SAUGUS – She has two degrees from a good school and could go anywhere, but an overwhelming passion for giving back has taken Lindsey Swanson 7,300 miles out of her comfort zone and into the slums of India.”Instead of entering the workforce right away I decided to do something for the world while I still had the energy and passion to give back,” she said via an e-mail chat from India.The 23-year-old Saugus native and Wake Forest University graduate finished school last spring with a degrees in economics and English literature, but said she couldn’t commit herself to a cubicle.”I started asking myself a lot of questions, and for the first time I felt they were the right ones: ?What do you want from this life?’ ” she said.Swanson decided to organize a fund called the “Women and Children Project India,” after researching womens’ rights and poverty in India. She then traveled to Kathputli Nagar, the poorest of slums in Jaipur, an urban city 150 miles from Delhi.”Ironically it is also located across from the government buildings and gorgeous stone parliament house,” she wrote in an e-mail.Every day she goes into the slums to teach young girls English, computer skills and, most importantly, self-confidence.Swanson teaches the girls for only two hours a day, which is all the time they have because they are also expected to do household work.She tries to teach the girls to be assertive, make eye contact, shake hands and be ambitious.”We discuss the alternatives to being a housewife, and the many opportunities that may await them if they choose,” she wrote. “I am usually not a ?kid person,’ I am the first to roll my eyes at a kid running in a restaurant or a baby crying on a plane. But these girls are truly amazing – smart, genuinely sweet, quirky, and so appreciative ? “She said the gratitude the girls show is so immense it makes her want to cry, but it also underscores the importance of the work she is doing.”Without me these girls would not receive any education at all since they are expected to clean the house until their father marries them off,” Swanson wrote.She has also teamed up with a local organization, Indian Network for Development Exchange (IDEX), where she spends an hour each day conducting family visits.Swanson sits with a Hindi translator and collects data, such as family size, aspirations and political rights, to try and get a handle on what is described as an underrepresented and undocumented neighborhood.While she couldn’t be prouder of what she is doing, Swanson said there is no way to convey the sense of tragedy in the slums.”The slums are hard to see and even harder to describe,” she wrote. “It is mostly just trash, feces and dirty children.”Most of the young children are naked, the streets double for a bathroom and are also home to dogs, pigs, goats and cows.”The slums break my heart everyday, but as usual, there’s a silver lining,” she wrote. “To me the children’s existence seems devastating but, to them, it is just another day playing with their friends in the trash and mud. They are blissfully unaware of their own plight, and almost all of them are happy despite their filth, malnutrition and handicaps. They are a great reminder that kids will be kids, no matter what.”Joyce Swanson, Lindsey’s mother, supports her daughter’s endeavors.”For me to say I’m proud of my daughter goes without saying,” she said. “But I admire her.”Joyce Swanson said she believes her job as a parent is to essential phase out her job as a parent. It would have been easy for her to tell her daughter not to go, but she could never do that.”I kept saying there are parents who send their kids off to war,” she said. “Life is a risk and I would never want to be the one to tell her not to do something. Everyday I say, ?I love you. Be safe.’ “Swanson is determined to persevere and to make a lasting difference in India by raising enough money to repaint the tiny school, buy a new white board for the empty classroom and organize a local book drive