January 15th was MLK Day this year in the United States, a federal holiday dedicated to the life and work of the American civil rights activist and pioneer Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. MLK Day has long been an important holiday for me personally, a time to reflect on service, community, and the social equity which we still struggle daily to achieve as a society. Famously, Dr. King’s philosophies of nonviolence were heavily inspired by
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October 24, 2017 Today officially marks the end of my first week in Prashanthagiri, and I’m just getting my feet wet in my role as Field Fellow — both metaphorically and literally. This morning I accompanied Gilgy on a partial field visit, stopping in at 11 of the 30 participating homes to check in on the progress of their provided seedlings and other produce plants for the Organic Kitchen Garden (OKG) initiative. The field visit
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She told me that I could fly, that all I had to do was believe and wings would escape from my shoulder blades and I would become a great wild eagle, a stranger to tethers and cages. No, not an eagle, but a beautiful exotic bird from the east, one that the world has never seen or classified or drawn in a science textbook. This bird, without even a name to inhibit her freedom, would
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The rain has gone. Mara poy, as you would say in Malayalam. I no longer have to grab that umbrella each time I leave the house. The sky is blue and the sun is shining. The village where I am working has taken on a whole new splendor. I can see the mountains in the distance where during the monsoon, all I could see was the underside of my umbrella and a gray, heavy sky.
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Good communication is the key to building strong and meaningful relationships, whether between a husband and wife or two business partners. The lack thereof can cause great strife and misunderstanding. Communication can be difficult between two close friends who share the same language, so imagine the difficulties that can present themselves with two people that recently met who speak different languages. According to John Powell, Communication works for those who work at it. We are
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