Life lesson: 3 University of Utah students spend time in New Delhi slum

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is more than three University of Utah students bargained for this summer as they worked in the crowded and dirty streets of New Delhi.

"I didn't know what to expect," said Katie Calvert, one of the three Hinckley Institute of Politics interns who earned a half-scholarship that took her to India to work for a nonprofit aid project there called Maitri. "I hoped in coming here that I would feel like I could help someone out."

That "someone" Calvert hoped for turned into thousands as she taught English to many children being raised in the region's dangerous slums, performed health checks on grown men and helped gain funding to push the organization's empowerment focus to more struggling communities.

"It's really frustrating because you want to do something, but you don't know what to do to make it better," she said.

Calvert, along with Emily Bennett and James Egan, also Hinckley interns, spent three months during the sweltering heat and humidity of summer in the slums of a once bustling city, working with the organization to perhaps better the lives of some. Little did they know they'd learn and take home more than they could ever teach or provide.

"There are a lot of problems that academics is not going to solve," said Egan, who is a senior studying political science and English at the U. "To relieve the proximate misery around me, I need to be those things that policy can't be."

Egan's trip was his second to India, as he previously served a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He said the new assignment was daunting but it also required the human element learned during his missionary service.

"When you walk through the streets as a missionary, you know these people need help," he said. "The only thing I can bring them as a missionary is a message, some theology, and that was definitely not what all of them were looking for. Some of them, they just need food and some doctor to help them out." He said the country relies on nongovernment operations to provide services they really need.

"A lot of these people have recourse to nothing that will really help them," Egan said. "They don't get it from family, they don't get it from the government. They need these nonprofits to make a difference."

The three otherwise privileged Americans aimed to help grow the Maitri organization and soon realized there was only so much they could do, that a Band-Aid approach couldn't solve everything.