Volunteer in India

From the mayhem of Delhi, to the tranquil realms of Darjeeling at the foothills of the Himalaya to the modern-day bustle of Bangalore, India offers sensory delights that will reward even the most jaded traveler.

Travelling in India is a truly unique experience as it is a country of startling contrasts. Despite its great welath more than 250 million people live below the poverty line.

With projects ranging from community development, media work experience, teaching English and sports coaching, your work will aim to improve the lives of those from some of India’s most impoverished slums and needy communities.

Choose your volunteer project in India

Our Aussie volunteer in India - Rachael Cossar

Community work in Calcutta, India

India has again assaulted all my senses. It's an insane, frantic and exhausting place, but also extremely stimulating and very rewarding.

Calcutta, to be frank, is shabby. It's a heaving place, straining under an INTENSE humidity that appears to have stood still since Independence, at least in regards to appearances. If you use your imagination, you can see glimpses of beauty in the old buildings, but most are so thoroughly run down and battered by the weather that this is a difficult task. Together with the crowding, poverty, ludicrous transport and infrastructure issues, plus the thousands of dogs (who simply couldn't be bothered to bite anyone, but are certainly not adverse to a scrap outside my window in the very early hours of the morning), Calcutta is a confronting city.

The Mission I am working at is, amongst all this madness, an amazing oasis. For a place where women and girls come because they have been living on the streets, are domestic violence victims, or are orphans, it is probably the most consistently positive place I've ever worked and the women truly are inspirational. We start every morning with yoga, followed by prayers and singing, before the work kicks off in the various teams - tailoring, silk screen printing, canteen, jam making, etc. A few of the women speak quite good English, but most have very little; one girl's vocab is limited to 'SISTER!', which she consistently calls out to me with no ambition to take it any further, whilst others are persistent in their endeavours to practice - 'sit, sit, speaking English!'

When I'm not helping out the various work teams, I'm actually formally teaching English, an assignment that is hard (and not just because we do everything sitting on the floor), challenging, hilarious and very entertaining (my broad Australian accent - yes, yes - is proving problematic...). It is also extremely rewarding. I was probably disproportionately pumped when one of the girls understood tenses; ecstatic when I overheard one of them say 'thanks very much', rather than 'very, very thanks' and delighted when I heard one of the girls asking a customer 'would you like any help?'

Next week, I have been asked to do a presentation to the senior team on business management and marketing. They want to know how to think like a business, rather than just as an NGO. It'll be a no PowerPoint, on the floor affair with a translator, which will be more humbling for me than them. I'd suggest that it's us 'corporates' that could learn more from them rather than vice versa.

The house I'm staying in is basic, but clean, with bucket showers as good as it gets. It's not a problem though, as here it is all relative; I at least get to use my bucket in a bathroom, as opposed to the boys outside my window washing in the lake or the family on the way to work washing at a burst water main on one of Calcutta's main drags. The house is run by a miniature lady who speaks no English at all, but who doesn't for one moment let this deter her from having a very animated 10 minute conversation with the other volunteers or me about God only knows what. We say 'good', 'thank you' or 'ok', and do a great deal of nodding, and this generally seems to suffice.

In regards to getting about, the Calcutta transport system is a cheap thrill if nothing else. The bus I get to work each morning costs me about 15 cents, but can only be compared to a shrunken woolshed on wheels. It's all wood and tin clapped together, with lots of sweaty folks inside, that rattles accordingly over the less than suitable roads for a city of 14 million. Just getting on the bus comes with its own set of nerves each day, as the bus doesn't so much stop, but rather demands you take a running jump. Add to this challenge the fact that I'm dressed like I'm on my way to a Toga Party, a la local style, and about as graceful in said ensemble as someone who has woken up stuck inside their doona cover, it's with a small internal round of applause each morning that I breath a sigh of relief and take my seat (it's designated seats for the ladies, and I couldn't be less of a feminist about it). It's then all about making out it's not happening, either the begging (by some poor soul always missing an eye, a leg, a...) or the really terrifying lack of road skills (if you think I'm exaggerating, the headline in yesterday's paper was 'Killer Buses, 5 pedestrians killed in last 15 days').

Finally, the transport is all about a fondness for beeping the horn. And as if to prove the point, the local driving school takes learners up and down my street each morning. There's very little traffic on this road ever, but nonetheless the learner is tooting and stalling and beeping and bunny hopping the whole way.... which, I'd offer, is probably a pass.

Community work in Calcutta, India