When we think about volunteering, we usually think about the people we hope to help: children who need more attention than a busy center can give, women learning a skill that could change their income, patients in a crowded hospital. That is how it should be. But ask anyone who has volunteered and they will tell you the change runs both ways. Somewhere between your first nervous morning at a project and your last goodbye, you change too, often without noticing until you are home.
Here are some of the ways a volunteering trip to India can change your life.
A change in perspective
You can read about India, watch documentaries and scroll through photos, but none of it quite prepares you for being here. Daily life in Delhi or Jaipur is louder, warmer and more complicated than any screen can show.
If you have always had a home, an education and enough to eat, it is hard to imagine life without them. On a project, you meet children catching up on years of missed school and women learning to read as adults, and you see how hard the local staff work for them. The problems you have read about stop being statistics. They become people you know by name.
Feeling grateful for what you have
A few weeks in India has a way of resetting your priorities. A slow phone or a canceled plan feels less like a crisis after a day spent with people who make a great deal out of very little.
You may start to see your own schooling differently, too. The chance to learn, and the doors it opened for you, is something many of the people you meet are still working hard for.
Friends beyond borders
Your oldest friends know you inside out. On a volunteer trip, you meet people from around the world who think, speak and joke differently from you, and you quickly discover what you share: the wish to be useful, and the same mix of excitement and exhaustion at the end of a project day.
These friendships teach you to connect with people who seem nothing like you, and they have a habit of lasting. A year later, you may find yourself visiting a fellow volunteer on another continent.
Polishing your skills, and finding new ones
Any of our projects will stretch you. If you have ever wondered whether you would make a good teacher, a few weeks in a Jaipur classroom or with children in Delhi will tell you. You soon learn that patience and a good game matter more than a perfect lesson plan.
You learn from the people around you as well. Fellow volunteers bring ideas from home, local staff show you what works in their community, and together you get more done than any of you could alone.
Being happy outside your comfort zone
Your own bed, your favorite food and friends who get your jokes make life easy. Volunteering in India takes some of that away, at least for a while. You share a room, eat spicier food than you are used to, work with people who speak little of your language and find your own way around a city of millions.
It can be hard at times, and that is the point. Every problem you solve makes you a little more independent, until one day you notice that you are not just coping. You are enjoying it.
Not sure what to do next in life? A few weeks of volunteering in India won’t answer every question, but it will answer some of them. To find out more about our projects, email info@volunteeringindia.com.