Today's post is written by Saumya Arya Haas, the Director of Headwaters/Delta Interfaith,  an advisor to organizations such as The New Orleans Healing Center and Hindu American Seva Charities; she writes about religion at The Huffington Post and is a contributing scholar at State of Formation. Saumya is also an ALB candidate in Religious Studies at Harvard University. She lives on a horse farm in Minnesota and is chronically short on sleep.

I’m low on sleep, as usual.

My baby is keeping me up: I’m in the throes of the 501(c)3 registration process for Headwaters/Delta Interfaith. Among other things, HDI is opening a non-denominational Spiritual Space as part of a revitalization project in New Orleans. The IRS paperwork is vast and complicated. Funding is scarce, and I worry about how I’m going to make it work. I’m not even from New Orleans! I live in Minneapolis.

I got involved with all of this because we moved to India in 1981 and my mom (Lalita Arya) was unable to bear the sight of a hungry child. One day, she gave a glass of fresh milk to a street kid. We had no idea what we were getting into: the next day, the kid brought a friend. Word spread. Eventually, we ventured into the slums to pass out blankets, milk and food. Like any mother, my mom realized that once basic needs are met, children have to go off to school. But even when she raised funds to pay the fees, local schools didn’t want to admit kids from the slums. So she built her own school. Girls, boys, Hindu, Christian, Muslim, disabled, migrant—whoever they were, my mother ignored social divisions and treated everyone the same. She worked in partnership with the community, talking (and listening) to everyone.

I was raised amid this lively chaos, and of course I helped. I learned, and grew, alongside my friends from the slums.

The full story of my mother’s work in India is 25 years long, and my multi-continental family history of community service and social justice work is even longer, so I can’t tell it all here. Her organization is called KHEL, for Kindness, Health, Education and Laughter: she considers these the basic rights of childhood. KHEL is a small organization and always struggling to survive but she simply won’t give up. Like most mothers, she makes do.

What do the slums of north India have to do with revitalizing New Orleans? Everything and nothing. The form is different but the intention is the same.  The skills I gained at KHEL –and the passion I inherited-- enable me to discover my own path of community service and social equity work here in the USA. Like my mother, I saw a need. I stepped into a community where I was a stranger, and asked what I could do to help. I listened, and forged partnerships with people who know more than I do. I learned. Fittingly, my fledgling organization began as a KHEL project. In every sense, it is the daughter of my mother’s work. When she started the school in India, my mother argued, cajoled (and sometimes begged) for people to educate their daughters. This was tough at first. Girls in India face many challenges, and educating them had repercussions we couldn’t imagine. The young women didn’t stop with primary school, they wanted to go to high school; they wanted to go to college. Their education earned their community’s respect. They waited longer to get married and have kids. They made sure the next generation got an education, too. Like many mothers, they kept working while raising their families but KHEL ladies have a strong leaning to social work: many are teachers but we also have a city councilwoman; our school administrator went on to work for the Indian government on AIDS prevention and education.

As a daughter of KHEL and my mother, I still act as an advisor, while my sister, Stomy Persaud, is the dedicated Executive Director. Her daughters continue our family traditions in their own way. In addition to the countless hours they’ve put in at KHEL, Shalini volunteered at a Crisis Nursery through High School and as a freshman at Tulane (in New Orleans!) has worked with children in the 9^th Ward. My younger niece Dharani is a member of the Blake School Justice League and a rising social activist. I don’t have my own kids, but I am proud of these young women: they are the fifth generation of our matrilineal line to work for social change. It’s worth a few sleepless nights.

My mom just turned 75, and she still runs KHEL. No one in the community refers to her as Mrs. Arya; everyone calls her Ammaji (respected mother). It’s what I call her, too. The form may be different, but the intention is the same.