Meet our Volunteers
Zoe volunteered in South India for three weeks.
Organize a fundraising event
Be ambitious and organize a fundraising event to contribute to your project. Here there are some ideas:
* Organize a sponsored run, swim or bike ride.
* Hold a charity dinner or bake sale.
* Organize a flea market. Collect second hand goods to sell.
* Hold a raffle with donated prizes. Ask local businesses to donate.
* Organize a Benefit Concert.
* Arrange a Pub Quiz.
The possibilities are endless! Be creative! We are affiliated with a number of charities worldwide. If you need official support for your fundraising efforts, let us know when and where you'd like to organize an event and we will try to arrange support for you. For more volunteer information, contact us.
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Uma Nivas (West Bengal)
Introduction
Do you want to really make a difference to the lives of the poor? Come on an adventure to the tribal villages of West Bengal and help teach English, math, computer studies, science or any other skills you have.
The skills that you can offer will help the desperately poor Santhal tribal children at Uma Nivas, a primary and girls’ high school with attached orphanage.
Join our children’s daily yoga and meditation sessions and develop your full potential while helping our children to develop theirs.
Environment
Uma Nivas Project is located in Katanga Village, Purulia District, West Bengal. The primary school has around 150 boys and girls, 50 of whom are residential, while the high school has around 150 children attending. The orphanage is home to 23 girls aged between 10 and 18.
The surrounding area is populated by tribal santhals who, for the most part, live well below the poverty line. The high school provides subsidized, and in some cases, free education to the local children. A school hostel accommodates around 50 girls from further who cannot come on a daily basis due to lack of easy transportation.
Right now we are only providing education to the village children. In the future we want to help develop infrastructure for the villages…a natural health care centre, a mobile medical unit come ambulance, a maternity clinic to provide hygienic conditions for childbirth, wells, and much more. The people here are unimaginably poor. They need our help so much. Bring your skills and come and join us!
Management
Didi Ananda Vratiisha, the principal of the high school is a very jolly person who is warm and hospitable. She's a great social worker and has been running the Uma Nivas high school for the last 10 years. She speaks very good English and will make you feel at home right away. She is also open to change and new ideas as far as the management of her project is concerned. She is also deeply respected by the local people as she really tries to help them solve their problems.
Volunteer Coordinator
Malati is originally from England, but has been helping poor schools in India for over 25 years. She has learned about the culture, the languages and about the people. Twenty years ago she started a programme to help provide infrastructure to struggling village schools and has since arranged funds for many schools to help them to become self-sufficient.
Accommodation
The school can offer one medium sized room where one or two volunteers can stay. The electric supply is generally good, except in the rainy season.
At the school bathing water is carried up to the bathroom from the well downstairs and the washing of clothes is done at the well. Volunteers will receive training in Indian style bathing!
You will be provided with vegetarian food but can eat other food outside our project if you wish.
Cost
First month: Rs. 20000 (approx. Euro 250)
Subsequent months: Rs. 6000 (approx. Euro 75)
Regardless of how you choose to help, P.O.O.R's volunteer program gives you a rich experience of the Indian culture and way of life that will stay with you long after you return home. And your students will never forget you...
Who do we need?
We prefer female volunteers or couples; however we will accept male volunteers who wish to help when we run our one week holiday English camps. You must have a good, moral character and respect the local culture.
Your job as a volunteer
- to teach English, math, computer studies, science, history, geography or share any other academic or non-academic skills you have.
- to train the teachers to plan and teach creative lessons
- to help with after school homework
- to play games with or organize activities for the children during recreation time, teach them about your life and learn about theirs
- if you have a taste for physical activity, your help with our garden will be appreciated, laying paths, planting vegetables or clearing out the underbrush which constantly threatens to take over.
- become a member of our small family for the time you are here and have fun with us together.
- we will be happy if volunteers can also teach songs and dance and drama to the children.
What to expect
In India rote learning is the norm and hundreds of bored pupils stream out of our schools every day burdened with books and with hours of homework ahead of them. This results from teaching defects in class time.
We would like a volunteer who can help teach the teachers how to make lessons more interesting using playful methods. If you are a kindergarten or lower primary teacher with a creative mind and the capacity to work wonders on a shoestring budget, we will welcome you with open arms.
We need your help to teach spoken English to the children and teachers. In India the children only learn to read and write English but never learn to talk it! We want to remedy this.
Other Projects accepting volunteers: Shillong, Jaipur
Volunteers
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