- What is Community Project Work
- Personal Experience
- Bangalore University
- Introducing to Students
- Problems Faced
- Results
- visiting the aged people and orphaned children and getting actively involved with them
- collecting food and distributing it amongst the needy
- Cleaning and beautifying the surroundings
- Donating blood
- Creating awareness on social issues
- Donating money, clothes and other items to the needy
I had done a month long volunteering work Krupaprasad Kendra. This non governmental organization is located at Nashik district of Maharashtra. The organization focuses people affected with HIV/ AIDS by caring and supporting them. The volunteering work was done before the start of my third year of Under Graduation. I learnt the basic skills of counselling, documentation, etc during my work there.
When I was pursuing my post graduation I was part of the street play team named as Drishti which is a part of the Centre of Social Action of Christ University. We often visited the slumsand villages in and around Bangalore such as LR Nagar, Rajendra Nagar and others and noted the problems faced by them. Later we would develop a script projecting their issue and practice the street play. In addition to this, we would visit the slums or villages, invite the locals to witness our play and then perform the street play in the middle of the village and slums. We aimed in creating awareness on multiple issues.
I had decided to hold a students’ presentation on the volunteering work undertaken by them on Jan 17th through MS Teams. Hence, five marks for the work done by them that must include certificates, letter of appreciation or photo or video records as proofs and five marks for the presentation of the same. As mentioned earlier, many of them did it but there were a section who did not do anything. These small fraction of students were complaining about everything like they did not find any, we can’t go out during the lockdown, parents were not allowing and some of them were not at all interested to do the volunteering work. This made me really angry.
As these students almost gave up and I sensed that my encouragement to students to take up any volunteering work was falling flat. I decided to tweak the voluntary activity. I told students to search for any volunteering work that can be done online. I found a website named as ivounteer. The link for the same is https://www.ivolunteer.in/. Students can opt for other virtual volunteering too.
One student was unable to find even one virtual volunteering work so I gave him an assignment to list down five NGO’s in his hometown of Hyderabad and an article about the same. One of the student did not do anything. Some of them volunteered for more than one. Rest of them volunteered in the following:-
- Sri Balavinayagar Seva Samajam – Pammal, Chennai, T.N.: 1 student
- Viklang Seva Bharti, Jabalpur, M.P.: 1 student
- The Art of Living, Chennai, T.N.: 1 student
- Asha Bhavan, Bangalore: 5 students
- Velugu Care Home for Aged Children, Madannapally, A.P.: 1 student
- Baharagora village school, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand: four students
- Team Everest and Bhumi NGO- Online work: 2 students
- Milestone: Trust for Special Children, Nashik, Maharashtra: 1 student
- The Koru Foundation, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand: 1 student (he started the ngo along with brother)
- Bommarillu Orphanage, Ongole, Prakasam, A.P.: One student
- Akhshaya Patra, Bangalore: 1 student
- AIESEC, Bangalore: 3 students
- Lions Club- Home for the Elderly, Erode, T.N.: 1 student
- Mitra Jyoti, Bangalore: 2 students
- IN-DEED Foundation- Online: 1 student
- Centre for Developmental Activities CDAC, Manipur run by Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, New Delhi, Moreh Bazar, Tali Road, Tengnoupal District, Manipur: 1 student
- The Life Foundation, Jeypore, Koraput, Odisha: 1 student
- Sampriti NGO, Jorhat, Assam: 1 student
Overall, it was a fantastic experience with lots of ups and down. Still, I am motivated to explore new possibilities in the coming semesters for the Community Project Work component. This is my first Community Project Work for the students.
Penned by – Livea Thekkekara Paul works as an English Lecturer at International School of Management Excellence, a leading private B-school in Bengaluru, India.