FOR as long as I can remember, I have been intrigued by India. As a young child, images of India, with such rich colours, textures, and overcrowded cities, intrigued me. I was from New York and have always been an extravert who loves crowds. However, nothing I was familiar with (including Times Square) compared with the images that I saw of India’s cities: so vibrant and exciting!
As a teenager, I discovered Indian cuisine. I chose to become a vegetarian at age 12, but it wasn’t until around age 14 that I tasted my first vindaloo. Finally, flavourful vegetarian food! At the same time that I was discovering Indian cuisine, I was increasingly involved in volunteering. I visited elders in a nursing home, spent time with adults with developmental disabilities in a residential programme, and spent one summer volunteering in a psychiatric hospital. I loved these experiences and they led me to pursue a career in social work. I studied social work as an undergraduate student and had hoped to spend a year in India after graduation working in some capacity with population growth and impact. However, since this was all before the internet and the world wide web, I wasn’t able to find an opportunity.
Volunteering in India
The years rolled on and I eventually pursued a graduate degree in social work, married, and was blessed with children. When my second child was born, I shifted from my school social work practice to join the ranks of academia. Following the birth of my third child, my desire to travel to India to volunteer or somehow contribute to social and educational programming resurfaced stronger than ever. With the support of my family, I began looking into how I might be able to realise my lifelong dream of volunteering in India.
In 2004, I had been teaching social work at The University of Vermont for seven years. About a third of our students studied abroad, but rarely had a social work experience or the opportunity to volunteer while overseas. Additionally, many of our students didn’t have the privilege of being able to be away from work for a full term to study abroad. So I began to think that perhaps I could bring students for a two week, winter inter-session course to India where we could volunteer with an NGO. However, I did have one major obstacle: I had no connections in India.
Through the internet, I reached out to some international social service organisations to inquire about any possible opportunities to bring students to India to volunteer. I heard nothing back for a year or so. Then one day, I received a message from the Director of Jewish Education at ORT India in Mumbai. My e-mail inquiry was forwarded to him and he was curious about what I had in mind. We scheduled a phone meeting and discussed my interest in bringing a group of undergraduate social work students to volunteer where we don’t know the language and are unfamiliar with the culture.
Expanding one’s experiences far beyond one’s comfort zone while navigating unfamiliar territory is a critical element of social work training. Social workers need to be able to suspend their personal frames of reference in order to be available to truly understand their client’s perspectives, needs, and goals. During that phone conversation, the director invited me to Mumbai and persuaded me that he would be able to help me arrange some volunteer opportunities. I wrote for a grant to fund my travel and nine months later I was meeting my new colleagues in Mumbai. The Director’s previous career was in social work so he and his wife (who was also involved in human services) connected me with several of their friends who graciously took time out of their busy schedules to meet with me and discuss what I had in mind for my students.
I felt that it would have been presumptuous of me to have something in mind for my students. Rather, I asked what would be helpful from such a group as ours. I had met with people from Down to Earth, Akanksha, and Saraswati Mandir Trust to discuss how my students might be helpful to the work of their organisations.
India journeys begin
I returned to Mumbai in December of 2007 with nine students to volunteer with the three NGOs mentioned above. Three students were matched to each NGO for the two weeks that we were in Mumbai. At Down to Earth, the students taught evening English and geography lessons to children in a makeshift classroom within a community in Cuffe Parade. Some of the parents of the children told my students, this was their first experience with foreigners coming into the community. By the end of the two weeks, they welcomed my students into their homes with incredible hospitality and generosity.
Another three students were placed at Akanksha. At two classroom sites, the social work students taught morning or afternoon English lessons and mathematics, as well as spent a great deal of time engaging with the children around cultural exchange.
Finally, the last three students were placed at Saraswati Mandir/TULIPS school in order to help with a research project on developing and documenting benchmarks and measurements for student progress. In later years, the social work students worked directly with children with disabilities, helping them with communication and fine motor skills. At the end of each evening, the students and I gathered to share, debrief, and reflect on their daily volunteer experiences. Conversations would inevitably lead to discussions of issues of poverty and its impact on the human condition and social development. We would speak about the role of social work and anti-oppressive practice. We would also reflect on social work practice skills that we were using in working in the various communities and organisations. We also did a great deal of reflecting on, and drawing connections to, the similarities between our experiences in Mumbai and our work in our small, rural American state of Vermont. Lastly, at the end of the course and one month after arriving back home, the students also shared their reflections of what knowledge and skills they would bring home with them to incorporate into their emerging social work practice.
I continued teaching this course with these partnerships for a few years and then gradually, and with another American colleague co-teaching the course with me, transitioned to partnering with the TATA Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). With TISS, we now offer a Field Practicum in Social Care Policy and Practice. For this two week course, we collaborate with TISS’s Centre for Health policy, Planning, and Management. Following an orientation session and some critical agency presentations, our students, in partnership with TISS students and faculty, work in small groups to study particular NGOs in depth so that they can describe the work of the NGO, its goals and objectives, administrative structure, funding and utilisation of services and programmes by the community, and solicit and provide feedback to the provider and the beneficiaries.
At the end of the course, the students make presentations to various stakeholders. Through this project, the students learn to analyse and understand various health problems of marginalised community members, hone their interviewing and collaboration skills while considering innovative prevention and intervention strategies that they might suggest, as well as examine and understand the role of professionals and paraprofessionals in providing services to vulnerable and marginalised people. Throughout this experience, once again each night we met as a group to debrief and reflect on what we have experienced, the various issues that confounded us, and how we want to move forward in our professional development based on this experience.
It is a privilege for me to travel every other year to Mumbai with a new group of students to volunteer in various capacities. People often say how noble volunteering is. However, for me, it feels selfish. As much as we have supported the work of various NGOs in Mumbai through research, teaching, or just sharing information, we often leave feeling we get so much more out of the experience than we could possibly give. We are forever changed by the experience. Whether it is because people are so very appreciative of our assistance or involvement, or whether it’s because for many of us, we haven’t before witnessed the extent of poverty nor the profound and vivid juxtaposition of wealth and poverty that Mumbai offers, or whether it’s the unprecedented and phenomenal Indian hospitality, we cannot help but be forever changed as we board the plane back to the States.