Volunteers Galore

For the last few months, Smarita and I have been organizing a volunteer trip. A grand total of 14 volunteers came to spend 2 weeks working at several of our NGO partners. Some were sent to volunteer in one of the red light districts drop-in-centers. Others were sent to set up a preschool inside a shelter home, and the rest went to lead arts programs at a shelter home for recently rescued survivors.

I must admit, the last two months have been hectic and sometimes difficult trying to get everything organized. And of course, as soon as the volunteers arrived all those plans got changed! But overall, the trip was successful and, frankly speaking, fun in a chaotic way. The phrase "herding cats" came up a lot because everyone wanted to visit different places in their freetime. I managed to take two of them to my Mother Teresa church, and straight away to the Kalighat Temple. And the whole team went for an exciting adventure to Varanasi, a spiritual journey for them all as they got sick on the train...

In terms of actual volunteering, I could not have asked for a better team. Each one was very self reliant and self-starting. They immediately made connections with the children and teenagers at the shelter homes, something which doesn't usually happen in such a short time. Since many of the survivors are traumatized, they are fearful of new people and especially men, but they automatically saw the genuine kindness in each of the volunteers. By the end of the week, our farewells included lots of tears and hand-drawn cards. We even had an inauguration party at the preschool - complete with icecream Phushka (an Indian street snack). All of the girls asked me "When are they coming back?" Looking into their longing eyes, I had to lie and tell them "Next year." I sincerely hope that each of the volunteers does come back next year. But in the meantime, I'll do my best to fill the big void in their hearts with messages and photos from the volunteer team.