iVolunteering in back of the beyond

Last year, around this time, Rohini Jog was basking in the success of turning around Roses of Mbuya, a small tailoring workshop in Uganda. Roses had 15 HIV positive women, stitching clothes as and when they were sought by the nearby shops. They earned a small stipend. Nothing much to look forward to.

But Jog changed all this. She had wafted into the world of the Roses as a volunteer with iVolunteer, the Indian counterpart of Voluntary Serivces Organisation (VSO), an international agency which has been placing volunteers in distant parts of the world matching skills with needs.

Jog is part of the first team of 16 Indians who were sent abroad by iVolunteer. The volunteers are coming back after their stay that lasted a year and a half.

The reasons that drove these volunteers to third world countries, to situations of power shortages and bad roads, are varied. For Jog, it was a ticket to freedom from corporate boredom and monotony and a peep into the development sector.

"I was tired of the work I had been doing since I was 16. I thought volunteering in Uganda was my opportunity," says Jog, now back from her 15-month stay in Uganda.

She recalls fondly how she changed the payment system in Roses to piece-rate and then went on to get advance contracts for work. One of the first was from Aga Khan Foundation, which had a training centre there and needed uniforms for their nurses. We got the order.

We had enough orders lined up till the end of the year and what was running on a $10,000 annual loss began to run on $5,000 annual profit, she says.

Now she is back in Mumbai and two months into her first job in the development sector with a French NGO. Here again, she is working as a programme manager of a project providing drugs to HIV and TB patients.

"Every year now, 5,000 odd people apply for volunteering. We take only about 50 people after rigorous screening," says Rahul Nainwal, the director of iVolunteer.

Nainwal, a management graduate from the Institute for Rural Management, Anand, has spent the last few months with farmers in Sierre Leone, tidying up accounts and setting up a non-profit organisation working on advocacy among farmers.

"I was often driving the NGO's truck," he says. A sense of adventure took me there, he adds. Like any VSO volunteer, he earned a stipend of Rs 7,000 a month. "I had to be part of the work that I was promoting," he adds.

iVolunteer is not the first project Nainwal started. He is known as the founder of Mitra, one of the NGOs which pioneered volunteering in India in 2000.

"It was about connecting volunteers with needs in the country. It is still working," says Nainwal.

iVolunteer was formed a couple of years ago when VSO sought partnership with Mitra. The name changed and international volunteering became an aspect of the NGO. iVolunteer is for now overflowing with stories of the first batch of volunteers.

Amid these stories coming from abroad are new faces who are leaving to explore distant shores as volunteers. There are volunteers like Neela Deshmuck, 60, who has now left for South Africa to work with a women's group. A 58-year old, who used to work with MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, has gone to Ghana, says Nainwal. Then there are couples with children who are leaving to work in African countries.

Poonam Sharma, who had gone to Africa as a volunteer from Amnesty, recalls her experience as fulfilling.

"I was supposed to raise funds for a national association for the deaf. They were totally dependent on foreign funds, but I forced them to look at the option of self sustainability and raising their own revenue. Today, they bring out souvenirs, stage skits and do various other activities to raise funds. It was a very fulfilling period for me," says Sharma, who has now joined VSO as a coordinator.

"The basic idea is to transfer skills," says Jog, who spent the last four months of her stay in Uganda with a local worker, who was to take over Roses from her.

"VSO wants skill transfer to happen through interlinking of people," says Nainwal, who can manage a smattering of Kreole after his stay in Sierre Leone.

www.ivolunteer.org.in