Introduction 

Taniska Murthy is a student at Bard College Berlin and took the OSUN Civic Engagement course in Spring 2024. For the course, Tanishka proposed a project that sought to tackle the experience of female migrants in Berlin and specifically the mental health support that they were receiving. The project planned to include a session with migrants to hear their experiences. The project would then involve research based events to eventually produce an academic and specific policy proposal to give to local officials. 

Expanding EJAAD to Berlin took time and attention away from the mental health focused project, so that project was never implemented. Taniska’s experience with the course did end up impacting EJAAD Berlin in a variety of ways.

The Project

The name “Ejaad” comes from the Dari word for creativity. EJAAD was started in Japan and founded by a mentor of Tanishka’s. That is where Tanishka first got involved with the project. As an NGO, EJAAD facilitates the sale of embroidery made by women in Kabul, Afghanistan to sell internationally. This provides the women who make the jewelry/embroidery with a stable income and a higher level of empowerment. Over the course of EJAAD’s existence, the funds have led to the creation of a health center and a learning center in Afghanistan. After being involved with the project for several years in Japan, Tanishka decided to create a chapter of EJAAD where she was studying in Berlin.

Today, chapters of EJAAD exist in America, China, and Japan. In a Berlin context, Tanishka asked Afghan students if they would be comfortable with a chapter of EJAAD in Berlin being started at BCB. For EJAAD chapters in America, China, and Japan, embroidery is sold and the money is sent back to the women who are sponsored by the organization. In Berlin that was not feasible, so an outreach program for education and crowd funding was decided on as the foundation of the Berlin chapter of EJAAD. Over the past year, the Berlin chapter of EJAAD has hosted film screenings (Breadwinner), collaborated with women’s groups on the Bard Berlin Campus on international women’s day, and held speaking events with activists. With an average of 15 people attending each event, EJAAD Berlin boasts a higher attendance record than most student run organizations at BCB.

Link to the EJAAD website: https://ejaadafghanistan.weebly.com/ 

Future Plans

In the future, EJAAD Berlin plans on hosting a women’s health event. There are also plans to increase the number of grants the Berlin chapter has access to.

Tanishka intends on studying abroad for a semester and has already made plans for how that can be achieved while also organizing EJAAD Berlin and setting the chapter up for success and longevity. This is possible because EJAAD’s collaborations come from abroad or on campus and events are often hosted online. By delegating students between individual tasks versus collaborative tasks, Tanishka is confident in her peers involved in the organization. As new students get involved and eventually leave Berlin for home or abroad, Tanishka predicts that she or others in the organization will go on to found more chapters of EJAAD.

Experience with the Civic Engagement Course

For Tanishka, learning about positionality was one of the most important aspects of the Civic Engagement Course. She says that positionality is something “We have this at the back of our heads, where it is assumed that we should know cultural boundaries.” It can be hard not knowing what one simply does not know. Taniska found that the course greatly emphasized on students looking at their own positionality. “It helped me realize that if you care about a project, you have to know that communities aren’t made uncomfortable or not respected by the project. That gets you more support from diverse communities.”

Positionality was reinforced when the course took students on a Berlin Lab tour. This tour was based on a decolonial understanding of the city of Berlin and how the city itself interacted with various communities throughout history. This helped Tanishka be cognizant of how projects would be received. By knowing more about her local community, Tanishka was better able to understand what that community could most benefit from and what obstacles would exist to a hypothetical future project.

This ties into the teamwork component of the course. Tanishka said that “it helped to discuss with others from other cultural contexts. European students and non-European students could discuss what makes sense in Berlin versus somewhere else.” Perspectives from students from America, Europe, Asia, and locally in Berlin allowed discussions of what projects could work at BCB and how they would differ from projects based in students’ home communities.

When asked about her final takeaways from the course, Tanishka stressed that positionality most impacted her understanding of her work. She also mentioned that the instruction given on interviewing skills was very helpful and that she “wouldn’t get those communication skills elsewhere.”

How the Course impacted EJAAD

Tanishka’s work with EJAAD Berlin was influenced by her experiences with the Civic Engagement Course. By starting slowly and involving Afghan students in the conceptual components of what would become EJAAD Berlin, Tanishka focused on positionality as she started her project. She considered how the project would be received and made sure that communication was done right.This included understanding what events would be the most successful on campus. As BCB has a large arts program, the movie screening was the most attended event and has become a model for future EJAAD Berlin outreach.

Just as the course brought new information and cultural understanding to Tanishka, she aims for EJAAD Berlin to inform the BCB community on the communities that EJAAD is involved with. The EJAAD Berlin events included many guest speakers. EJAAD Berlin has collaborated with Little Sun, a Berlin based company that sent a representative to talk about milk production in Zambia in a sustainability focused event; Shreya Patel a Canadian/Indian actor who spoke to attendees of an EJAAD event; a Rotterdam professor held a talk on menstrual health in the global south; a radio show in Afghanistan talked about how they educated girls through radio and television; finally, Pashtana Durani, founder of LEARN Afghanistan spoke “from a place of care and knowing about the issue” to students who wanted to hear about her experiences. 

Founding EJAAD Berlin and hosting these events required dedication and patience on Tanishka’s part. By combining her own experiences with those of her peers through positionality and teamwork, Tanishka has so far made EJAAD Berlin a success.