GSBF Rangsutra – Grace Matthews

Me hanging with a baby in between interviews in Mahabar, Rajasthan, India.

Me on my vacation to visit my brother at the Gateway to India in Mumbai, my favorite tourist spot.

As this fellowship is closing, it brings me back to the beginning, when I first heard about it. I thought that this was the greatest hidden gem Santa Clara University had to offer, and I couldn’t believe that more people didn’t know about it. I pulled all of my energy into figuring out how I could do it, how I could become part of this community trying to change the world. I made my excitement clear to everyone around me, I couldn’t stop talking about it throughout the entire application process and even now through the end stages of deliverable writing. Even though my specific project didn’t completely light my soul on fire, the community and mission of the Miller Center do, and continues to

Me, freshman year, at my first maternity ward in a slum in Mumbai, India.

And thinking back to my field experience, thinking about what lit my heart on fire, some things clearly come to mind. I loved the small moments of being in community, the meals in women’s homes, the openness of mothers with and about their babies, the conversations with others who had similar passions. The real human connections are the social engagement that feed the fire in my soul, especially when they involve women and children. I can connect with them over the simple things, and they make me happy. They are what I keep talking about, and they are the pictures I show when I tell my friends and family about what I’m excited about from my trips to India

How does this kind of social engagement fit into the greater world of social change though? Talking to people and bonding over simple meals is great, but what does it do to change the lives of others?

I feel like a lot of the time, social change is either far too clinical, i.e. dropping off food at a person’s door, or faceless, nameless policy change that hopes to make a positive change, or not nearly clinical enough, i.e. mission trips that aim to meet as many people as possible and build a school, never to return to the region again. Both are necessary, and both need to come together. The big picture needs to meet the small picture, the policy needs to meet the people, the ideas need to meet the practical implications necessary to follow through and make a positive impact.

My favorite photo from this summer, with a 15 day old baby named Prince in Barmer, Rajasthan, India.

I feel like I sit at that intersection. Through my time sitting in classes at Santa Clara, I have learned about policy and procedure, models and movements, development across the world and in my own neighborhood. Through my experiences in the field, through immersions, and multiple fellowships on campus, I have learned about and from the people who are affected by policy, start the movements, and are pushing for development in every way in their own backyard. This social engagement of having the privilege of a college education in the United States, in addition to the privilege of being able to travel and learn from different communities has sat me right where social entrepreneurship has the potential to
create even more impact than it already does. To bring together the dreamers and the doers, and get stuff done.

At the Amber Fort in Jaipur India my freshman year, again with a baby randomly placed in my care.

As I look forward to my next year, I see this same pull affect my decisions. Half of me wants to go travel Europe and go straight to graduate school and move directly into my field of choice, working directly with women and newborns around the word. The other half of me wants to pay off my student loans as quickly and responsibly as possible, even if that means working in a job I don’t like, or am not crazy about, until that happens. It is possible to match my dreams with my realities, and I need to figure out how
to do so. But looking back over this fellowship, and my college career as a whole, I know I need to follow what makes my heart swell.

My second trip to the Taj Mahal over the year, a fabulous way to start out my third summer.

I can’t be 100% practical, and I can’t be 100% impractical, and as I look into my vocation and my future, my goal will have to be figuring out how to match the dreamer in my heart with the doer in my brain. I always assumed that when people said “if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life” were trying to make the best out of their
situations, but now I truly believe it. Seeing great examples of people loving what they’re doing and making changes in the world makes me believe that we can have it all. We can change the world, not be crippled by debt for our entire lives, and love what we do. Its simply a matter of following what feeds your fire.

As this was my third trip to India, I didn’t feel the same sense of awe and amazement at people who live in extreme poverty as I did my first or second time. The first two trips I saw very clear problems with very unclear solutions, and I was consistently wracking my brain trying to figure out what these solutions should be. I remember the first time I saw a slum and I asked one of the priests from Mumbai why people live there. People who live in slums aren’t the poorest people in India; they could be living elsewhere. I had to come to terms with the fact that I don’t have all the answers, and that I can’t change it all.

I truly believe that every single person alive has innate human dignity. Every single person is a truly full human. I know this and I believe this and I preach this at the top of my lungs from the highest rooftops I can find. But every once in a while, I truly understand it. I had several of these experiences this summer.

We were driving under and overpass in New Delhi. These overpasses are overcrowded and constantly bursting with energy. There are informal markets and families and too many cars, bicycles, and street dogs to count. When we got stuck in some traffic though, I looked out my window. One of the street signs under the overpass had two poles supporting it. Two women had hung baby hammocks between these two poles under the sign. I was in awe. The next freeway overpass had the same setup. This forced me to recognize that these women didn’t have a place to put their babies that wasn’t on the ground or in their arms. They never got a break from their motherhood.

Another time, we were in the train station in New Delhi. Sandhya and I were lugging around our huge bags of luggage, struggling to make it to the train on time. I had heard that the New Delhi train station was one of the poorest places in the world, but this was my first time there at nig
ht. As we walked through the station, there were people everywhere. There was the usual hub bub of people coming and going in a train station, but more remarkably, there were people getting ready for bed. There were full families laying out their blankets on the cold, hard concrete, and putting their children to bed. In the middle of the New Delhi train station. They had to sleep there, hoping that their children wouldn’t run away in the middle of the night, hoping that no one would rob them, and hoping that they would wake up in the morning and that everything would be ok.

While its sometimes easier for me to see someone’s full humanity in their very human struggles, I also saw humanity in the simple joys of life. One day, we were at a family’s house where we spent quite a bit of time. They made us tea, as they always did, and I asked if I could see how they did it. Mumta, the daughter of the family, agreed, and brought me outside. She rounded up the family’s goats, and milked one of them. As I watched her take a crazy amount of time to make a crazy small amount of tea, I felt like I had a glimpse into her life. Making tea is such a standard part of life in all of India.

This experience of watching Mumta make tea also drove home another topic we discussed at length with our translator/lifesaver/research partner/dear friend, Mukesh. He wanted to drive home the point that people who live in poverty in rural areas live in much closer harmony with nature than the rest of the world, without romanticizing their position. These families herd cattle and goats and occasionally camels. They drink milk from their animals. They eat food they grow in their backyards, or buy it from local markets. They are in much closer sync with the environment than the majority of the world. This realization made it blindingly clear why people living in the Global South, especially in rural areas, are being affected so much more directly by climate change than those of us in the Global North.

Having three such intensive experiences three summers in a row, I finally feel solidified in my vocation. I feel more passionate than ever about going into the field of women’s reproductive healthcare. Every time a woman mentioned she was pregnant, or had a baby on her hip, I was entranced. I was simultaneously disappointed that I could not dive deeper into their experiences, as our translator was a male, and those conversations were generally off-limits, or at least extremely awkward.

Sometimes the world feels like an overwhelming place with millions of unsolvable problems. People tell you that you are heartless if you don’t give your time here or there or if you don’t speak up about every social ill that comes your way. When you see people living in total poverty, an overwhelming sense of guilt frequently accompanies that. But as I’ve heard said many times, and I’ve now started to say myself, guilt is a useless emotion. Sitting around and seeing bad things happening and just feeling bad about things makes you unproductive and fixes absolutely zero of the problems that you feel bad about. Guilt is only useful when it prompts action, and I think I have finally hit that stage.

When I see all my friends around me getting high paying jobs at large firms, or having job security for the rest of the foreseeable future, my goal of having a job I love over a job I’m passionate seems silly. How can I try and save the world if I’m having a hard time saving myself? How can I try and find stability and security for others when my own stability and security isn’t fully there? How can I justify my decisions of working towards the greater good when I can’t even pay off my student loans?

In an effort to turn my guilt into action, I justify my desires for a job that strive to make the world a more just place to inhabit. By focusing on one of the millions of issues the world sees and struggles with every day, I can hone my energy to just one, and make a difference there. I know that I will not change the world, but I know that every time I choose to live in solidarity over discord, every time I choose action over idleness, every time I choose justice over corruption and dishonesty, I am moving in the right direction

As I sit down and try to think about how I have gotten to where I am now, there are so many experiences and people that have shaped who I am today. How did I get to heading into my third summer in a row in India? How did I discover my passion for women’s health and empowerment and childhood advocacy? How and why have I taken on so many roles and responsibilities that life without a planner seems completely obsolete?

My mom and I relaxing before I left for India last summer.

I grew up in a family of four. My older sister is the oldest, my younger brother is the only boy, and my younger sister is the youngest. As I liked to remind my mom time and time when I was younger, I should be entitled to special privileges as simply the second child. What that really meant is that I fully recognized my spot as the true middle child, and I exemplified every middle child stereotype imaginable. I worked especially hard when working with or against my siblings, who honestly could not have cared less, and have maintained an unrealistically competitive attitude since the day I knew I understood the concept of winning. I find it very hard to talk about myself for very long without talking about my siblings. I see so much of myself in them and I see so much of them in myself that I truly can’t imagine a complete assessment of who I am outside of my role as a sister. Going to high school with all of them, and now college with one of them, I have realized that I very highly prioritize them in my life. Much to their dismay I feel like a second mother constantly linking new recipes or quirky items or opportunities in which they would thrive to their iMessage, Facebook, Instagram, or basically any way that I can get them to listen to me.

My siblings and I on a boat in San Diego.

When I was 8 years old, my mom became a single mom. Throughout the years, I don’t think any of my siblings and I truly understood what it meant for her. We saw it very much from the side of us not having a father to raise us, but not from the side of my mom not having a spouse with whom to raise four children. As I have grown up and grown to appreciate every sacrifice she ever made for us, I have come to see how incredible a source of inspiration my mom has been for all of us. My mom lived a very full life before finally settling down in her late 30s and having us four kids in a span of 4 years and 4 months. She managed businesses, started her own business, kept four very annoying kids all in line enough to pursue postsecondary education, and somehow managed to stay sane throughout the entirety of the process. When looking for role models in my life, I got lucky that I don’t have to look very far at all. She is one of the strongest women in my life, and I can’t imagine a life without her constantly encouraging me to take the next step and find the next opportunity.

My mom being an all-around rockstar when she had 4 kids under the age of 5.

As a high school student, I aimed to be the ultimate Wildcat (our school’s incredibly generic mascot). I played two varsity sports (swimming and water polo), served on student council (junior class representative and student body vice president), left for my hour long commute to school at 6:45am and didn’t leave for home until after 5 on an early day, led every retreat I could manage, and joined just about every club they would let me into. I was at every play, choral concert, dance, and presentation I could attend in addition to my other commitments. Throughout all of this I continued to swim on my club team at home and play club water polo during my “off-season.”

Me, coming from swim practice and heading to chemistry bowl.

Coming to college, I expected nothing to be different. As I came into college as a completely blank slate however, I realized that a lot of the things that I had been doing in high school, although I had loved each and every one of them, had been to check boxes on a resume. Athlete? Check. Student Council? Check. Filled up your calendar completely with no end in sight? Check.

As I went through my first quarter at Santa Clara, I realized that I still needed a full schedule, thats just who I was. And so as I have gone through my time in college, I have simply tried to be more intentional about the kinds of activities with which I am filling my schedule. I ask myself “What can I learn from this experience?” instead of “How will this look on a resume?”, or “How will this contribute to the betterment of society?” instead of “How many more hours can I spend with my friends?” This has led to an equally packed and arguably more emotionally exhausting calendar, but I can truly feel myself doing something productive either for myself or for my community every step of the way.

An action shot of me playing water polo.

Growing up with three kids who were for all intents and purposes my same age led me to be incredibly social from birth. At all times I had at least one friend around me; there are few photos of me all by myself before the age of 10. Throughout elementary school and high school I felt the need to surround myself with as many people as possible at all times. Senior year I found out that a girl did not particularly like me, and I decided that it was because she didn’t know me well enough. I casually started interacting with her more and more until I knew that I had changed her mind. This was just the kind of person I was! I put myself into every activity to try to expand my social circle, and I continue to do this. Every new experience is an opportunity to meet new people.

In college I’ve been an orientation leader, a student teacher for 8-11 year olds, a fellow for several different programs, amongst other things, all while taking a full load of classes and attempting to maintain a social life. Last summer, I experienced something new: loneliness. At the beginning of the summer, none of my friends were home from school and I spent quite a few weeks completely alone during the daytime. When it came time for me to leave for India, I was panicked. I had never done something that big alone before. I would have been nervous if I had been going to live with nuns and work at a hospital with a group of people, but I was going completely by myself. As it sunk in on the plane ride over how truly alone I could be, I entered into a self-perpetuating cycle of isolating myself. When I came back for the fall quarter, I moved into an apartment alone, as all of my housemates were abroad. Nearly everyone I had lived with or befriended within the past two years was in another country. I went from my over the top social self in the spring of the same year to a stressed out ball of anxiety who found it difficult to leave my room. I still had a very busy schedule, I couldn’t let anyone down, but for the most part, if I didn’t absolutely have to be out of bed, I wasn’t.

Me, standing beside a dam in Talasari, India last summer.

I would love to say that everyone came back from abroad and my support system and social circle fell back into place just as it had been before, but thats simply not true. I have come out of the past 9 months of loneliness with floods of questions about who I am outside of these circles and what true friendship is, and its something I am still struggling with.

How does this relate to being a Global Social Benefit Fellow? As of late, I have had more of an urge than usual to truly get something done in the world. I have also been bending over backward to figure out who I am in the big, beautiful world I inhabit. And with that, I look forward to every experience, every up and down and in between that is to come with the next 9 months ahead of me.

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