Study Break: Nikhit D'Sa, Ed.D. candidate

[caption id="attachment_8739" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Photo by Martha Stewart"][/caption] Concentration: Human Development and Education Tool for Change: Resiliency and street children Hometown: Mumbai, India There wasn't one moment that made Nikhit D'Sa, Ed.M.'12, aware of street children, no specific event that left him thinking, "This is the work I want to do." In Mumbai, India, where he grew up, street children are a constant presence. (Some nonprofits estimate that as many as a quarter million kids live on the streets without adult protection.) But this is exactly the kind of work he ended up doing. It started when he was in middle school, when he volunteered with an NGO that worked with street children. He taught English and played one of India's most popular sports with the kids: cricket. But D'Sa eventually grew impatient with what he saw as a one-dimensional portrayal of street children, especially because he had been privy to their thoughts and dreams. He decided he wanted to learn about the paths taken by vulnerable young people. After attending the College of the Atlantic in Maine, where he still serves on the board of directors, D'Sa won a fellowship that allowed him to travel for a year to Ireland, the Fiji Islands, Ghana, and Jamaica, where he collected stories from street children and gave them cameras to document their lives. Nowadays, as a doctoral student at the Ed School, he's looking at trajectories of resilient development, most recently by teaching and collecting data at a charter school in Lowell, Mass., that serves adolescents who dropped out of high school or were expelled. This summer, he was in Bangladesh, evaluating the implementation of a national education and vocational training program for street children and child laborers through the nonprofit organization Save the Children. Cricket allowed you to … see the children as friends and peers rather than as street kids. Most misunderstood thing about street kids: That they don't want to be in school. Most of the street kids I have met have a voracious appetite for education, but they have a hard time accessing alternative education programs or connecting with the curriculum. We need to rethink how we package education for these children. How working with street children changed you as a kid: It helped me realize how fortunate I was to have caring, loving parents who supported me through all my experiences and explorations, from childhood mischief to adolescent rebellion. Common thread that allows resiliency in some street children: Strong relationships with older youth who have jobs or NGO workers, parents/guardians, neighborhood elders. You've given cameras to street kids because … it took a lot for them to trust another outsider with the details of their lives. Giving them a camera was one way to create a rapport in a short period of time. I tried to tie my stories to the pictures they showed me. While risky, my honesty often allowed them to open up. What you really miss about India: Eating with my hands at every meal. Something surprising about you: I nearly went to graduate school for a degree in theater arts. Your singing claim to fame: West African Idol. While traveling in Ghana I became acquainted with a group of boys who were part of a local band. They dragged me to the auditions for West African Idol. I made it through a few rounds of auditions but unfortunately had to leave Ghana before I got very far in the competition. Working with street kids is … edifying.