Dianna Badalament's blog

Kolkata - Take 2 I arrived in Kolkata two days ago to start a new phase of the Made By Survivors Jewelry Program. Today will be my first time back with the survivors at Child Care Home at Women's Interlink Foundation. I am so eager to see their beautiful faces, look through their projects to see progress and to start training them to produce Made By Survivors fall jewelry line. I am sort of surprised to note that I have slipped back into life in India like I had never left. It's fantastic to be back working with the amazing team in India, who are indeed, the backbone of this program: Paul, Doel and Soma. As I embark on the first day, I try to: envision reaching all the goals we all would like to accomplish, muster up a stiff upper lip and dig deep for extra patience, love and compassion to interact (for many months) with women who have been demoralized most of their lives, and, implement learnings from my last trip here and recent meetings with jewelry mentors. It's a lot to do, but luckily, motivation for tackling these tasks has never been stronger.