Kindness that Unites
When we first met in a tall apartment building in Jakarta to explore the idea of Roshan Learning Center, we never saw the endpoint as the point. The journey was enough because it brought us together and gave people the chance to feel the unexpected power of kindness.
If we had never moved past that first meeting, that would have been enough, because the gathering was an act of kindness on the part of everyone there. Mothers made rare arrangements for outside care for their children, fathers dug deep for bus fare to get to the meeting, Ashley and I braved uncertainty and public speaking to lead the meeting. One wonderful Afghan woman braved the disdain of a few men to volunteer to lead one of the core tasks, teacher recruitment, that needed to be done and therefore landed her on our ad hoc management team.
These acts of simple kindness gave everyone a good day—many for the first time in a while—and helped create a sense of belonging for people far from home.
Even better, this first step created momentum for more kindness to come. The small connections and efforts continued over the next two months. We saw the kindness of young teen refugee boys who could not speak English but who could whack away to demolish concrete steps during a renovation, and they did. We saw a British architect volunteer his toilet to our efforts, much to the delight of the entire community, especially me, after eyeing the unappealing “squatty potty.” We saw a young Iranian mother put her precious, expensive saffron into a rice dish to share at an opening celebration. We saw well-heeled volunteer foreign national teachers travel long distances through megatropolis traffic to sweat through classes in our decidedly not air-conditioned one-room schoolhouse. We saw refugee teenagers travel even farther across two bus systems, sometimes two hours each way, to attend our classes.
These acts of kindness collectively created a community and a feeling of trust.
Trust is a funny thing. In those early days of Roshan, I learned a lot about trust and how it’s a privilege to grow up with it. To grow up trusting people is a gift, not a norm. To go about one’s days trusting that things will work out, that people will be kind to you, that people are generally good and honest is the product of a privileged environment. I learned that dishonesty can be a form of survival, a tool for safety. One member of our leadership team in those early days lied to me once and I was surprised when I realized it; when that person owned up to the mistake with humility and apology, it was an act of tremendous courage—and kindness. It was a way of saying, “I trust you with my real story. I trust you not to hurt me because of my failings.” That was kindness, and it created space not only for a deeper relationship but also for vulnerability.
Kindness rarely seemed like a grand gesture, however. It showed up mostly in the small things. It showed up in the quiet swish of the broom every morning by an unassuming widow who had nothing but her own two hands to give. It showed up in a birthday cake cooked in a rice cooker when the apartment offered no oven. It showed up in a gap-toothed smile or the hug—back in those hugging, pre-Covid days—from a young student excited to be at school. My friend and partner Ashley summed it up well when she said, “The kindness at Roshan was an atmosphere more than a single story,” one we feel excited and fortunate to build on to make these challenging times easier and the day ahead a brighter one.