“Lighted to Lighten.”

The Young Women’s Christian Association of the College among its many activities includes Bible classes in the vernacular which bring together students from the same language areas and after a week of purely English study and English chapel service serve as a link with home life and home conditions.  Not only with home on the one side; on the other the Association ties them up with wider interests, with conferences that bring together students from all India, with activities that range all the way from teaching servants’ children to read and translating Christian books into their own vernaculars to sending gifts of money to a suffering student in Vienna.

Social service is carried on along lines not very different from those pursued in Lucknow.  Sunday schools, visits to outcaste villages, and lectures on health and cleanliness have their place.  A new feature is the dispensing of simple medical help, which not only relieves the recipients, but teaches the students what they can do later when in their own homes.  Another distinctive venture is the “Little School” in the college grounds, where volunteer workers take turns morning and evening in teaching the neighborhood children, and thus get their first taste of the joys and difficulties of the teacher’s profession.

An interested girl thus expresses her ideas on the subject of social service.  Her emphasis upon the positive side of life speaks well for her future accomplishment: 

“Though the condition of the people is deplorable we need not despair of making matters better for them.  Instead of giving the mere negative instructions that they should not drink, or be extravagant with their money, or get into the clutches of money lenders, we can do something positive.  Some interesting diversions could be invented that would prevent men from frequenting drinking houses.  With regard to their extravagance on certain occasions, we might suggest to them ways in which they could lessen items of expenditure.  To prevent their being at the mercy of money lenders, co-operative societies may be started in order to lend money at a lower rate of interest; or to supply them with capital or with tools in order to start their work.

“To remove the other evil of ignorance with regard to health, we may go into the villages and give them practical lessons on cleanliness.  We could tell them of the value of fresh air and give them other needful instructions.

“In doing social work of this kind, there are many principles we ought to have in mind.  Instead of telling a poor man with no means of living that he should not steal it would be better to see that he is somehow placed beyond the reach of want.  Another is that instead of merely imparting morality in negative form, it would be better to point out to them some positive way in which they could improve.  More important than any of these principles is that instead of thinking of ‘bestowing good’ on the people, it would be more effective, if we co-operate with them and enlist their initiative, thus enabling them by degrees to be fit to manage their own affairs.”