Long story short, little did I realize the metamorphosis my father underwent that night. I did not know till many years later how he did not sleep that entire night. Himself of humble beginnings, education had been the single most powerful factor that transformed his life. Now Mr. Mortenson had presented him with an idea that seemed practical and he started dreaming of helping kids in his own village in India. He went to India to visit his parents every year and gradually started talking to people how such a thing can be arranged. Finally, in 2010 he launched the first school in Faridpur village, India. Not having much funds at that time he bore the cost of the project himself. With the help of my aunt Fouzia, he hired three teachers, rented a space, arranged for books, chalked out a curriculum and started his journey. His spirits were high and I would enjoy listening to him talk with pride about his school.

But my father had not accounted for the unpredictability factor. What he started with a belief in goodness became a source of ultimate bitterness to him. Within a year the whole plan collapsed due to the dishonesty of the people he had hired. The gobbled up his money, sold the school furniture and conned him grandly. They even stole the money he used to send to provide snacks for kids. When he went to India and tried to confront them, they openly denied any of his allegations. He came back to New Jersey pretty shattered and defeated. Looking back, I think he had become depressed. I had never seen this side of my dad and it scared me to my core and forced me to start thinking how can I improve this process.

One day, I went to spend a day at my cousin house. I noticed my aunt talking for hours on the phone with her relatives in India. I learnt that she was using a phone service called Vonage which provided unlimitated calls to Inidia at a very reasonable price. I realized that this was the solution to my father's problems. That evening, I presented my ideas to my dad in the car ride home. I gave him the following four-point plan:

• My dad, my aunt Fouzia who helps him and all the teachers should be connected via vonage/skype.
• They should form a parent association (like PTA in our schools). The parents should give feedback every 2 weeks via vonage/skype.
• Teachers should take tests weekly and send all the tabulated test results to aunt Fouzia, then only the teachers should be paid.
• To quantify the progress of students, hire an independent teacher to conduct seperate test and report back directly to aunt Fouzia.
• Hire another reliable person whose job will be to go in person and visit all the center periodically and report back to aunt.

What followed after my proposal is impossible to put in writing. My dad had no idea that I was so acutely aware of the difficulties he was facing. Maybe it was the practical simplicity of my plan, or maybe it was a sense of support he felt from me; whatever the reason my dad snapped out of his melancholy. And somehow, I grew up in his eyes a little that day. From that day onwards, he actually started working on implementing my plan. His first decision was to choose a better location where he had reliable contacts. Instead of choosing a random village, this time he decided to start in his native village, Gilani. This way he had more reliable people to keep an eye on for him. Next, he hired Azad Uncle to be the manager whose job was to simply monitor the teachers progress and report to him closely. The teachers were hired after rigorous interviewing and they were told explicitly that part of their job was to send weekly tests to my aunt and in case of negligence, they would lose their job. My aunt keeps a strict eye on the tests and discusses the test performance with the teachers on a weekly basis on skype. In addition, some parents are more than happy to be involved and get together once a month to go over the nuances and requests over skype with my aunt or dad. The systems with all its checks and balances became very structured and over time we started seeing positive results. Seven years have passed since that eventful car drive. Seven years of consistent hard work and close monitoring has yielded the rebirth and sustained growth of Roshni project and currently we have total of one hundred and fifty children studying in two different locations. Though we have come a long way in our journey, our efforts continue and we hope to strengthen our Roshni learning center and empower as many children as possible.

At the end I would like to say that all this planning, fund raising efforts would not have made any difference if aunt Fouzia had not dedicated her life to further this cause, so hats off to her efforts which made Roshni project a success.