It’s been exactly a month since my last blog post and since I boarded a plane out of Bangalore and by now I’m fully acclimated to life back in America. It’s hard for me to be sad about being home, especially when it means eating American food and seeing everyone I missed all summer, and […]
I’ve again found myself scrambling to write my last blog post in India right before I board my plane, just as how I wrote my first one in the terminal before boarding my plane to Delhi. I justify this to myself by claiming it will be written after everything I’ll experience on my trip in […]
First, some pictures to keep things interesting—from our recent weekend trip to Mysore and the surrounding areas. A few weeks ago Kevin and I were lucky enough to meet with CASI’s director, Professor Devesh Kapur, as he made a brief stop in Bangalore to meet with a group from Jana Foundation (our workplace) for some collaborative […]
The next phase of my project at work is fully underway. As I wrote in an earlier blog post, our goal had changed to a comparison between our own enterprise survey and that of the economic census, with the idea that small to mid-size businesses, especially those without a set structure, might be underrepresented by […]
We finally made it outside of the city and managed to experience some of India’s natural beauty this past weekend. Thanks to the active planning and help of our coworker Lakshmi, we somehow agreed to and carried out plans to wake up at 3am on a Saturday to make it to Nandi Hills and walk […]
It seems like just yesterday I was writing my last blog post, just getting into the swing of things and figuring out what exactly I might be spending my time on here. It’s been a very short almost two weeks, as my days seem to fly by. Having been thrown into a project right before […]
I had to double check to make sure earlier today when I realized I had left home less than a week ago. From a very hospitable welcome by the Penn Club of Delhi and UPIASI in Delhi, to very personal and accommodating introductions and overviews by our host organization Jana Urban Foundation and Janalakshmi Financial […]
Hello everyone! I’m Jacob Van Houten, originally from Lower Merion in the suburbs of Philadelphia and currently attending the College of Arts and Sciences at Penn. I just finished my sophomore year studying Mathematical Economics, and I’m thrilled to say I’ll be spending the summer working with Jana Urban Foundation in Bangalore doing microfinance work. […]
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