Saratoga News

Photograph by Robert Scheer

Stanford student Sreyashi Jhumki Basu will spend her senior year in Russia, where she will study homeless children.

Stanford student wins a $10,000 scholarship

By Michelle Alaimo

The Donald A. Strauss Foundation awarded Sreyashi Jhumki Basu of Saratoga a $10,000 scholarship to be used to develop a public-service project for homeless Russian children during her senior year at Stanford University.

Basu was one of 10 winners of the scholarship, which is in its first year. Winners were selected on the basis of their proposals for a project to carry out over the summer and during their senior year, as well as a history of community service.

In her proposal, Basu wrote, "My final goal is to write an honors thesis in my major, human biology, proposing guidelines for an outreach program focused on providing primary and preventative health care to Russian children living on the street."

Basu says she enjoys working with kids and got interested in Russian children after taking a two-week seminar titled "Collapse of Communism," taught by Stanford Provost Condoleezza Rice. Last year, Basu spent her fall quarter in Russia as part of Stanford's Moscow Overseas program, where she did a lot of unstructured research and spent many hours in Russian shelters learning about the Russian children by talking to them, taking them to the circus, bringing them crayons and taking them on piggyback rides.

Basu said that Russian shelters are different from American shelters because they house both homeless and orphaned children.

Basu is leaving on July 7 to do more structured research on Russian children. The scholarship money is covering all her costs. She plans to conduct a survey of 100 children living in shelters and 100 children living on the streets and compare their knowledge of health issues and access to health care.

Basu said she will pose the questions verbally to the children because in general the kids do not read or write very well. She added that she plans not only to ask basic questions such as their first names, ages and where they live, but to ask about hygiene habits. Basu will describe medical symptoms to the children and ask if they know of or have ever seen these symptoms. She will ask how often the children go to see doctors and who pays for it.

"I hope to interview five kids a day, five days a week," Basu said, adding that this should take about an hour of warm-up and interview time per child. Basu doesn't promise the children any reward for talking to her, but she said she plans to take each child's picture at the end of a survey and give it to him or her.

Basu has been asked by the Foundation to go to Orange County in May of 1998 and present her project to the board, according to board member Duncan Strauss.

Basu's parents, Dipak and Radha Basu, reside in Saratoga. Her family traveled a lot when she was younger, living in Germany, India, Boston and Los Angeles. Basu attended Castilleja High School in Palo Alto.

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