There 18 million street children in India. There are six young women from six different nations on the board of the Ashraya Initiative for Children, a non-profit that three of them started after working with kids at Mahindra UWC in India.

“At some point you’re going to realize that it’s worth giving somebody else a chance, because you got one,” observes Davis UWC Scholar Julia Neubauer (Austria, Mahindra UWC, Princeton ‘07). Julia co-founded the initiative (in Hindi, ashraya means “hope,” “trust,” “shelter,” and “protection”) with fellow Mahindra grads Elizabeth Sholtys, an American now at Emory University, and Kaminika Morjaria of England and India, who now studies at the London School of Economics.

At Mahindra, the three resolved to come back to India to work again with kids. They’d moved on to college when, in April ‘04, Liz Sholtys emailed the others and asked, ”Why not now?”
“We both said, ‘We’re in,’” Julia recalls.

In June ‘05 they christened the new organization, which now rents an apartment in Pune that is the full-time home to nine children and two live-in caregivers. The program also runs an outreach effort that provides for the education, medical, and other needs of 20 more kids.

Each of the original board members — now joined by Jasleen Anand of Canada, Asami Matsumoto of Japan, and Amber Wang of the United States — commits to spending time working in Pune with the children. They have weekly phone conferences, and each is raising funds in her home country and community.

“We really want to assure donors that we consider these kids as our kids — and we take responsibility for them,” Julia says.

Julia will spend part of this summer working for the Princeton University Investment Company, where she has been interning, then will spend time in Pune before returning to the Princeton job.

“What she brings to us is a person we can rely on — that she’s going to do the right thing,” says Andrew Golden, president of the investment firm. Julia won the university’s 2006 International Service Award for her work with Ashraya and her three fellow volunteers.