Lisbeth helps poor children in India: "I had so much to give away"

Lisbeth Johansen could not turn away from the children in the slums of the Indian city of Kolkata. "You can almost call it a vocation," says the woman behind the aid organization LittleBigHelp

Most Danes can do without founding their own aid organization. They can also refrain from establishing an orphanage and a school for street children in a dirty, smelly slum in South Asia.

But Lisbeth Johansen could not do that when she traveled to Kolkata, formerly Calcutta, which is the capital of the eastern state of West Bengal in India, in 2010. Here she saw how children and adults struggled to survive in the slums. She saw children living alone on the streets sniffing glue, child prostitutes and a poverty so deep and hopeless that she felt compelled to stay and do something herself.

"Sometimes we encounter situations in life that we cannot turn away from. For me, this was one of those situations: I couldn't turn away," she says.

Lisbeth Johansen had ended up in Kolkata by chance, because it was the cheapest place in India to fly to from Thailand, where she stayed before. The plan was for her to stay in Kolkata for a few days and then travel on.

At that time, the Danish woman had already traveled to India several times, and the year before she had founded the aid organization LittleBigHelp, which initially aimed to collect money for aid projects in the country.

It has been nine years since Lisbeth Johansen arrived in Kolkata with her backpack, and she has not yet returned 'properly' to Denmark. Today, the 45-year-old educated economist divides his time between Kolkata and Amager in Denmark, and LittleBigHelp has gradually made a clear mark in the Indian city of millions, where the aid organization runs 22 projects in total. The projects count, among other things, an orphanage, schools and a number of educational projects for women, and together they include several hundred vulnerable children and women.

Before Lisbeth Johansen founded LittleBigHelp, she was Nordic sales and marketing manager for the international hotel chain Radisson Edwardian and worked as a coach alongside her regular job.

She traveled a lot, had an exciting and well-paid job, and on paper, nothing was lacking in her life. Still, after a few runs she let it all go when she was ready. And at that point the decision was no longer difficult.

“I felt that I had so many resources to draw on and so much to give. It was really a strong force in me – you could almost call it a calling. I've probably always been good at following my heart. And then I have a strong will. The will has been my weapon in aid work," she says.

Weapons are used in battle, and part of the time LittleBigHelp's aid work is also a battle, says Lisbeth Johansen.

“Everything is difficult in India. The corruption and inefficiency is so widespread and characterizes everything that goes on. To be able to work in India, for example, you must have an international bank account. It takes four years to get one, and even when the four years have passed, and it should be fine, three more months go by without it working," she says.

Much is about corruption, and getting the bank account ready would probably have gone faster if LittleBigHelp paid a bribe.

"But we don't do that. So after hearing about the process for weeks from one of my co-workers who was struggling with it, I ended up showing up at the bank myself to talk to the person in charge. There I tried to politely ask him to fix it. By chance we got talking about yoga and it interested us both. The following day, the bank account had been put in order," she says.

Coincidences, uncertainty and waiting are basic conditions in Lisbeth Johansen's work. Still, it is connected and makes sense for the NGO entrepreneur. Because she was right that Kolkata's street children and vulnerable women needed help, despite seeing only a fraction of their reality at first glance.

"I could not have imagined anything that the children and women here have survived: Children whose father has thrown acid on the children's mother, and who is now threatening to kill the children from prison to punish his wife. A wife who, by the way, has sold her own eggs in an attempt to support the family. Or former street children who have come to live in our orphanage and whose parents stop visiting them. The terrible thing about sitting with a child in your arms, who asks you why its mother and father no longer come to visit," says Lisbeth Johansen.

It is hard to be a witness to the children's lives, and precisely because she wants to stick to the job in the long run, she makes a point of also treating herself well.

"Because everything goes better, not least the relief work, when I treat myself right," she emphasizes.

The breaks in Denmark help to give new energy, and today she divides her time between the projects in Kolkata and fundraising, coaching and yoga teaching in Denmark.

Over the years, Lisbeth Johansen's view of development aid, and of what the aid consists of, has changed significantly:

"At first I thought it was about giving, giving, giving: clothes, medicine and food. But it does not develop people to give. It just makes them dependent and lazy. Today, we give the children education so that they can fend for themselves when one day they have to leave the orphanage. The same applies to the women. They receive education so that they can become self-sufficient. Food is also important – but food alone does not develop.”