Melissa May gained 100 sisters this summer.

May (sophomore-environmental resources management) met them at an orphanage in India when she traveled abroad with eight other Penn State students as part of a service program.

The students stayed at the orphanage, played with the children and helped them with their homework. They cleaned, put on puppet shows and helped the staff learn English.

But beyond the job, there were real lessons to learn, real people to meet, and stark realities to face. Many students said they came face-to-face with the intense poverty surrounding them.

"I learned that what we worry about in our daily lives isn't that important," May said. "They're happy without everything Americans have."

Homes of the Indian Nations (HOINA), a program that operates in the South Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, brings students, such as May, to India to work with children in orphanages who are often abused or abandoned by their families.

HOINA is connected to Penn State through the Schreyer Honors College but is open to all interested Penn State students. It is classified as a service education program, according to Schreyer Selection and International Programs Coordinator Richard Stoller.

Stoller said he hopes the program gives students the experience of another part of the world.

"Most students have very little sense of third-world countries," Stoller said.

Many participants said they learned a lot about underdeveloped countries and the poverty that faces them during the trip.

"It was really, really extreme," Keely Byrne (junior-finance) said. "The kids at HOINA had horrible lives, but in the day-to-day lives, it was better than others."

When given another view of the world, many students said they were able to re-examine their own lives in comparison to the lives of the children and other Indian citizens.

"I learned about what people need in life," participant Jessica Lehman (sophomore-English and geography) said. "What you need in life is people."

Byrne said she discovered that the home put a human face on poverty and orphaned children. It was no longer just an ad on TV; it was people, problems and poverty, she said.

During a train ride to the boys' orphanage in the neighboring state of Andhra Pradesh, May said she experienced the country's poverty firsthand.

Beggar children would stay in the train stations asking passengers for money and food, she said, adding that sometimes they would follow people onto the train and sweep the floors in front of them to make money.

"That'd be hard to do, because you'd want to help them, but the change and food I give them probably wouldn't last that long," May said. "You can't help everyone."

Since 2000, HOINA's founder, Darlene Large, has invited Penn State students to participate in the summer program.

Lehman said children are brought into the orphanages when Large or HOINA's board of trustees hear of children in need, or when someone personally brings them to the home.

Although many of the children are orphans, there are also children from families who simply did not have the means to support them.

Large, who is currently in India, said in an e-mail message that she has recently taken in additional children, putting the number at about "90 boys and over 100 girls."

"We took in some tsunami kids and a lot of orphaned ones and abandoned kids, and most of them are under 7 or 8 [years old]. Some are 2 and 3," she said. "We could sure [use] some colored T-shirts and jeans for these little boys."