Volunteering in India

When planning a vacation, sometimes we want to do more than just simply see the sights. If you’re interested in doing some good with your vacation time, Julie Thompson, writer for hackwriters.com, might have an interesting idea for you to persue in her article Smiles & suffering amongst India’s poorest children. In this article you will receive a first hand account from Heather Campbell, a volunteer from New Zealand.

“India. A country with a dizzying mix of cultures, languages and religions, all merging together to make a unique cocktail of sights, sounds and smells. India is home to over a billion people, making it the second most populated country in the world. It is also home to devastating levels of poverty, illiteracy and exploitation.

Volunteering in India provided Heather with the opportunity to get amongst a society completely different to her own. ‘We did a lot of traveling around the countryside, looking at existing programs. We met families in quite isolated, very poor rural areas who had disabled children that lived in quite impoverished conditions, just seeing if we could, and how we could provide some help’.

Despite the intense poverty, Heather was able to see the positive aspects of the trip.

‘I never saw so many smiley children in all my life’ she says, laughing, ‘and they had absolutely nothing, I never saw them with a toy, yet they all played, and ran around, and they were happy, and they laughed, but they just had nothing. Some of them didn’t even have clothes, maybe one item of clothing, maybe one t-shirt or one pair of pants, but hardly ever both’.”