Episode 4
· 57:36
Well, good morning, good afternoon, and good evening to all of you. My name
William Hocking:is Bill Hocking, and welcome to the one, the only Bill Hocking Podcast. Good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening, avid fans, and welcome once again to the one, the only, William Hocking Podcast brought to you from my good friends at podcaststhatmatter.org and the Thought Partner Group. Today, we've got a very special episode for you.
William Hocking:Along the lines of my main tenant in doing these podcasts, which is what does it look like to live a life worth living? How does it feel to live a life worth living? I'm going to introduce you to an organization, specifically one person in that organization, that is seriously walking the proverbial walk when it comes to helping people improve their lives. Their organization is called Tiljala Shed, T I L J A L A, Shed. They're based in Calcutta, India.
William Hocking:They've been in business as a nonprofit for forty years or so. And this organization has literally helped thousands and thousands and thousands of the poorest of the poor, people that live in the slums of Calcutta, raise themselves out of their poverty through education to start to realize better lives for themselves. I am so honored and blessed to bring this gentleman, his name is Shafkat Alam, to our episode today and allow him to tell you what it is that they do and how you can help them to continue to do what they do. I'm also gonna introduce you to somebody very close to me. His name is Connor.
William Hocking:He's 31 years old in the high-tech industry and he took it upon himself to go to Calcutta for two weeks out of his life on his own dime, learn about what it is that they do to help the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. These slums that Mother Teresa herself used to minister to. And he went there to try to make a difference and see what it is that they're doing. Well, his life has been changed because of that journey. So Connor and Shafkat Alam are gonna join me today.
William Hocking:So please welcome them to the stage and we hope that you get something out of this episode because these people are really walking the proverbial walk. God bless and welcome them to our episode. Well, good morning Avid fans. Good afternoon and good evening. And welcome once again to the William Hocking Podcast.
William Hocking:I know you've all been waiting for this with great eagerness, and there's really good reason for you to be eager to hear this podcast. Today we've got a couple of very special guests, and in that tenet of what does it look like to live a life worth living, we're going to focus on an organization that you probably never heard of, but afterwards you're going to be glad that you did learn about this, and hopefully you're going to want to take some action to help this organization with their vision and their mission. Because if you think about organizations that help live lives worth living, These guys walk the walk and not just talk about it. Their name is Tiljala SHED, they're based in Calcutta, India, and we're going to invite one of their principals into this podcast in a few minutes. His name is Shafkat Alam, and he will introduce himself once he's live in about fifteen minutes or so.
William Hocking:But in the meantime, we have our guest here, his name is Connor. He actually, as a 31 year old, took the time out of his busy schedule, he works full time for a technology company, out of Northern Virginia. He took about ten days of his personal leave to travel to India because he felt a calling to try to help people that desperately need it. And so he was there in India helping Tiljala SHED and this gentleman you're going to meet in a few minutes, to drive awareness and to actually help some of the people in India on a hands on basis. Connor was with some of the poorest of the poor, if you will, in the slums of Calcutta, and, the imagery that he's been able to share with me and others is riveting.
William Hocking:It's gut wrenching. But what he's doing to help them and what more importantly they are doing to help these people is heartwarming. So, Connor, welcome to the show. We really appreciate you being a part of this. And, why don't you go ahead and take a few seconds and kind of not just reintroduce yourself, but talk to our audience about why did you do what you just did, as I described?
William Hocking:Thanks for the intro.
Connor Hocking:Happy to be here. First time doing a podcast. So a little bio. I I was a philosophy student in undergrad, and I got a master's in philosophy. And I've spent a lot of time thinking about what I would consider to be very important questions.
Connor Hocking:What's a good life? What are my duties to my fellow human beings? All that sort of thing. But when you when you hit your thirties, a lot of people have some kind of little crisis of, oh, wow, youth is sort of, you know, there's a shelf life to it. And it really began to hit me how much I had been thinking about these things in kind of a detached abstract way and not really living them.
Connor Hocking:And then add on top of that, I've been blessed to be extremely privileged my whole life. And I always kind of knew this, but for whatever reason, it hit me with a new kind of urgency recently. And I just realized that I didn't want to let myself get any older without having some kind of hands on immersive experience in a world utterly different from the one that I know. And before this, I've done a fair amount of traveling, but it was mostly typical tourism stuff. It was a lot of hiking, going to nice cities.
Connor Hocking:Going to Calcutta was very different because I'd never seen anything like what I'd seen there. I mean, I live near West Baltimore and some of the poverty near here, right near where I live is really eye opening, but it's it's on a different level when you get down to Calcutta. A lot of us know the name is Calcutta. The official name now is Kolkata, but just for people, if they're looking this up, yeah, in East India.
William Hocking:Okay. Well, thanks for sharing that. You know, it's just intriguing to me that some people with your age bracket have felt and are feeling kind of a calling to do a little more with their lives than maybe they currently are. You know, we're seeing a resurgence, you know, if you listen to the media and you believe the media, we're seeing a resurgence of people in your age bracket, some a little older, some a little younger, returning to churches, returning to religion, in a sense kind of looking for more meaning out of life, you know, they can see what their careers may look like, they can predict where their careers are going to take them, etc, but there appears to be a bigger resurgence of, you know, what does it look like to live a life worth living for myself, for my family, for people I care about, people I love, Almost kind of a return to the past as they perceive it. And it seems that more and more people today feel that they're missing something.
William Hocking:And it could be a lot of things that they're missing. They certainly don't have what I had growing up because the world is very, very different. But, yeah, I think it's a fantastic thing that more people your age are feeling a calling to do something and not just reminisce about what they hear their parents or grandparents talk about. You know, people like yourself that decide, I'm going to get on a plane and I'm going to travel halfway across the world and visit a part of the planet that in this case is destitute, has a reputation for being destitute, and literally visit with and help with people that are arguably the poorest of the poor, I think that's incredibly altruistic and I salute you for it. You know, it's not every day that somebody your age takes time away from the so called rat race and puts his time and money literally where his mouth is.
William Hocking:So hats off to you for doing that and hats off to this cause that you believe in, that you're willing to try to do something and not just talk about it. So, before Shavkat actually joins us, he should be joining in a few minutes, is there anything you want the audience to know about the organization? He's going to introduce it obviously and talk about what he does and what they do. Is there anything that you want the audience to know specifically about Tiljala SHED and, how maybe they can help. And I'll spell the organization, it's T as in Tom, I as in India, L as in Larry, J as in Joseph, A as in apple, T as in Tom, right?
William Hocking:And then A as in apple, and then there's a space shed just like it sounds. S as in Sam, H as in Harry, E as in Edward, D as in David. And again they're based in Kolkata. So if you had a magic wand, what would you like the listeners here to know and to do about this organization based in Kolkata?
Connor Hocking:Let me just step back for a second and say more about what I did in my time there. It was it was very refreshing how little red tape was involved. I I went in mid February, about a month and a half ago. And three, four weeks before, I simply called Shafkat on WhatsApp. You know, he had never spoken to me before, never heard of me before.
Connor Hocking:And I just said, hey. I have some time coming up. Can I just come down and help out however I can? And I'm mostly interested in just conducting informal interviews with you, your staff, and the people you serve? And he said, sure.
Connor Hocking:And it was really that simple. Like, he set me up with an Airbnb nearby, and he had one of his staff pick me up from the airport. And then when I was there, I got to meet a lot of the staff. I got to see all seven of the different centers in the different slum communities of Kolkata that they serve. I got to do interviews with, I think, 18 different people with the translator most of the time because I don't speak Bengali.
Connor Hocking:It's one of the local languages there. And I was just really grateful for all the help I got from the staff even though I told them I'm not I mean, I'm barely even, like, an amateur journalist. I've done a few interviews in my life, but it was a great it was kind of a world class crash course in what I'll describe as sort of NGO journalism, I take it. I'm just kind of going right in the field, so to speak, for, you know, day after day after day, talking to all sorts of people that they serve. So that's my background.
Connor Hocking:In terms of a little more on the organization, we'll hear some more from Shavkat himself soon. But it's worth stressing that, you know, sometimes in this context, people kind of wonder about the the optics, so to speak, of, like, you know, I'm an American guy from one kind of demographic going to a very different part of the world. What do I know about that part of the world? What what could I do to help? I don't know anything about it.
Connor Hocking:And I think that's a question worth asking. It's important to stress that this organization is extremely grassroots. Shafkaat says it's it's not a separate organization from the communities that it serves. It's sort of an extension or just part of that community. And of the 62 staff, I believe 40% of them are former beneficiaries.
Connor Hocking:So a lot of people that grew up in these slum communities and probably handled Jawahshed helped sponsor their education. They've they've now come back to work for the organization. And it's the sort of thing where if there's a social worker that doesn't go to their assigned community for a day or two, the people will realize it and get kind of worried and and call them up and say, hey. Are you okay? Are you sick or something?
Connor Hocking:Like, the people know what their people are cooking for dinner, who need money for a funeral. Are just, like, woven in there. So any concerns people might have understandably about, like Mhmm. You know, some random westerner coming and trying to help, I was just kinda plugged into this existing very tight knit infrastructure. And, my goal now after sort of seeing all this and is to do whatever I can to spread awareness about this.
Connor Hocking:This podcast is one of those things. In addition, finishing an article about my experience there that we're gonna get on the Tiljala SHED website. By the time this podcast is released, that should be done. K. And we'll have links, we'll have links on the Tiljala SHED website.
Connor Hocking:And I'm also gonna be doing, a couple presentations and talks to, some groups that I know and friends of family, that sort of thing.
William Hocking:Yeah, I fully intend to help promote your promotion of the organization through possible future podcasts on this site with podcaststhatmatter.org, who is one of our sponsors here. But share, before he comes on, a little bit about the reaction the local populace had when you showed up. Some of the videos that you shared already were absolutely hysterical. You know, the concept of Connor being perceived as a rock star or something of that sort through some of these videos was hysterical to me. You know, just having literally dozens of kids and children jumping all over you as if like you're some kind of rock god or celebrity.
William Hocking:You know, I'm a
Connor Hocking:white guy there and I stick out like a sore thumb. And it's important to stress that not all of Kolkata is like what I saw. Like there are it's like a lot of India. It's had
William Hocking:Sure.
Connor Hocking:Economic takeoff, likes of which, you know, the world has almost never seen. So lots of Kolkata are very different. What I was seeing, you get very few tourists in these places, understandably. So when I walk through, people notice. Right.
Connor Hocking:And yeah. I mean, you know, if I if I stood still for too long, a crowd would gather and the the English typically was minimal to nonexistent. There were a couple of standouts. Like, there was one there was one little Jalishad student who's 17, and she was actually one of my translators. But just a lot of super excited kids wanting fist bumps.
Connor Hocking:And, you know, you kinda learn to communicate by, like, either Google Translate. Can get a couple things across, or I would just sort of hang out with kids and show them photos of my family and, you know, that kind of thing. And so we you communicate in whatever way you can. It's important to stress that despite the destitute material conditions, and we'll talk about that in a second of, like, you know, living next to untreated sewage canals and having families of seven, eight people in a 10 by 15 hut without any ventilation gets stifling in the summer. Things that are pretty grim despite that, at least at least with the children.
Connor Hocking:With the children, there is definitely a sense of festiveness around me. I can't say how they are day to day. I mean, I think, as you said, rock star is not too much of an exaggeration. Just like, I don't know, they see somebody who's American, and I suppose it makes them just kind of think of what alternatives could be, you know? And so around me, they're happy to see me.
William Hocking:That's really it's just kind of interesting. I mean, Laurence Olivier said many, many years ago in an interview, for those of you who are not familiar with Laurence Olivier, he's probably one of the greatest actors that's ever walked the walk and shared the screen, when asked about, you know, how do you feel about acting when you mess something up, you know, when you've made an error? And he looked at the camera and looked at the interviewer and said, The audience doesn't know that I've messed up my lines. I know I've messed up my lines. So these people, the analogy here being, these people at one level may know and may feel that they're destitute, as we would define it, that they have little to nothing.
William Hocking:But at one level they also don't know what it's like to have the opulence that we have. So do they feel poor? Not necessarily. You know, when they compare themselves somehow through social media, they may feel poor. But in their world they're not.
William Hocking:They're alive, they're living, and even though they're picking through trash for, you know, ten, twelve hours a day to get 2 or $3, as we would define it, and try to feed their families, that's just part of life for them. That's their existence. You know, they don't have another reality to compare themselves with, that's what they've been doing all this time, their entire lives, and sometimes their fathers, their mothers have been doing this, and their grandparents, they were born into this system, and in some ways perhaps they feel they'll die as a part of this world, in this environment. They don't feel unhappy.
Connor Hocking:I don't want say more than I'm warranted to because, know, I had a handful of conversations with the translator, so I lost some of the nuance. I do wanna stress, however, that I think for some people Right. There is an acute sense of, you know, how bad the situation is, and and you feel it in your stomach whether or not you're seeing someone else in social media when, you know, you're malnourished. Right? So I I definitely think there's something to what you're saying.
William Hocking:Right.
Connor Hocking:I think with the kids, especially with the social media exposure, because a lot of them do have very cheap smartphones, there is that more more awareness of what things are like in the rest of the world.
William Hocking:Okay, avid fans. We're gonna take a quick break from our dialogue right here, and I'm going to put a plug in for somebody who I feel is truly scary smart. His name is Dr. Kent, and he's the gentleman that got me started on this podcast route as well as getting my first novel published. Talk to Kent, talktokent,.com is an is alias, and this guy is scary smart. If you've got a book inside of you or an idea, you want help with branding or help with coaching or any number of things, Talk To Kent is a solution for you.
William Hocking:I highly recommend you give this guy a check out. Talktokent.com. Well, joining us right on queue is the one, the only Shafkat Alam hails to us from Kolkata, India. Now it's ten and a half hours ahead. I skipped math class that day, so I don't know exactly what time it is, but I know it's evening for you, Shavkat.
William Hocking:Thank you, thank you, Dhanyavad, and pardon my bad Hindi or whatever base language that is, for spending your valuable time, especially this late at night, away from your family and away from your mission to share some perspectives with us. Connor has been sharing with us for the last twenty minutes or so his experience when he visited you for the first time in India, why he was compelled to want to go there and start to try to make a difference. I think it's very altruistic of him to do what he did, but in a proverbial sense, he's just getting started. And hopefully some of the messaging that you will share with our avid fans here is that people can make a difference, that they should make a difference, that in my humble opinion, they should feel a responsibility to make a difference because they can, and they can easily do this. And it makes such a huge difference in the lives of people when they stop focusing, so to speak, on themselves and start focusing outward, I.
William Hocking:E. The servant leadership mantra. Shavkat, please take a couple seconds, introduce yourself, share with us what Tiljala SHED does, and I guess most importantly, what can people do literally today? What can they do going forward to help your mission, to help your vision, and help make a difference to people that desperately, desperately need it. Welcome.
Shafkat Alam:Thank you so much, Bill, for introducing me, and thank you, Connor, for seeing you, meeting you again. So my name is Shafka Talam, and I'm one of the joint secretary of Tiljala Society for Human and Educational Development. In short, we say Tiljala SHED. So hi everyone, I'm Shafka Talam. I am from an organization called Tiljala SHED, Tiljala Society for Human and Educational Development.
Shafkat Alam:We are a non profit based in Kolkata in India and I am one of the joint secretary in this organization which was started by my father who himself was the first law graduate from the slums. So being the part and parcel of this community itself, who knows better than my father when he started this mission with a handful youths of Tiljala when he saw a lot of children engaging in waste picking I don't know if people in the West knows about this but many children in India and specifically in the Asian region are involved in waste picking so they make a living out of waste. It literally means like in India most of the people we don't have so much civic sense like and you know we throw waste garbage out of our windows out of the car window, out of the building window and this waste is scattered all over the city. So these and you will find vats, waste dumps, small waste dumps which Connor has seen when he was here with us in the month of February and he was also surprised and he became very emotional watching children and watching other families in such condition.
Shafkat Alam:So these families and the children, they make a living out of waste. They scavenge paper, glass, metal, whatever they find valuable, which they sell it to the stockist and in return they get some money. And this way, they make a living out of waste. So it's a very famous saying in Calcutta, like in India, they make a living out of the garbage we throw out.
William Hocking:That literally they do that. Literally. Just I'm gonna interrupt you for a second for the audience. Just imagine those of us that are listening to this that have born, lived in The States and have incredible opulence compared to what these people have. Imagine going to a dump, basically a place where you dump all your trash, your garbage, and see, in this case, hundreds, maybe hundreds of little kids, grade school kids, middle school kids, high school kids, and their parents and possibly their grandparents picking through mountains of garbage, of trash, looking for little things, little being in the sense things that are of perceived value that they can take and sell on a not just weekly basis, on a daily basis for up to ten, twelve hours a day.
William Hocking:And in return for that, somebody's going to give them the equivalent of three to what, dollars 5 a day in U. S. Dollars, in this case, rupees, but $3 to $5 a day for ten hours of work and literally picking through mountains of garbage and trash and risking everything that comes with that. You know, cutting themselves, disease, I would think there's probably more than a few rats running through those mounds of garbage. It's almost incomprehensible that, you know, just the imagery of saying that would I think bust anybody up.
William Hocking:So anyway, I just want to put that out there. Go ahead.
Shafkat Alam:And even the children don't make even $3 to $5 you know, and when the children go to the shop to sell, they are cheated in rates, they are cheated in the rates. So suppose a particular thing they have brought and the rate in the market is something, but they will get a lower rate on
William Hocking:A lower rate you mean a lower amount of money.
Connor Hocking:Yes. Okay.
Shafkat Alam:That means they are also cheated by the stockists and they ensure that they sell all the stuffs in their shop only because these families have also taken advance money from them for their family problems. Like some have marriages in their family and you know in England
William Hocking:So these people are working, if I understand what you're saying, these people in a sense are working off loans, or some people might say extortion. They have issues, some of these shops or businesses or something have loaned them money for them to survive and in return they have to pay off these loans at a ridiculous amount of numeration just to pay off a loan in order for them to survive. So they're in this, apparently this never ending cycle.
Shafkat Alam:Yes, cycle, yes. So that's why we call it the vicious cycle.
William Hocking:Vicious cycle. Okay.
Shafkat Alam:And these families cannot sell the stuff to any other place. That's the problem. It becomes a very nexus and they also get cheated in their weights, in their prices. So when we started the work, we noticed the problem first you identify the problem and then you start solving the problem. So my father, since he was a government school teacher, he got a government service for himself, which in India it's a fantasy for anybody, for everybody to get a government job because that's the most secure job in the planet.
Shafkat Alam:So he became a primary school teacher despite being overqualified for the job and he wanted to stay in the primary school And he saw these children picking up trash. So the first thing he wanted is to rescue the children and put them into schools because he always believed the correct place of the children is not in the trash but in
William Hocking:the school. So Right.
Shafkat Alam:That's how he started working. But he also knew the reality that why child labor exists. It is because the money is involved. So in order to rescue the children, remove the children from such work, we have to ensure that the income of the family goes up. Right.
Shafkat Alam:Then only this problem can be addressed. Otherwise, it is just your wishful desire if you really want to make a change. And that's how we started, the first grant we got from Trickle Up Foundation in New York. They were the first foundation to help my father. It's still
William Hocking:What what was the name of that foundation?
Shafkat Alam:Trickle Up Foundation. Have an office. Trickle Up?
William Hocking:Yes. Okay.
Shafkat Alam:And they have an office in New York City.
William Hocking:Okay.
Shafkat Alam:Still. And surprisingly, they also have a branch office in my city because the amount of grants they have given in my city and in my state, now they have an office now. So
William Hocking:How did how did your how did Trickle Up learn about your father? What was the connection?
Shafkat Alam:The connection was a lot of researchers from international, from Harvard, from Stanford, from a lot of universities used to come. And because my father used to write also, role of, in those days, pen and paper, there was no internet, there was nothing.
William Hocking:So he
Shafkat Alam:used to sit with a lot of academicians, professors, all these researchers from across the globe used to come, and he wrote then a role of waste pickers in recycling. And people have ignored them, you know, and even the slum people so they are not from the slum, they are below the slum. Even the slum people don't want to mix with them. They face social ostracism. They face taboo even from the slum community.
Shafkat Alam:Because people people treat them as dirt and garbage. Have always treated them as dirt and garbage and even the slum people do not want to mix with this community.
William Hocking:Interesting. Which
Connor Hocking:is just a term for waste. Yes.
Shafkat Alam:Yes. So it was not just money. Money was an issue. Poverty was an issue. It was also a taboo that was adding pain to the current problem.
William Hocking:So these people in a sense not only were born into this poverty, they were perceived by other groups, parts of the populace as trash, you know, in a sense that kind of described as you're in the lowest echelon of the low, and because you're part of this group, you are what it is you do, which is in this case pick trash. So they're considered trash because that's what they live with, that's how they exist, by picking trash and trying to sell it. So, you know, to your comment, what your father did, you were I think Spartan to say that one of the only ways out of this kind of never ending nexus cycle is education. Right? So the focus, as I remember Connor telling me and you telling me when we talked before, was one of the ways to help get people out of this nexus is to educate them so they now have a choice, or give them more of a choice, correct?
William Hocking:Yes. All right, so talk a little bit about the education aspect. You got a grant from Trickle Up, or your father did, and then that grant enabled Tiljala's shed to start building schools?
Shafkat Alam:No, that grant was actually a livelihood grant for their parents. So their parents would start a business. So the slogan was $100 In those days, you can understand the $100
William Hocking:This is 1987, right when you started? Right.
Shafkat Alam:Yes, yes, it was 1987. Okay. Got this grant and these families, women headed businesses, but it was a conditional grant. It was not a loan. So the conditions were if you want this grant, you have to send your child to school.
Shafkat Alam:You cannot send the child Okay. To
William Hocking:And what if the grant was, we'll give you 100 but you have to send your kids to a school, what if the school didn't exist? I mean, I'm assuming there's not a lot of schools in Calcutta where these kids could go.
Shafkat Alam:Yeah, but there were a lot of government schools in those days.
William Hocking:Okay. So
Shafkat Alam:these children were admitted to the government schools and their families have to have a saving, they have to have a bank account, they have to have you can take this grant to start a new business or you can expand an existing business. So this way, their families ensured their children were in schools. That was the first breakthrough for us, And the children finally got to see the door of the school, you know, which they have never seen in their lives.
Connor Hocking:Shafkat, just to clarify, do I have to correct? Back in the eighties when you started, the problem wasn't that there were no schools. The problem was the parents couldn't afford to have their kids spending a day in the classroom that could have been spent making a pittance out in the garbage fields.
William Hocking:Okay.
Shafkat Alam:Are there schools available? Still, have a lot of schools. Government schools are always available. The problem is these children never went to schools because they will lose revenue, because even they were earning a small amount, maybe not like their parents, but they were also contributing some small amount from there. And they were learning very bad things because when you are working with other raktikas, it's a very mobile community and there are a lot of other problems in this community also.
Shafkat Alam:So these children were being exposed to an environment which they were not supposed to. So the childhood, they became an adult very early. Even if you are talking with a child of 12 years, 13 years, you will feel that you're talking to a child who is like eighteen-nineteen years because they have been working from the age of seven years. So as low as sometimes I have seen six years, accompanying their parents and clicking up like the parents. So they become adult very early, and that also I become challenges in the community
William Hocking:think you'll agree with me, at least most of you will, that our planet needs to change. The people in it need to change, And some of us, and I count myself as one of them, are really trying to do my unfair share and our little part to cause that change. There's an organization I'm associated with and I'm proud to be associated with called Speakers That Matter, and Speakers That Matter is assembling people like me and perhaps people like you that have voices that yearn to speak to companies, to organizations, to people in general, and actually cause a shift to generate more positive energy and to change our planet for the better. So if you're one of those people that want or need to make a bigger impact than you're already making, please send me a note. William.Hocking@Outlook.com, and check out speakersthatmatter.com.
William Hocking:You'll be glad that you did. Yeah. These kids are physically look like kids, but emotionally they've aged so much by virtue of what they've had to do in order to exist. And because it's a family, they feel pressure from their parents and their grandparents to contribute because without those meager small contributions at their level, the family may not even be able to exist. So they, like you said, they look like six or seven, but emotionally and from a living life perspective, they've aged quite a bit.
William Hocking:People here in The States just can't comprehend that that's the way children should live, and they don't, by and large, live that way here. So that's how it kind of started in the eighties. You
Connor Hocking:know, carefree childhood that
William Hocking:a lot
Connor Hocking:of us get to enjoy is snuffed out or greatly accelerated from
William Hocking:that. Right.
Connor Hocking:I was talking to one family. This was this was the the most difficult interview of all the ones I did. I won't name the names for anonymity, but the kid's 14. The mother believes she's 31. She's not sure.
Connor Hocking:That that happened a couple times. People weren't exactly sure how old they were. And the kid to me looked 10 because he was malnourished, and the mother to me looked closer to 40. And I was just thinking, like, in between those ages, like, 14 and 31, that's, like, that sweet spot of youth that just gets snuffed out in the slums. You kind of leapfrog over it.
Connor Hocking:And by the time you're at by the time you're in your early twenties, you already look maybe a decade older because of just the constant strain of, you know, poverty always nipping at your heels. Right? And their their situation is just chaotic. The the the father and the husband is a is a severe addict. There's a lot of what's called brown sugar.
Connor Hocking:It's a cheap form of heroin in a lot of the slum communities. And whatever whatever money he can get his hands on, he spends on that. Mentally ill, he gets violent.
William Hocking:He Right.
Shafkat Alam:Runs out
Connor Hocking:in the streets, gets beat up. And in some kind of I don't know if it was a drug fueled rage or what, he just burned their government documents. And now they couldn't get they couldn't get rations from the government for their their food rations. And told Josh I had to step down to kind of supply those in the meantime while they're securing new ones. And when they get new ones, the mother's gonna store them at her sister's house.
William Hocking:Right.
Connor Hocking:But this is just sort of a snapshot of just the kind of just incessant chaos. And all this is happening, you know, in a 10 by 15 hut with thousands of neighbors stretching as far as you can see along this canal, and they're just stepping into that every single day of their lives. So that was the toughest interview I did, but that's sort of just a snapshot of of what childhood is like and what it's not like for a lot of these people.
William Hocking:I mean, by our definition of childhood, that isn't childhood. That's, in a sense, that's factory slavery, you know, it's a lot of things, it's incomprehensible, you can hear about it and intellectually you can imagine it, but until you see it, whether in person like you did, Connor, or through images on the internet or TV or whatever, you just can't believe that people exist this way. And not only do they exist, they've been existing this way for centuries in some cases, depending on where in the world you're talking about. And now our so called modern society, they exist in the hundreds, thousands, millions, I mean, maybe I'm exaggerating, in different parts of the world. And that's their world.
William Hocking:That is it.
Connor Hocking:Is defined as like very cramped conditions. Yeah, that system. No reliable access to clean water, those sorts things.
William Hocking:Just no clean water, no sanitation that we know of, you know, scrapping for food by picking through mounds of trash and garbage, just hard to fathom that existence. Mean, the heat, the smell, it's just beyond comprehension unless I guess you're there. And then it must hit you like a ton of bricks.
Connor Hocking:We had, you know, tenement conditions in big cities like New York and all over the West, you had child labor and factories were at the same the same condition was there. You didn't really get to have a childhood. Were were working because I needed your small fingers to fit between the pieces. Yeah. You know?
William Hocking:Right. Yeah, I know, I mean, a lot of Europe at the time and different parts of Asia, etcetera, they had their upper class, your wealthy, you know, you're a nobility. There was no middle class and then you had the peasantry. The peasantries lived to serve the nobility. And we'd like to think that, you know, we've evolved beyond that in The States, and generally speaking, we have, and a lot of Europe has, but there are still parts of the world, huge geographical parts of the world that haven't figured out how to change that.
William Hocking:And I think you're talking about Calcutta is one big part of it, other parts of India and other parts of Asia. So Shafkat, in your case, just kind of fast forward a bit and talk about how big Tal Jahli Shed is now. And most importantly, you know, I'll use this sense of what I'll call magic wand. You know, I think our listeners are starting to get a sense that there's a lot of people that need a lot of help. And one way to help them obviously is through donations and contributions and things.
William Hocking:You know, do like a magic wand scenario and share with us, you know, couple of things that our listeners can do to really start to make a difference. Because what we don't want people to feel after listening to this is that this is hideous, horrific, but what can I do? What can one person do here in The States watching a podcast to really change this? Right? So what would you have our listeners want to do after listening to this?
Shafkat Alam:I want to start from what my father always said that when he started this mission, the first ten years, had fifty percent more than actually, than 50% dropout. And after thirty nine years, now we have two percent dropout. So that's a very good news. Know now the children you will not find the children in the community where we work were doing rack picking work. They are now enrolled in schools.
Shafkat Alam:We need to continue this mission to ensure because when somebody asked my father when he visited in a state department program to America, why are you doing this? He said that I am doing it because I am selfish. So everybody was shocked when he said I am selfish. So he said I am doing it because if I don't do, crime will only go up and my family will also suffer. So I am doing it for the selfish interest of my family.
Shafkat Alam:So that is the reason he said that and that's the reason you know we all should do this because if we don't intervene, these children will turn into crime. These children will turn into gangsters, mafias and all these things. So our education program ensures that these children remain in school and not just remain in school, they go to a government school. We enroll them into government schools and we run after school learning centers of which Konar had a lovely time visiting all our learning centers. He is a testimonial life testimonial here in this podcast.
Shafkat Alam:So we have after school learning centers for the primary section students and evening classes for the secondary students for class six to 10. These children we started these evening classes for the teenager children because they were roaming around in the area and going on in wrong circles. So now they can stay in the classroom and we teach the children through games and play. We have holistic education, which means we also have taekwondo classes. We have martial arts, taekwondo.
Shafkat Alam:We have guitar classes where the children come and learn guitar. First time they have instruments in their hands. They have never seen instruments in their hands. All these
William Hocking:So you're teaching them you're introducing music to them that they can create themselves.
Shafkat Alam:We have performing We have drawing classes. We have digital learning classes where they learn laptop computers, we have a girls library There which is very is no such library in the vicinity, the five kilometer vicinity where we have. So the girls have a library, the girls have computer internet and the girls have a private time. So they can do a lot of activities like, as I said, drawing, scouts and other programs. We also have science project exhibition, a competition where the children make science models.
Shafkat Alam:We take the children to educational tools, to water parks. So now you will tell me why, Shavkat, why water park? Because all these rich people, children, the privileged children, they go to water park, they go to science amusement parks. So we want to bring the services of the rich, of the privileged class to these children. Education is not just in the classroom.
Shafkat Alam:They have a three sixty degree development education. So the viewers watching you can go to the link, can contribute. If those who cannot contribute can introduce us to their networks, become our ambassadors, can become our volunteers, they can come just like Connor did. And I would also request Connor to share your experiences because he came in one of the craziest months of India in February and it was a Ramadan month and so many people total traffic chaos and amid that he visited and interacted with so many children and not just one area. He almost visited in all the educational learning centers, interacted with hundreds of children.
Shafkat Alam:And these viewers who are watching you can definitely come in and contribute or become a volunteer or become an ambassador of the organization.
William Hocking:See, one of the things, the key things that you said earlier, by exposing these children to what the rich have and take for granted there in India, you're allowing these kids to start to dream, as I call it, of what a better life could look like because they can see what other kids have and maybe take for granted that they maybe have thought about or somebody has whispered about it, now they can actually see it and start to imagine, maybe I can have this. Maybe I can get out of this situation that I'm in, that I was born into, and somehow have more of a child's life as I deserve, so they can start to dream what it could mean for them. And then that combined with the education that they're getting could somehow possibly allow them to break away from this, to start to actually earn a living as most of us would define it, that could help rescue their families there and eventually get them free. You know, in a sense what some people here would call slavery, you're actually freeing they're freeing themselves and maybe their family along with it. So from the contribution standpoint, I already told the audience here, Tiljala SHED, T I L J A L A, shedd.org is That's a the name.
William Hocking:We don't have a T
Connor Hocking:I?
William Hocking:Yeah, that's the name. Yeah, tishedd.org. Oh, tished.org is the actual website. Okay. Yeah, the link will be posted with the video when people are actually able to see this.
William Hocking:And the other thing I wanted to remind our audience here is that, you know, when we do these podcasts at podcaststhatmatter.org sponsors, that's part of the thought partner group, which is what you're seeing here on the screen under my name. We try to do these in sequences. In other words, this is not a one and done. Okay, this is an introduction that we're giving you to Shavkat and his organization. We would like to bring Shafkat and his organization on in a future podcast and doing so would enable him to actually show our listeners some of what we're describing.
William Hocking:Now, most people listen to podcasts only hear it, but this will be a video as well, and there will be an opportunity to actually post the video as well as the audio in places where people can learn more. So from the standpoint of what people can expect going forward, we're going to give more and more visibility to this organization because these people are making a difference. By some people's definition, a very small difference overall in terms of numbers of people affected. But again, like anything else, know, eat an elephant one bite at a time. That's how you eat an elephant.
William Hocking:You know, how do you solve poverty? One school, one child, one family at a time, and there's this ripple effect. If more and more people get involved, more and more families can find their way out of this and live what we would call more of a normal life, right? So Shavkat, is there any last words you'd like to share with our audience before we call this a wrap? So I think can some
Connor Hocking:of the numbers on that point about the size of the impact so far and the number of families served and all that?
William Hocking:Oh, yeah. Please do.
Shafkat Alam:Yes. Actually, I don't Until now, we have helped around we have reached around 35,000 families, roughly.
William Hocking:35,000 families? Yes. And we have admitted 35,000.
Shafkat Alam:Yes. And we have admitted more than 22,000 children in school.
William Hocking:22,000 kids that otherwise would not have seen any school at all. As
Shafkat Alam:I said, the first ten years, more than 50% drop out. So DPM, we tried this with the children, they dropped out, then their parents, their children, their children, then it was their children. So many children now are the grandparents and their grandmother or father were students. About that. Bill and Connor, you should definitely include this.
Shafkat Alam:When my father started working, the average age of marriage, especially the girl child, was 12 years, 13 years when he started the work. Now it is nineteen years after so many years of intervention that has changed the stereotype mindset, know, that the girls are only for marriages, the families never have wanted to educate the girl child that has changed, that stereotype mindset has changed And he and his staff and his team were able to make this big transformation because unless you have educated mothers in the society, nothing can change.
William Hocking:That's the key driver of that. Well, in a lot of parts of the world, unfortunately, it's very different from here in The States, females are discriminated against because they're female. You know, their job, so to speak, in many parts of the planet, and this is cultural, in some cases religious focused, etc, but their job is to produce offspring. That's all they're geared for. Males, men, boys, they're superior in these cultures, in these areas.
William Hocking:Women's job is to have babies and that's it. And the issue is, well, many issues, but unfortunately, unless there's education where women can feel that they can make a difference over and above getting married at age 12, 13, or 14 and having kids, they don't see any way out of that unless they're educated that they can do something more, they can contribute as much, if not more, than their male counterparts. So the empowerment of women is such a powerful thing that you're doing. And I just can't salute it enough. It's incomprehensible to a lot of us here in The States that huge swaths of population of females exist this way.
William Hocking:We read about it, we hear about it, but every day you see it there. It just kind of blows my mind. Thank you for sharing that. Shavkot, we absolutely would like to get you back on the air here for you to kind of share more about what you're doing and how people can directly help. But as we wrap up this podcast, please go to tished.org, right?
William Hocking:And there'll be areas there where if you feel compelled, if this has made any difference to you, you'll be able to contribute in any way and capacity that you can. And we hope that you do something and not just listen. So thank you, Shavkat. Dhanyavad to you. Connor, thank you for bringing Shavkat into our world here, and thank you for your personal time and your passion, for helping this organization to help empower women and help children, etcetera.
William Hocking:And thank you listeners for listening. Please do what you can. And, thanks everyone for just being yourselves. God bless you, and we'll talk to you in another podcast.
Connor Hocking:Thank you. Salut.
William Hocking:I don't know how you feel after watching this, but I know personally, I feel really humbled to be in the presence of someone like Shafkaat that you just listened to because of what he and his small army are trying to do, striving to do to improve the lives of some of the poorest people on the planet there in Calcutta and India. As you may recall from the episode, his father actually started the organization forty years ago, forty plus years ago, and he is literally walking in the same footsteps as his dad to strive to make a difference. And that's what these podcasts are all about. When we do these podcasts, we feature people that are either walking the walk or starting to walk that walk of what does it look like to live a life worth living. These people are living a life worth living in my humble opinion, and hopefully you'll agree with me.
William Hocking:So we talked a little about what the organization does, how they empower very poor people, especially young girls through education to rise themselves out of this cycle, this vicious cycle that they were born into, and how you personally could help with this, I'll say almost holy mission, is through lots of things. You can donate obviously money. You can give your own time in some way, shape, or form like Connor is at age 31, or some combination of both. So the organization again is t I l j a l e, Tzed. Their org name in the Internet is tished.org.
William Hocking:And I hope in listening to them that this has touched you, touched your heart, and make you feel perhaps a little compelled to wanna do something. So God bless. Thanks for listening, and welcome next time to our next episode. Take care. I've gotta put in one last plug for the group that helps me make these podcasts happen, and that's podcasts that matter.
William Hocking:Podcaststhatmatter.org. Just like it sounds. Really should check them out. At that website, there's a plethora of different voices up there that I'm very confident you'll really enjoy. One in particular I wanna put a plug out to is called Adopting Joy by Colleen Ryan.
William Hocking:She has an amazing voice, and you should hear her podcast. There's a lot of them up there, but I particularly like that one. So I hope you, exit stage right. Check out podcasts that matter. You'd be glad that you did.
William Hocking:Well, avid fans, as they say in LA, that's a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's conversation. We hope you enjoyed it, and we hope that you learned something, that perhaps there was a few pearls of wisdom that you took away from today's conversation. Thanks again, and until next time. God bless.
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