A bit about the charity I am working for this summer and what I think I will be doing
This summer I will be joining 25 other UK volunteers and heading to Tamil Nadu in southern India where I will be volunteering with Restless Development for 3 months. I have already met most of the other volunteers at our training weekend in York and I cannot wait to get to know them all better once we get to India.
Restless Development are a youth-led organisation whose work is very different to that which I did in Nepal so I am excited to see what it will be like. They have three goals: civic participation – ensuring that young people are significant contributors to development processes, Livelihoods and Employment – helping young people to take up productive livelihoods and employment and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights – promoting safe sexual and reproductive practices among young people.
Restless have been working in India since 1985 engaging young people to address the most urgent issues they face in India – governance, livelihoods and health. They currently work in 5 of the 29 states in India – Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand and Rajasthan.
As far as I know I will be living in accommodation with other international volunteers but we will be assigned a host family who will provide all of our food. We will be working in Youth Resource Centres (YRC) and schools and colleges within our communities.
Each international volunteer is also paired up with a national volunteer and I am very excited to meet the national volunteers when we arrive. We will be working together very closely and I’m sure this will give us a very unique experience.
As for where I’ll actually be staying and exactly what I’ll be doing I have no idea. I will only find out at the end of our week-long training in country. I hope that I will be able to work along the health side but our groups are decided for us so we will see.
I hope to update this regularly – WiFi permitting of course.
Lots of love,
Em xx