total amount of contribution from the above people was £100.00, as this amount does not cover a considerable proportion of our personal expenses, we have decided to put it towards our next charitable event, which is doing a parachute jump for War Child (Atousa) and Child Line (Harj). keep an eye on our blog in April for pictures of this spectacular event (weather permitting, of course).

Travel tips!

In order to travel to India we were advised by the nurse that we needed vaccinations to protect us against local viral infections we could pick up based on the type of work we are planning to do. The vaccinations included:

Typhoid
Dyptheria
Polio
Hepititus A & B
Tetnus

We both suffered for a couple of days after having the injections but nothing major. If you experience the same type of thing there is really nothing you can do except take pain killers.

Interview with the BBC

I (Harj) met up with a friend, Amrit Cheema who works for BBC Coventry and Warwickshire. I was telling him about my trip to India and what we are planning to do. He was very impressed and said the BBC would see this as a very interesting story to document. He said they are always looking for citizen journalists to take out the BBC's eqiupment and collect as much footage as they can of their experiences with the aim of it becoming a documentary. After discussing this with Atousa we both decided to go ahead and take this opportunity. As part of this process we were invited to give an interview regarding our plans and reasons for our trip. We were interviewed by Satnam Rana, Broadcast journalist for BBC Midlands Today as well as by Liz Kershaw from BBC Coventry and Warwickshire. They have both invited us back for a post trip interview to find out how it went. We are looking forward to taking out their camera and taking some exciting footage.

Thanks to National Space Centre/Leicester.

I (Atousa) thought it would be a good idea to contact The National Space Centre (NSC) for some educational materials that I could use to make the learning more exciting for children. I met with Gareth James the education manager at NSC who kindly provided me with very interesting and fun materials such as posters, leaflets and other educational toys to do with science, which I plan to use with the children while in India and then leave there for the teachers to continue using with future generations of classes.

How did Harj get involved?

I (Harj) became interested in going to India with Atousa for slightly different reasons. i currently work with Asian women and children who experience domestic violence. many of the women i work with are actually from India. i thought if i could go there and speak to women and young girls about domestic violence, i could raise some of the issues which are common between the two countries, such as immigration complications and forced marriages. my work in this field was initially inspired by the loss of someone very dear to me who also went through years of domestic violence .

India is not only my home - land, it is a place where i can trace my roots and ancestry. Even though i have visited India before i never looked beneath the surface of what life in india can mean for some people. i am not expecting a miracle, i don't expect people to change over night but if i can empower at least one woman to take her life in her own hands and stand on her own to feet i will be happy.

How it all began?

I (Atousa) was invited to a charity event in Milton Keynes, where i was introduced to an Indian based charity. This charity was one like i had never heard about before. They would ask retired career women and house wives to dedicate one room in their homes to 'street children'.Street children are children who are from very poor backgrounds whose parents do not have the means to educate them and so they do not go to school. These women educate the children in very basic life skills such how to get dressed, how to eat, how to pray and other very basic things.

i was so touched by what i saw and started thinking when ever will these children learn about more interesting things like, Space Physics, Biology, Literature? It was at this point that i felt i could make a change by creating a dream.

I have followed my own dream since i was a child and so i believe having a dream is very important. I believe the dream you choose to follow as a child can change your future. I remember when i was a little girl my mother would tell me stories of historical figures like Great Dariush, the Great King of Persia. My dream was to meet those people so i asked my mother how i can meet them, she said one thing which shaped my life. she said i could meet these people if i invented a time machine.

Inventing a time machine became my dream. All the decisions i made in my life thereafter were based on this dream.

i am planning to go to India taking the worm's eye view approach. What i essentially mean is, i do not expect to make a huge difference such as change the whole educational system of India, all i want is to do is inspire at least one dream in at least one child.

i was having coffee in one of Leicester's relaxing venues!, when me and a friend got chatting. Harj was as exited as i was when she heard about what i was planning. she said she would like to come with me but i thought she didn't mean it as many people before had said the same thing. But Harj was definitely serious. we spend the next few weeks discussing and throwing ideas around until finally we came up with a concrete plan and everything looked like it was going ahead.

What is it all about?

This is about the passion of two very active and compassionate individuals who have been lucky enough to have the opportunities in life to succeed, we feel it is important to help those who are less fortunate in the world, as so much talent is going unrecognized through no fault of their own. We come from two very different backgrounds one from the field of Science and one from the field of Criminology.

Atousa Goudarzi is a final year PhD student in Radio and Space Plasma Physics group at the University of Leicester. She is working on the effects of solar wind on the Earth magnetosphere. Her contribution to the project will be to train and educate teachers and students respectively in the subject of Space Physics.

Harjeet Chakira is a postgraduate in Clinical Criminology from the University of Leicester. She is currently working in the field of domestic violence with Asian women and children. Her contribution to the project will be to visit young women studying in colleges and universities and highlight the issue of domestic violence, its nature, extent and effects in the UK and other countries.
we are planning to do a bit of traveling, mainly to third world countries and offer our expertise for free.

In order to take the first step we are planning to travel to India on first of January 2007.

Why India?