Assessing How We Define Diversity - Seattle University

photo COURTESY OF MEG BEADE
Volunteer Amanda Higgins (left) with Binodini Daas and Meg Beade, ’05, at Prem Dan, a home for the ill and destitute in Calcutta.
happiness in people who have few material
possessions but are rich in kindness.
Nathan Canney, ’06, spent three
months in Calcutta, volunteering at
Khaligat and helping care for people
with conditions from tuberculosis and
malaria to AIDS. Living in a place so
different from where he grew up—Moscow,
Idaho—took some getting used to.
“Calcutta was a very overwhelming
city to me,” says Canney, a structural engineer
at Seattle’s Magnusson Klemencic
Associates. “But it gave me an appreciation
of other cultures and a desire to learn
more and to further my perspectives.”
When Waller returned from Calcutta,
he dealt with a range of emotions. “I felt
much anger, confusion, a sense that I
did not belong. I would watch TV and
nothing seemed to make sense any longer,”
he recalls. “Attempting to process
and integrate all of these encounters was
the most difficult part, and continues to
be challenging for returning volunteers.
This is a lifelong process; how does one
begin to make sense of what we all witnessed
in Calcutta?”
Meg Beade, ’05, became interested in
traveling to Calcutta after she heard about
the trip from a friend. In January 2006 she
arrived for what would be a three-month
stay. During her time as a volunteer at
Prem Dan and Shishu Bhavan, an orphanage
in central Calcutta, Beade says she met
several people who changed her life. When
she left, she took with her a desire to do
more service work with the poor and “to
live authentically,” she says, “in whatever
ways God desires of me.”
At Prem Dan she worked mostly with
disabled and seriously ill elderly women,
and cleaned floors, made beds and distributed
food. From the women, Beade
says, she found real joy.
“If I ever felt close to God, it was in
Prem Dan,” she says. “I fell in love with
those women, and my heart breaks when
I think of the injustice that brought them
there in the first place.”
In 2004 Lucas McIntyre, ’06, went to
India, where he would stay and volunteer
for six months. The first three months he
spent with the Missionaries of Charity;
the second half of the trip was focused
on working with a microfinance group to
address issues of poverty at a systemic level.
No experience could fully prepare him for
what he found in Calcutta.
While volunteering at Prem Dan,
McIntyre developed a close connection
with one patient in particular, Tarachand,
who was severely crippled. McIntyre took
it upon himself to clean his wounds and
check on him daily. When the man died,
he was heartbroken.
“Calcutta is not easy by any means,”
he says. “I feel like I’ve gone through it
as a different person, that I can be more
empathetic and understanding.”
To learn more about the Calcutta Club,
visit www.seattleu.edu/calcuttaclub/.
—Tina Potterf
SU Magazine Fall 2007 | 29