I used to wonder why I had such a tough life, and over time I realized that EVERYONE faces challenges.
~ words from Baby that keep us thinking and wondering ~
Not hers. Not yours. People are always more than the chapters anyone could share. Hold what is here gently. Approach with curiosity, before judgment.
Notice what you notice. Wonder what you wonder. There is no quiz, no right way. Read until something stays.
this film has no words. notice what you notice. notice what you wonder. wonder out loud. and don't forget to notice what you feel, too.
Attitude Of Gratitude
Every morning I remember how blessed I am. To have such a loving, supportive husband. To have a good home and a good circle of friends. To have food on our plates every day and a beautiful garden that provides so much of that food. Yes, the challenges through my life have been endless. When one seems to end another emerges. But as I overcome and work through each challenge, my sense of gratitude grows. This helps me stay content and happy.
The challenges began when I was very young. I have two beautiful parents whom I love very much. But for as long as I can remember they have been arguing with each other. Whatever Dad says, Mum would disagree with. Dad would often drink a lot of alcohol and that caused problems too. After 6th grade, I stopped going to school. I had to be there to support Mum. I had to work and support the family.
The fighting at home continued until my early twenties when Mum passed away. I was broken. And then to make things harder, Dad abandoned us. It was just my younger sister and I from then on. I took her under my wing and raised her. In those years my sister and I became very close. Without each other’s support, I don’t know how we would have gotten through it all.
My relatives helped me get married to a beautiful man who lived in a village near by. My husband is incredible. He brought so much hope and positivity to my life. Life seemed to take a huge turn for the better. Our one year anniversary was approaching and I was the happiest I’d been. Then one day when my husband was out delivering packages, he got into a severe accident. Both feet were cut severely, almost in half, and we rushed to the hospital. The next 5 years were spent in bed before my husband began learning to walk again. The challenges continued beyond these years. We’ve had our share of financial challenges, court cases over land, issues with our family members, and health challenges too. I used to wonder why I had such a tough life, and over time I realized that EVERYONE faces challenges. Everyone has their ups and their downs. Everyone faces these issues and other issues too. But there are also many beautiful moments. The choice to celebrate these and be grateful is in my hands.
In the last few months I joined a self-help group and have begun turning old saris into quilts. This work has been wonderful and gives me such peace of mind. We have some family members who have raised a case against us over some land we own. The legal fees have been very high so the extra money from selling the quilts helps too.
Want to create a calm and focused space to start the conversation? Set up desks or chairs in a circle and start the session with 2 minutes of collective silence.
"What’s the best thing that has happened today?” Encourage members of the group to share responses, listening to and acknowledge all responses. Consider asking the group to think about whether other people contributed to making the “thing” that they identified happen.
Read the story “I am Baby” at www.betterworlded.org/#experience-the-content and discuss how even though she is faced with many challenges, Baby strives to be grateful.
Consider discussing the various challenges Baby has faced. “Has the group faced similar challenges? Are these challenges that everyone faces in some way? What are some of the things Baby is grateful for? Is it important/helpful to be grateful? Why?” You could also push the class to consider whether we can also be grateful for the challenges that we face and the growth that comes from overcoming them. Here is also a great chance to integrate math. You could ask the group to each make a list of things that they are grateful for in their life. Encourage them to consider all aspects of their life such as people, experiences, things they own, or have access to in nature. Encourage the group to consider people or things they might take for granted too. These might include the person who cleans their school, the person who grows the food they eat, their parents, or their teachers. Once they have made this list ask each person to pair up with another student, share their lists with each other, and then create a Venn diagram to illustrate overlapping things they are grateful for. This activity could also be done in groups of three for Venn diagrams with three circles. You could also consider other ways to interpret and share this qualitative data. “Could the data be categorized and illustrated on other types of graphs?” One of the things Baby is grateful for is the opportunity to create and sell quilts. The class could also help Baby through solving simultaneous equations to identify how many quilts of each material she has made how much she and Kavitha can expect to make from them.
Ask everyone to choose one person that has done a lot for them and write a letter of gratitude to them. You might want to encourage the group to choose people that they usually do not express their gratitude toward or people that are easily taken for granted.
Allow the class time to first reflect on what they are grateful to this person for and to then capture this in a letter. Upon completion, encourage each person to give this letter to the person that they wrote it for. Alternate activities could also include creating a gratitude tree for the group and asking each person to contribute three decorated leaves, each with 1 thing they are grateful for; or creating a board with pictures or a collage of various things that each person is grateful for.
“What are we grateful to each other for? How can we express our appreciation to each other?” If time and group size permits, a powerful way to begin this exercise could be with YOU mentioning something you appreciate about each person.
Following this, you could welcome each person to turn to the people near them and tell them what they appreciate about them. You might consider asking the group to note these down so that they can look back upon them over the year and years to come.
This is one way to teach this story. You could also weave your own way, threading two or three other people the AI finds for you alongside.
Want to weave a full lesson around this story?
The weaver finds 3-4 real people whose stories thread together with this one.
Weave a lesson →Bridging The Empathy Gap
Contentment. Health. These are the things I want most in life. Nothing more, nothing less. I want to live a peaceful life and not get caught up in the challenges that life throws at us. I want to always be content and grateful for what I have. And finally, I want to be healthy. This body is like a temple and it’s important I nourish, respect, and look after it. What is important to you? Do you value peace, contentment, and health too? How do you go about living by your values? Worries are powerful. It’s easy for a thought or concern to get into my mind and not want to leave. My husband is always reminding me to relax and stop thinking about what could happen in the future – to just enjoy this moment. In these moments I try to be more like him. I try to be more grateful. It’s hard though. I have heard that, on average, most people have something like 60,000 thoughts a day! What do you think about? Do you ever find yourself worrying about the future? Why is this? Do you have any suggestions as to how I could worry less? How I can be more present in this moment? How could you? I do on the other hand find it much easier to be healthy. Making healthy choices has become such a way of life. One of the biggest things that affects our health is the food we eat. I make it a point to never ever eat out. Even if we are out late into the night, I never buy food and always come home to prepare a good home cooked meal. It worries me that I don’t know what goes into food that we buy. What ingredients? Where are they from? How fresh is the food? How hygienic was the process while preparing the food? Was the person thinking of positive thoughts or making this angrily in a rush? I think all these factors affect our food and health. By eating home cooked food, I am aware of what goes into my food and can make good choices in what I eat and feed others. Do you eat out much? Where? Why? Do you know much about the food you buy? Where it comes from? How is it prepared? Are there better choices you could be making? In addition to cooking food at home I also cook food that I have grown myself. I have a huge garden with a variety of fruit, vegetables, and spices. I love that I can pluck a vegetable from my garden and cook it immediately. How can we get fresher than that? Committing to growing food takes time and effort - to water, weed, and look after all my plants. I use a bucket to water my plants. Can you help me work out how much water I’ll need in total? I have 6 fruit trees that need 5L each, 10 large vegetable plants that need 2L each, and 9 small vegetable plants that need 250mL each. By watering early or later in the day I use less than I otherwise would have, as minimal water is lost to evaporation. Why is it that less water is lost then? Do you have any ideas as to how I could save water? How much could I save? I’m always thinking about how I can make healthier versions of our traditional South Indian foods. There is a delicious rice pancake called “dosai” that my husband and I love. Rather than using the dough as is, I add spinach and other veggies to it to make it healthier and more enjoyable too. I also substitute white flour for brown flour, white rice with brown rice, and sugar with a natural sweetener called jaggery. A third of the dough for each dosai ends up being veggies. Of this, three quarters is spinach and the remainder is onions. I carefully monitor how much of various vegetables I consume to ensure I get a good variety of nutrients and vitamins. Can you tell me what fraction of each dosai is spinach? What about onions? What’s the ideal fraction? Do you have ideas for healthier choices I could make? How can we get creative with our foods to improve the nutrient content? What are healthier substitutions you could make? Cosmetics are another area where I love to get creative. A lot of the cosmetics we see in shops today have all kinds of chemicals, and I worry what effect this could have on our bodies and the environment. People say some of these are tested on animals too. Rather than purchase these products, I make my own. I usually combine coconut oil with the sembarathi leaf, mehendi plant, and other flowers to make a great moisturizer. I make my own shampoo, soaps, and cleaning liquids too. And most of my medicines are natural too. What cosmetic products do you use? What is in them? What effect do these inputs have on your health and the environment? Do you have ideas for other products I could make? What are better choices we could make? I’ve realized that the three things I want in life are actually very interconnected. The better I eat and the healthier I am, the more peaceful I feel. The more peaceful I am, the more content I feel. A feeling of contentment and gratitude motivates me to do more to look after my body and health. This custom lesson plan is . For now, why not try this awesome lesson to pair with the story?
This custom lesson plan is coming soon.
This is one way to teach this story. You could also weave your own way, threading two or three other people the AI finds for you alongside.
Want to weave a full lesson around this story?
The weaver finds 3-4 real people whose stories thread together with this one.
Weave a lesson →Coining Solutions
When I was 14 I stopped attending school. When my mother passed away, I had to get a job to support my father and help us earn enough to eat and survive. A few months into my job as a construction worker, everything changed. I was on the 4th floor one afternoon when I began to feel unstable. I tried to regain my balance but was struggling to do so on the narrow support structures. Before I even realized what was happening, I had fallen. Four floors.
It was a miracle I survived. For months to follow my entire body used to throb from head to toe. It took me years to re-learn how to walk. And during this time, almost of all of the 350 INR my father was earning each day was going toward my treatment. I needed to find another job. But no one wanted to employ me after my fall. I didn’t really have a skill to offer either. So for 15 years I stayed at home. My self-esteem fell completely. My father was getting older and older. How long could this continue? Earlier this year I finally hit a break. Two organizations, CORD and Thuni Seed, were training women to turn saris into quilts. Many people own saris that are slightly torn, old, or simply just sitting unused at home. These organizations have started collecting these saris, training us to sow them together into quilts, and then selling them to help us generate income.
I really enjoy working closely with my friend Baby to create these quilts. Her husband was in a similar position to me when he had an accident and lost half his foot. I feel Baby really understands what I am going through. She’s also someone older that I can look up to, much like a big sister. She’s always helping me with my own problems.
Baby is also very creative. Our first sets of quilts were looking very messy. We didn’t have sewing machines and our hand stitches looked tacky. We would usually sell 1 or 2 quilts a week, but we struggled to make further sales with many people not liking the low quality of stitching. Baby recently had a wonderful idea though: she thought we could stitch the quilt and then invert the entire quilt inside out so that the stitches would not be seen before closing the gap. Since making this change, our quilts look much neater. We’re both hoping the sales increase by at least another quilt per week.
I am so grateful for the opportunity to create these quilts with Baby. Baby has helped me realize that my days aren’t a waste and a drain on the people around me. She’s helped rebuild my self-esteem. Baby has also shown me that if I focus all my attention on the task in front of us, all my other worries and concerns will leave me, bringing me peace of mind. When I focus on the task, I also find I can finish the quilt quicker. It's important that our time is spent well and that we make and sell as many saris as we can.
Want to create a calm and focused space to start the conversation? Set up desks or chairs in a circle and start the session with 2 minutes of collective silence.
“How do we use money in our everyday lives?” You might ask people in the room how they use money. “What do we spend money on?
Where do we receive it from?” Encourage the class to think about the goods and services we have access to, and the things we could afford to spend money on if we wanted to. Are there certain things we have access to that others don’t have access to? Remember to be mindful and respectful of socio-economic disparities within the class and community when having this discussion. We want to make sure this is a safe space!
“About 10% of the world’s people have almost 90% of the world’s wealth. Why does this inequality exist?
What are the impacts of it? How does it vary among urban or rural areas, cities, and countries?” Read the story “Kavitha Quilts with Baby” at https://betterworlded.org/#experience-the- content as a group. You could explore what the concept of inequality means with the group. You might want to begin by looking at the local, then regional, and then finally the global contexts. Consider bringing Kavitha into the discussion at this point. “What were some the challenges she faced with respect to earning money?” Responses might include “not finishing her education”, “personal health challenges”, and “being born into a situation with limited access to resources and opportunities”. Note the various different, complex, and interconnected factors at play. How is quilt making helping her? Here is a great chance to integrate math to help Kavitha address her challenges. You could help the class practice describing distributions to help Kavitha predict her future sales. What is the best measure to use? Are there outliers? How could we best extrapolate future sales? Do we best communicate expected sales through giving her a range? A single number? For harder math you could also explore whether the data fits a normal distribution, consider standard deviations, and provide a confidence interval for your answer to Kavitha. You could also help Kavitha understand how much time she will take to make the quilts and how this changes as she switches to the new style. For simple math you could subtract the time taken for the old style from the new style. To practice algebra you could derive a linear function in the form “y=mx” for each style and graph these. You could explore how these equations would change if she has a current stock of quilts (y=mx+b). For harder math, you could explore how the time taken to produce a quilt reduces with more experience through a non-linear graph.
Begin a “Free-Write” exercise with the group to help draw out solutions to issues in our community. The goal with our Free-Write is to write for 10 minutes straight.
“Take no breaks. Try to never lift the pen off of the paper.” Ask the group to share everything they know about money and the way they believe we spend it. Is this different for people living in different situations? How? What can we do to reduce inequality? After 10 minutes, welcome class members to share their ideas with the group. You might find this a good place to draw out and discuss assumptions. These subconscious assumptions might be things like “people who don’t have much money don't work hard and waste their money”; “wealthier people only care about money.”
“How do our day to day decisions and attitudes affect inequality? What can we do to address inequality in our community?
Globally?” This could be an opportunity to draw connections between our local actions and how they affect people globally. You could share examples such as choosing to purchase fair trade products that ensure a fair price is paid to makers.
This is one way to teach this story. You could also weave your own way, threading two or three other people the AI finds for you alongside.
Want to weave a full lesson around this story?
The weaver finds 3-4 real people whose stories thread together with this one.
Weave a lesson →Not hers. Not yours. People are always more than the chapters anyone could share. Hold what is here gently. Approach with curiosity, before judgment.
If a moment stayed, follow it. If a question rose up, hold it. The quiet teaching is still teaching.
Three or four real stories woven into one lesson, your topic, your time. Baby is one. The weaver finds the others, threads the math, the literacy, the values, the reflection.
Open the weaver →