What did I actually do?

Many people have asked what I did in India when I wasn’t taking photos of roadside advertisements or tucking into McSpicy burgers at McDonalds.

Fair question. I had actually meant to write more about work, but in the event the volunteering came to feel like a ‘day job’ and seemed less interesting to write about than vehicles driving the wrong way up the hard shoulder.

So here’s what I did. I’ve included a bit of background on volunteering at Deep Griha Society which should be useful if any readers are interested in giving their time to an Indian NGO in the future.

DGS was set up in 1975 and the first volunteers came in 1981. The charity welcomes a mixture of international and local volunteers. The organisation is clear that volunteers are there to ‘support staff, not replace them’. This attracted me when I was looking for a volunteering opportunity. I definitely wasn’t interested in working for an NGO that wanted to put impose its view of the world on an Indian organisation.

My fellow volunteers. Charlie in the middle is 80 years old.

Volunteers get involved in activities across the organisation – from fundraising to helping out in the crèches and youth empowerment groups. Writing grant proposals to secure new funding streams for the charity is another regular volunteer activity.

I focused on external communications, as that seemed a good way to use my PR skills. I wrote the quarterly newsletter (you can read it here). This newsletter goes out to 4000+ friends of DGS around the world and shows them the difference their donations have made (click here to sign up for future issues). I also wrote a number of news stories for the website along with a manual for future volunteers to enable them to get up and running updating the website, facebook, twitter etc. If any readers go to DGS they might end up using it one day ;) I also used my photography skills to record some events such as this intriguing and rendition of ‘Old Macdonald had a farm’ at the DGS' school open day:

I also gave one-to-one English coaching classes to a number of the team leaders. Good English skills are essential to the efficient running of the organisation, and are especially important when it comes to applying for international funding or attending congresses. I found teaching my native language much to my liking. The results were tangible and it was a great way to get to know local people. I also gave some pre-exam English coaching to a group of boys at City of Child, as well as to the teachers at the charity’s English-medium school and to the DISHA ladies (DISHA = Deep Griha’s Integrated Service for HIV and AIDS)

English coaching at City of Child 

The inimitable DISHA ladies

HIV/AIDS is a major focus for DGS and another area of involvement for volunteers. Wake Up Pune! is the English language version, aimed predominantly at Pune’s growing middle class population. Given the English medium, volunteers play a big role in Wake Up Pune.

I got to co-lead an awareness session for a group of men at a new alcohol and drug rehabilitation centre called Santulan. I had the help of Anuja, a local volunteer, who translated my presentation into Marathi. The men were curious and engaged, and speaking to them felt like a real privilege.   

Other activities undertaken by volunteers included an exciting Tippy Tap project, and a project aimed at creating nutritional ladoos (round Indian sweets) to deliver a healthy dose of key nutrients currently in short supply among local children.

So that’s a brief description of some of what I and my volunteer friends have been up to. To be honest in many ways it felt like I was just getting going when it was time to leave India. This reflects the experience of many international volunteers – there’s so much to take in at first and so much to get to grips with culture-wise that the longer one can commit to staying the better. The solution is for me to return to Pune and continue my work in the future…

The inspirational Dr Neela Onawale, who set up DGS in 1975 

with her husband Reverend Bhaskar Onawale 

If anyone is thinking of volunteering I would be happy to be contacted. I had invaluable advice from my friend Lotte Webb who has been to DGS a couple of times in the past. You can also visit this page.

I fell a little behind on my blog posts so I'll be sharing a few more over the coming weeks.