Yes, you really can make a better world

By Mark Hare "All these people we have helped have become friends of ours," says Natascha Yogachandra, "so it's personal for us." The work of her Hope is Life Foundation (hopeislife.org) is small scale, but life-changing. I recently had what's become my annual sit-down with Natascha, now 18, and her parents, Nat and Debbie. The Yogachandras, from Fairport, set out for India and then Thailand after the tsunami struck Nat's native Thailand in 2005. Natascha, then a sixth-grader, had been collecting books for poor children in far off places for years. She was moved by the sight of the tsunami victims and persuaded her parents (Nat is a retired Kodak marketing executive) to move closer to the action so they could do more. They rented out their Fairport home and have lived on the road ever since, raising small amounts of money and using it for very local projects — most often for schools, libraries and educational materials, but for small economic development projects, too. Natascha completed her high school education at an international school in Bangkok and has completed her freshman year at New York University, where she is majoring in journalism and anthropology. I continue to find the Yogachandras' story both interesting and inspirational because their experience shows just how much people can do with tiny amounts of money. Theirs is a hands-on foundation and they only give to people they know and whose needs they can verify. They oversee the spending and make sure that every project is aimed at helping people become independent and is sustainable. Even now, with Natascha in school, and Debbie and Nat living near Ithaca with her father, they still travel and continue the foundation's work. Just this summer they visited a dozen young women whose tuition they've been paying in a Calcutta secondary school. Some of them are moving on to college. But school administrators were direct, Natascha says, "Some of them are just not ready to go to college," she says. But they will receive vocational training and that will help them secure jobs — which is the key to escaping abusive husbands or families that might sell them to brothels. They'll continue to send tuition supports. In Manipur, near the Indian border with Myanmar, they visited a school with 143 students, many of them AIDS orphans. They have become friends with the school's owner and her husband, who is the headmaster — and they trust both of them. The Yogachandras helped them set up a small pig farm that will provide training and jobs for villagers and generate some income to sustain the school. That's the kind of project that can change lives, a few at a time. That's an important lesson, and very empowering. Natascha is certain that she'll find a way to integrate the foundation work with her after-college life and career. "This work has to be woven into our daily lives," she says. I hope many more young people get a taste of her experience. To travel the world and see just how much good each of us can do is the perfect antidote to the poison of today's retrenchment and no-can-do philosophy. Give young people a glimpse of what's possible, and they'll become not just personally engaged, but politically engaged — convinced that the United States can do big things, can put people to work, meet the needs of those in trouble and build a better country. The foundation's name says it all: Hope is life. (You can contribute by sending checks to the Hope is Life Foundation, P.O. Box 261, Fairport, NY 14450) Mark Hare's column appears on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. He can be reached at (585) 258-2351.