For thousands of years in India, citizens have been organized by a strict caste system and expected to live, work, and marry within the class they were born into. In the top castes are priests and teachers, and at the bottom are menial laborers. Below them, there's the poorest of the poor, the Dalits, once called "the untouchables."
Today India's caste system is gradually falling out of use, but there are still some 200 million Dalits in India, families who have been living in extreme poverty for generations and have practically no way out. Generational poverty is a huge problem everywhere, including the United States, but this is one of the starkest examples of it in the world.
In 1997 an Indian American businessman had a radical idea about how to fight generational poverty and founded a special school in India to make it happen. It's called Shanti Bhavan, and it's the subject of a new Netflix documentary called Daughters of Destiny, which premiers Friday.
Shanti Bhavan accepts only the poorest students, those who come from families that live on less than $2 a day—95 percent of its students are in the Dalit caste. They come to the school when they're four years old and stay until they graduate from high school, getting a better education than they could possibly have gotten in their poor, rural communities, and living in a stable environment designed to help them thrive.
And here's the thing: This radical intervention works. Some 97 percent of Shanti Bhavan students graduate from high school, and 98 percent go on to graduate from college. Shanti Bhavan grads are now working at places like Amazon, Mercedez Benz, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan. For a group of kids destined to spend their lives in extreme poverty, that's huge.
"The most important statistic, however," says Ajit George, Shanti Bhavan's director of operations. "Is that all Shanti Bhavan graduates give back 20 to 50 percent of their salary to their families, communities, and other children in need. Their achievements are impacting others on a tremendous scale."
We were especially psyched about this film because we've been fans of Shanti Bhavan for a while now. Last year Glamour visited the school to profile Keerthi, an amazing young girl whose life was changed when she got into Shanti Bhavan. Keerthi's education was partly funded by She's the First, a partner of Glamour's philanthropic initiative, The Girl Project.
Daughters of Destiny, directed by award-winning filmmaker Vanessa Roth, tells the stories of five students who are working to break out of the poverty trap with the help of Shanti Bhavan and shares the amazing tale of the man who started the school and has worked tirelessly to keep it running.
Ahead of the the premier, we chatted with Ajit George about poverty, Daughters of Destiny, and what makes Shanti Bhavan special.
Glamour: How did Shanti Bhavan come to be?
Ajit George: Shanti Bhavan was created by my father, Dr. Abraham George, in 1997. I may sound biased, but my father is the most extraordinary individual I’ve ever met, and he’s lived a few different lives in a single lifetime!
His first life was in the Indian military, and when he traveled through the country during his service, he was deeply disturbed by both the economic hardships faced by many as well as the social inequality rampant in the Dalit—formerly known as the “untouchables”—and tribal communities. It left a mark on him, something he carried with him into the next stage of his life.
He left the military, came to the U.S., started his own company, and became financially successful. Growing up, I always saw how charitable he was, giving to others in need. I think the lessons he’d learned through his early travels in India informed his decisions, as well as a strong Gandhian sense of equality.
The suffering he’d seen in his motherland never left him, however, and in 1995 he returned to India, committed to using his wealth to help end poverty and injustice. He did some incredible things during those first years, including orchestrating the largest testing and treatment of lead poisoning ever conducted in the world. It paved the way for unleaded gasoline in India and had a massive impact on the environment and health of the nation.
Still, his most burning desire was to change the social and economic inequity of India. The idea that would become Shanti Bhavan had already taken hold in him—that if you could give impoverished children the same tools and opportunities their wealthier peers had, while modeling for them strong values and civic engagement, there would be no limit to what they could achieve.
Glamour: Can you explain the approach you use at Shanti Bhavan? How is it different from other interventions that fight poverty?
AG: The poverty our children experience is generational, passed on from parent to child for hundreds of years. It is also both social and financial—a potent and corrosive combination of discrimination and economic deprivation. And it is multifaceted. The children face rampant alcoholism in their families, physical and sexual abuse, forced early marriage, chronic illness, high suicide rates, generational debts, and other destructive elements that curtail upward mobility.
To break that cycle requires radical intervention.
Teaching a child to read or giving them access to primary or even secondary school education isn’t enough to allow them to compete with better-educated children for good jobs. To break out of poverty and join their middle- and upper-class peers, they need firm academic grounding beginning at the age of three or four; they need spaces where they can feel safe and loved, and where they can study without distraction; they need access to basic utilities like electricity and working bathrooms; they need nutritional meals and proper health care; and they need exposure to global attitudes and values to prepare them for the modern workplace. Then they need college placement, tuition support, and career counseling. Perhaps most important, they need mentorship, guidance, reinforcement of self-esteem, positive role-models, and aspirational goals that motivate them.
For many years systems of intervention focused on basic literacy as an almost arbitrary benchmark or end goal without questioning what basic literacy could actually do for someone in poverty. Shanti Bhavan looked at the results of decades of basic literacy and found that many of its recipients ended up back in poverty once the program ended. In fact, many of the parents of the children of Shanti Bhavan went through some form of a basic literacy program, or primary and secondary education, and yet went straight back into poverty once their schooling ended.
I think the prevailing notion is that education or poverty alleviation for the poor only needs to be bare bones. But I can’t imagine having found any professional or personal success if all I had been provided with was basic literacy or a primary education. Shanti Bhavan adopted a different ethos: There should be no glass ceiling for the poor. We should demand excellence from them, and give them the support and resources to achieve that success.
Our model is a 17-year intervention, from pre-K through college. Until they complete twelfth grade, our students live in our beautiful campus where they receive clothing, meals, health care, and all the support of a stable home. After twelfth grade we continue to provide guidance and financial support as they pursue college educations and attain their first job.
Our commitment to our children is from the first day of school to the first day of work. It’s the only way to ensure they break out of poverty permanently.
No other program gives this level of education, this length of intervention, or this amount of support. However, our goal is not simply to educate children. By modeling for them the values we are founded upon, we’re working to empower change-makers who uplift their families and communities by paying forward their success. Our children grow up knowing that everything they have received is because someone else cared, someone else stepped up and came forward to help them. It’s something they carry in their hearts. They know they never need to pay that back to those who helped them, but they do need to pay it forward to others in need.
Our belief is that each child will positively impact hundreds of others throughout their life. Already we’re seeing our working graduates help their parents, brothers and sisters, and other relatives by paying off debts, providing basic necessities, building homes, supporting tuition, and much more.
Glamour: Let's talk about Daughters of Destiny! What should we expect to see when Shanti Bhavan comes to the small screen?
AG: Daughters of Destiny is a raw, emotional portrayal of India’s social underclass through the perspective of five women from Shanti Bhavan. Poverty is a complex issue—it’s not just one thing, and it’s not just strictly about money. It embeds itself in dignity, self-respect, interpersonal relationships, and so much more. Daughters of Destiny does not hold its audience’s hand; the stories told defy certain expectations about poverty, and challenge the audience to understand its complexities and nuances. It does so by spotlighting these five young women, who, despite having many things in common, have very different stories to tell. The series also provides insight into our unique approach to education; it gives viewers a glimpse into what makes Shanti Bhavan special.
People will be deeply moved by this inspiring and powerful glimpse into another world they may not otherwise be able to see. It’s a very human story and a very personal one. Viewers are going to get intimate with the lives of these young women and those of us who work at Shanti Bhavan.
Glamour: What is your vision for the future of Shanti Bhavan?
AG: Our students’ success has answered the most important question we had when we founded Shanti Bhavan 20 years ago: “Can it work?” Not only does it work; it has exceeded many people’s expectations!
If you give impoverished children the tools other kids have and raise them in an environment that is supportive and nurturing—and that is itself a model of civic engagement—not only will they succeed, but when they have the ability to do so, but they too will give back to others in need. Our goal now is to expand our reach, to help as many children as possible.
One of the toughest realities we face is that each year Shanti Bhavan is forced to turn away hundreds of children, not because they aren’t in need or aren’t able to succeed, but because one school simply cannot accommodate them all.
To that end, we are currently raising funds for a second Shanti Bhavan school, which we will begin construction on in 2018. A second school doubles our immediate impact, but the long-term effect those children will have on the region is immeasurable. This is how you break the cycle of poverty.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
