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Red Dot Foundation
Almost ten years ago I launched Safecity, a crowdsourcing platform to collate anonymous stories of sexual and gender-based violence. These stories are geotagged and appear as pins on a map. It makes visible the issue of sexual and gender-based violence which is highly underreported due to stigma and taboo associated with it.
Banned Books - Mapping an Allyship Journey
Book banning, the flash button issue in headline news across the United States currently, is also the raging topic in my local school district this month. There is shock and disbelief in my suburban New York community that we are the location for a book ban conversation, and that there are parents among us petitioning the school library to reconsider stocking some books. Please note that the debate is not about whether these books should be taught, its about whether these books should be available in a public-school library.
“Let Freedom Ring”: A Reflection During Black History Month
As a child, the voice and stories of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. echoed in the halls of my home. My father, Reverend Michael Millben, would reminisce about his days marching with Dr. King in the Civil Rights Movement and serving as a glorified chauffeur to his beloved mentor Dr. Martin Luther King, Sr., simply to posture himself as a pupil and maximize time learning from him. I would provoke my mother, Pastor Althea Millben, to tell me the story over and over of the moment she and Dr. Coretta Scott King sang in duet together during her days in college at Langston University in Oklahoma. Dr. King, the King family, and the Millben family have their own place in Black History.
Los Angeles Kings Lean Into Prominence of South Asians in Hockey
Did you know that the FIRST professional athlete of Indian descent to play in a “Big Four” sports league was a hockey player? Also, the NHL is the ONLY league to broadcast nationally in an Indian language, and they awarded the 2020 Willie O’Ree Community Service Award to the co-founder of a South Asian-focused international hockey network?
Indian Businesses Contributing to the Growth and Development of Saudi Arabia
Dr. Dilnawaz Rumi, a member of the medical team of HRH Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz, the then Crown Prince, was not even 30 when he started working at the royal palace. Now, 25 years later, despite the death of the then crown prince, he continues to remain a trusted physician of the House of Saud.
National Caregivers Day: Long Distance Caregiving, on the Other Side of the World
The dreaded call came at 3:45 am. I jumped; my heart began to race and thud at the same time. I groped for my phone in the dark. “He had another stroke today and is back in the ICU,” said a voice.
Designing Indian Avatar NFTs for Valentine's Day: Adding Desi Representation to the Metaverse
As Silicon Valley founders of a metaverse app with nearly 3 million users, we, like so many others, have been following the rise of NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and web3. While there has been an increased presence of Indian founders and NFT investors recently, we want to ensure that translates to increased representation for web3 — the next stage of the internet.
Books by Indian Diaspora Leaders: What's Out
Given the number of fantastic reads that have been recently published by Indian diaspora leaders, we felt compelled to create this page to serve as a resource of several books that are out this month, recently out, or will be out soon.
Reflections on Contemporary Indian American Art: An Inward Journey
I had always seen myself as a writer and a historian, with no more than a peripheral interest in contemporary art, mainly because I never had the opportunity to delve into it deeply enough to understand its abstract complexities. That is, until I was charged with directing an exhibition project EMerge: Art of the Indian Diaspora for the National Indo-American Museum (NIAM).
The Necessary ‘Re-Education’ of America
Although various media formats proliferate airways, and would therefore seem to heighten awareness regarding the challenges that people of color face in every corner of the globe, Black History Month 2022 and the 24 months that preceded it remind us that we are still far from fulfillment of the words Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1967 when he said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
The Next Paradigm Shift in Philanthropy: The Inevitable Rise of Catalytic Capital
In The Psychology of Human Misjudgment, Charlie Munger—Warren Buffet’s long-standing business partner—brilliantly describes the man-with-a-hammer-tendency as follows: ‘to a man with only a hammer, every problem looks pretty much like a nail’. Indeed, we all tend to look at the world in ways that are biased, or through a single theoretical or disciplinary lens, whether known or unknown to us. We use monochromatic lenses. It is time we broaden ‘how we see’.
Ignition Grants: Technology-based Energy Solutions
Climate Change is one of the biggest challenges facing our world today, spurring the call for global collaborations to tackle this crisis. The recent launch of the U.S.-India Climate and Clean Energy Agenda 2030 partnership reiterated the commitment of both nations to work together to achieve their ambitious climate and clean energy targets.
The Netherlands: Home to the Second-Largest Indian Diaspora in Europe
With a population of 17.5 million, the Netherlands is home to about a quarter-million people of Indian origin, the largest Indian diaspora community in Europe after the United Kingdom. This includes approximately 200,000 Indo-Surinamese.
Supporting India's Vulnerable Children With Miracle Foundation
Her name was Shibani Das and she was not quite 2 years old. Her hair had all been shaved off because of lice, and she weighed almost nothing, just skin, bones, and beautiful eyes.
Diaspora: The feeling of being neither here nor there, solved!
Is the Indian diaspora really confused about their identity? We often used ABCD (American born confused desi) for an Indian who grew up in America—and I challenge that. I really don’t think they are confused. The really confused person is an NRI, someone like me— who grew up in India and then moved to live in America.
Years Spent: Exploring Poetry in Adventure, Life and Love
There is a certain kind of magical feeling about creating something from scratch, be it a book, a piece of art or even starting a business. It consumes your mind and spirit fully until you are able to give some shape to that fire that burns deep inside of you. You channel your energy towards building something new, not worried so much about the outcome but enjoying the journey totally engrossed in the process. I went through a similar crest of emotions, shaping my debut book, ‘Years Spent’.
Indian-origin writers: Making it big on the world literary stage
Indian-origin writers have contributed immensely to the growth and richness of English literature. The 32-million strong Indian diaspora, one of the most prominent communities globally, has produced an acclaimed and diverse range of literary work that has bagged some of the world’s top literary awards, in spite of the fact that English was not culturally their mother tongue and only a working language for most of them.
Need of the Hour With eVidyaloka
90% of the Indian education system is driven by rural government schools, and there are 2 chronic challenges we have as a country: acute teacher shortage and quality of learning experience.
UNEARTHED: Untold Stories from The Ramayana
There is something about story-telling that captivates my imagination; it is an intrinsic part of South Asian culture. I grew up in New Delhi, India, in the 1980s, at a time when watching the Ramayana and Mahabharata were the beginning of our exposure to television, but mostly listening to stories from these epics, read to me by my mother. Decades later, these stories still intrigue me and I found a kindred spirit in Amit Patel, who grew up in Fremont, California in the 1990s, watching these on DVD, with his ba. These Hindu epics which mostly celebrate the victory of good over evil, read differently when viewed now – less simplistic, more layered, providing more questions than answers.
The Rise of Indian Entrepreneurs in the UAE
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been a fertile land for Indian business leaders who have established global brands in the world’s oil hub. One of the fastest-growing cities globally and the most populous in the UAE, Dubai attracts Indian businesspersons as it offers ease of doing business, access to world-class infrastructure, investors, world-class living standards, no income tax, and proximity to India, Africa, and Europe.