Sobhana Jaya-Madhavan has oriented her life and career around volunteering and helping others.
Sobhana Jaya-Madhavan, a woman in her mid-50s with a career spanning over two decades and a life dedicated to volunteering and community service, reflects on how one moment can turn a life around in unpredictable ways.
“I really enjoyed [philosophy] because it exposed me to different ways of thinking about the same question,” she said. “What is life? Is there a God? All of these questions. But you think about it from many philosophical, religious, ethical perspectives. It exposed me to things I'd never known before. I think my love to see the world, to meet people from different cultures, to understand things from multiple perspectives — I think that's where it crystallized for me.
"So Year 1, I was in Film City slum in Mumbai, which is the second largest slum in Mumbai — first one is Dharavi,” she said. "Now, as a privileged middle class girl from Kerala, not only had I not been exposed to these things, I had no clue what a slum looked like or what goes on in there. So it was unexpected for me. That experience was extremely important to me because I think it taught me to discover the oneness of humanity.
However, she was quickly faced with the harsh realities of being an immigrant. “I came here thinking I'm going to have multiple job offers. And I'm going to have a tough time picking which one to say yes to,” she said. Working towards inclusion When her mandatory field work time in India was wrapping up, she went to the women in the slum and posed the question: "Where would you all like to go and what would you all like as a small gift?"“They said they would like to go to the film city and watch a movie shooting. I asked why, and they said, 'We go to work in the morning and we don't come back until night. We never get to go and see the making of a movie.
She is also president of BC-India Business Network and sits on the Burnaby Board of Trade and United Way Cabinet.
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