Imogen and Hayley go to India with End Poverty India

Hello, we are Imogen and Hayley. Imogen is student of musicology at King’s College London and a singer. Hayleys is an actress, writer and teacher working in London. We’ve been friends for many years and are about to embark on a project we’re both very excited about.

In September 2013, we will journey to India to work with The GEN Initiative and its partner End Poverty India. These charities enable some of India's most disadvantaged villagers - particularly the Meo population in the Alwar District of Rajasthan - help themselves improve the quality of their lives.

We will spend a month living with a local family, teaching English and numeracy in End Poverty’s classes for unschooled girls, and to End Poverty’s local staff. We will be working on the income generation handicrafts project for women and girls – we’ll be learning to quilt using a traditional local technique to make bags, purses and pillow cases which can be sold at craft fairs in India and the UK, providing the women with their own income.

A special focus of the trip will be getting to know the songs, local instruments and musical traditions of the Meo people and other population groups in the area. One of the best ways to understand, connect with and enjoy a community is through their music, which is so rich in history, stories, beliefs and jokes. Music provides a unique insight into parts of daily life and local culture we may otherwise not discover. This insight is so vital to the continuation and improvement of the grassroots projects supported by GEN and is a very exciting new area of research for the charity.

The teaching part of the project is especially meaningful to us. Education is a human right, and sometimes we forget how lucky we are to have free and available education. Many of the girls in the area we will be working in, never had the opportunity to go to school before the GEN Initiative education programme began.

In order to make this trip a possibility, we need to raise some money to help us pay for our flights, visas, accommodation, teaching materials and everything else involved in making such a big project possible. When we are there we hope to help End Poverty buy some of the items on the GEN Initiative shopping list for the villagers, such as bicycles, goats, chickens, reproductive health sessions, health camps, sewing machines and learning materials and much much more!

So please, give anything you can to make this trip a possibility, so that we can help the GEN Initiative continue their life-changing work.

If you have any questions or want to know more, please ask us, or visit

http://www.gen-initiative.org

http://www.endpovertyindia.org

https://twitter.com/imo_hay_india

https://www.facebook.com/HayleyAndImogenInIndia

http://imogenhayleyindia.blog.com/