A Decade Of Helping ‘Sister City’

By LAURA COX
Ten years of small steps are bringing results that seemed unattainable.
Over New Year’s, when Dr. Ashok Malhotra visited the school he founded a decade ago in Dundlod, India, he discovered 10 2009 graduates now are attending college.
That was among the achievements marked in the 10th anniversary celebration of the Indo-International School when Malhotra and his partner, Linda Drake, visited Oneonta’s Sister City in India’s Rajasthan state Dec. 31 to Jan. 4.
Malhotra, a SUNY Oneonta distinguished teaching professor, is founder and president of the Ninash Foundation, and in December 2000 convinced then-Mayor Kim Muller and Common Council  creating the Sister City tie with Dundlod.
The proclamation established “diplomatic ties” to extend “the hand of friendship.”
In January 2001, then-SUNY Oneonta President Alan Donovan traveled with Malhotra to Dundlod and read the Common Council’s proclamation to the chairman of the village council there.
The Ninash Foundation now supports five schools and provides free education to approximately 1,050 impoverished children in remote villages in India, including two schools – an elementary and high school – in Dundlod hosting 550 students.
Since this declaration was made, Malhotra and Drake, Ninash Foundation treasurer and director of the SUNY Oneonta Center for Social Responsibility and Community, have been lucky enough to have the financial support of many local community members, elementary schools, and the two local colleges and their students.
It spurred the initiation of local fundraisers to help fund the Dundlod schools and promote literacy throughout the village as well as the addition of lessons on Indian culture to the third grade curriculum at local elementary schools, Malhotra said.
Over the past 10 years Riverside Elementary held repeated penny drives.  Greater Plains Elementary’s “kiss the goat” fundraiser has bought 18 goats for the poorest of poor families in Dundlod and collected recyclables to buy school supplies.  Center Street School children raised more than $700 for a teacher’s salary. 
SUNY Oneonta sororities and fraternities have raised funds for a playground and books.  Local Indian musicians have organized benefit concerts.  Most recently, the Chi Upsilon Sigma National Latin Sorority planned a Walk for Literacy.