India Himalaya Volunteer and Adventure

For both programmes (four or eight weeks) the schedule is the same for the first seven days:

Day 1 - Arrival in Delhi
Personally met at Delhi Airport and shown to a hotel to refresh and chill out.

Day 2 to 5 - Travel to Jaipur
After breakfast you will travel by deluxe bus to Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. This will take five hours but you will stop halfway for lunch on this journey. In Jaipur, you will stay with a local Indian family during a three-day orientation that covers things such as: Indian history and culture, volunteering and community development and introduction to Hindi. The orientations also include time for sightseeing and shopping. One excursion includes a morning visit to Amber Fort, the old city and an elephant ride (if permitted). You will also see a Bollywood movie at Jaipur’s most famous movie theatre.

Day 5 - Taj Mahal overnight visit
You will travel to Agra for an overnight stay and a visit to the stunning Taj Mahal.

Day 6 - Travel to Himachal Base Camp
You and the other volunteers will board an overnight train (14 hours) for Palamphur, the closest railhead to the Himachal project placement.

Day 7 - Arrival at Project site
On arrival you will have a three-hour transfer to the camp by taxi. The camp is located in the Bindravan village, which is part of Palampur town (1.5km away). You will then have free time to relax, unpack and become familiar with your new home. After lunch there is a visit to a local market.

Day 8 - Introduction to volunteer projects
After breakfast, you will meet with all the friendly guides that will take care of you for the next three or seven weeks. They are there to offer on-site assistance, helping with any language barriers and will attend the projects with you so there is always help and advice if needed. In the afternoon there are group sessions to plan for the volunteer work.

Weeks 2 to 4 / 2 to 8 - dependent on length of stay

Depending on your interests and local needs, you are placed in work settings where you can make a meaningful contribution to the improvement of local social services. You can volunteer by helping, the three main areas are education, childcare centres and a school for mentally challenged children.
You also have the opportunity to do further volunteer work on free afternoons.
Typical placements include additional tutoring for slow learning children, maintenance of institutional facilities, computer training, orphanage work and other similar community orientated projects and services.

Volunteer Options
1. Education
2. Childcare
3. School for mentally challenged children

Wherever your volunteer placement occurs, the general pattern is to work five days a week for approximately three to five hours per day. Most work occurs in the morning before lunch. But some placements require afternoon work as well.

Volunteer Role: Education projects

Class sizes in India can be extremely large, leading teachers to become little more than traffic police attempting to keep order.

Activities include:

• Teaching children English and Maths in schools
• Creating a playful environment through painting, playing games, singing etc
• Working with local teachers in creating low cost teaching materials
• Take responsibility for everyday attendance of a few children to the school
• Ensuring regular health check ups of the children in each school through co-operating with the local doctors and hospital staff
• Creating basic hygiene awareness amongst children for healthier living
• Between the end of March and mid-April, from mid-July to early August and from mid-December to the end of December, the government schools are closed for holidays. If you are here during this time you will have the opportunity to teach at independently sponsored schools (using community centres).

Childcare volunteers assist in local childcare centres, known as Aanganbari. The concept of ‘pre-school' childcare is a new one in India. Unlike Western countries, where childcare facilities exist primarily to free women to work, the aanganbari's main purpose is to provide a safe, healthy and hygienic space to young children who would not be able to receive proper care at home.

Activities include:

• Ensuring maximum attendance by the children of the area to these centres
• Personal attention and care to the children coming to the centre every day
• Assistance to the local worker for record maintenance for each child based on health, vaccination, growth and nutritional condition
• Making and feeding the children a specially prepared nutritious meal every day with the heap of a local worker
• Continuous survey of all pregnant women and newborn babies in the area for regular health check ups and vaccination
• Creating a colourful and enjoyable environment for the children with games, stories and other creative activities (all material, support and training for such activities is provided)

Special school for mentally challenged children. Severely understaffed, the two teachers in the school are often struggling to give adequate attention to each of the approximately 20-odd students enrolled in the school.

Activities include:

• Assisting teachers in completing assignments for the students
• Organising education and fun activities for the children
• Visiting students’ homes for sensitisation of the family towards their children with special needs

If you would like to get involved in more volunteer work than your core option offers. You may have the option to further volunteer work which can include the following:

1. Additional tutoring for slower learning children
With the help of regularly updated records of school children, interested volunteers can take up special classes for children that need more tutoring at their homes. This activity can have the additional benefit of building more confidence in the community about volunteers’ work and awareness about the need for regular schooling.

2. Conversation English and computer education classes to women
A variety of educational and confidence building activities are organised for the benefit of adolescent girls and women of the local community. These activities are geared towards expanding the horizon of this often-neglected section of the community with the purpose of giving them a sense of self-worth and empowerment. Volunteers contribute significantly in the areas of:

Computer training - Computer knowledge can give students an employability advantage and make it easier for them to access modern means to information and expression. Volunteers can make use of the well-tested and developed modules of imparting basic computer skills to enthusiastic local girls and women.
English classes - In an increasingly unilingual world, knowledge of English can make a huge difference to the confidence, employability and social status of an individual. With English not being the first language in the rural areas, people from a vast majority of Indian population miss out on quality opportunities of gaining confidence in the use of language. Volunteers, with their involvement in teaching English to local women can help the project achieve a multitude of objectives like empowerment and increasing employability.

3. Orphan home, Saliyana
Situated in the village Saliyana, the orphanage houses around 25 children in various age segments. Volunteers can provide the special individual attention that the children miss. Some specific activities can include:

• Helping children with their homework
• Conducting sports training and games
• Creativity exercises
• General care and attention to the children

4. Maintenance of institutional facilities
During some afternoons, volunteers can take up maintenance, renovation and decoration of various work places like schools, daycare centres etc. This kind of work will not be available at all times so is an extra activity that you would carry out.

Please note: Itineraries and activities are subject to change.