A Mother’s Promise: Usha Parthasarathy on Home Visits, Hope, and Changing a Child’s Future in India скачать в хорошем качестве

A Mother’s Promise: Usha Parthasarathy on Home Visits, Hope, and Changing a Child’s Future in India

In this episode of Where Hope Begins: The Save One Life Podcast, host Kai Sorensen speaks with Usha Parthasarathy, Save One Life’s India Program Coordinator—a woman whose life has been shaped by hemophilia across generations. Usha shares the deeply personal losses of her father and first son, and how those experiences fueled a lifelong commitment to community-building, advocacy, and practical support for families living with bleeding disorders in India.  Together, they explore why real change happens up close—in families’ homes, through relationships, listening, and trust—and how sponsorship helps create not just survival, but confidence, stability, and a future.  What You’ll Learn:  • How Usha’s connection to hemophilia spans three generations—and how loss shaped her mission  • Why community support and reliable information are often what families need first  • How the Hemophilia Federation (India) helped build organization, awareness, and acceptance  • What Usha’s role as India Program Coordinator actually involves—and why local partners are essential  • Why home visits are so important for understanding real needs beyond medicine  • How sponsorship supports daily stability—transportation, school, basic necessities—and reduces pressure on caregivers  • How scholarships and education pathways are helping children move from “rags to riches” and even give back  Episode Highlights:  • 00:00 – Kai introduces Usha as someone known for deep compassion and high expectations: “not just support, but a future”  • 00:50 – Usha shares her first true understanding of hemophilia through her son’s diagnosis—and her father’s suffering  • 01:55 – The devastating turning point: losing her son and then her father within a year  • 03:21 – What Usha needed most early on: support, knowledge, and other families who understood  • 04:13 – The role of her husband: “By getting help from others, we can help many”  • 06:01 – India as Save One Life’s first program country—and how Usha became the coordinator  • 07:30 – Usha defines her role: assessing program partners, guiding reporting, and staying connected to families  • 08:23 – Why home visits matter: living conditions, distance from care, and the reality for mothers as primary caregivers  • 09:17 – “I am a mother. I’m not a coordinator.” How identity builds trust  • 09:45 – The biggest shift sponsorship creates: a mother no longer has to beg family for money to reach care  • 12:23 – Educational scholarships and long-term outcomes: doctors, engineers, accountants—and giving back  • 14:21 – Usha’s call to action: spread awareness and help “make a difference in a child’s future”  Meet the Guest:  Usha Parthasarathy has served the hemophilia community since 1986, helping establish the Hemophilia Federation (India) alongside Ashok Verma. As vice president of development for HFI, she traveled widely across India to help parents and patients organize into chapters and to raise both treatment standards and social acceptance of hemophilia.  In 2009, Usha began serving as a volunteer India Program Coordinator for Save One Life, enrolling program partners, monitoring implementation, and strengthening visibility and impact across the country.  Usha is from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, earned her bachelor’s degree from Madras University, and is the daughter of a father and mother of a son with hemophilia. Her adult son now lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and two daughters.  Tools, Frameworks, or Strategies Mentioned:  • Home visits as a needs-assessment tool: understanding living conditions, access barriers, and caregiver realities  • Relationship-first support: listening to families’ stories as a core form of care  • Local program partner model: assessing readiness, accountability, and the ability to run the program effectively  • Sponsorship as stability: enabling transportation, school access, and basic needs—reducing caregiver burden  • Education + scholarship pathway: sponsorship plus scholarships as a bridge to long-term independence and upward mobility  • Identity-based trust building: “I’m a mother, not a coordinator”—using shared experience to create confidence  Resource Links:  • Sponsor a Child: https://saveonelife.net/sponsorship  • Produced in partnership with Balancing Life's Issues: https://balancinglifesissues.com/podc... In honor of Save One Life’s 25th anniversary, this podcast shares the remarkable story of how a simple act of compassion grew into a global lifeline for individuals and families living with hemophilia and other bleeding disorders.  What began with a single question — could one family help another, across borders? — has become a movement built on dignity, opportunity, and hope.