“Teacher, when are you going on your next trip and coming back to tell us about it?”

Clelia is in fifth grade at a school on the outskirts of Turin, Italy, where I have been teaching for a few years. It isn’t the first time a child in my class has asked me about my other job, as a photojournalist covering stories around the world.

Clelia didn’t know that four days later I would be returning to India, where I would meet children at a primary school very different from hers – a school housed in a single-story shack in the Dharavi slums on the outskirts of Mumbai. 

When a schoolteacher tells his pupils about the hardships faced by other children around the world, their responses amaze him.