An Outlet: Part 4

4 October, 2018 - NGO Day

Today was surprisingly such a good but heckin' tiring day!

Day before yesterday, my college asked if anyone is interested in doing volunteering work for some NGO for a day and I signed up for it. And today was the day.

The NGO set up this carnival called Let's Read Carnival where they invited students from marginalised sections of society and organised a reading fest. I think that's a very good idea. This type of volunteering was a bit ironic for me because I don't normally like dealing with kids but I guess I've become a little softer now?

Anyways, I woke up, got ready and left for the place. As soon as I got off my ride, the faculty in charge of today's volunteering group messaged in our group asking me specifically whether I have reached. There was no one around me. WHAT IS THIS SORCERY?! First of all I didn't know the faculty was. So I didn't know that she knew who I am. Also, how and why did she ask me only out of all the people? And that too as soon as I reached the place?! I later realised that the person in charge was our new coordinator and she had seen me at the station and getting into my ride. Ah, makes sense now.

The others starting coming one by one, including one of my friends from our friend circle. I was happy that she had volunteered so I had someone to hang out with.

We didn't do any work in the beginning. More like we didn't get to do any work in the beginning. Apparently they had a breifing session for volunteers but no one informed us about it despite reaching early. Eventually, they tasked us with figuring out and handing out individual ID cards to all the students who came. There were A LOT of kids.

So the ID cards were of different colours  and the colours symbolised the child's reading capacity/ level of reading. The IDs also specified how many books of which language should they read. This information will come handy later on.

The NGO had made ID cards based on entire foundations missing out the fact that the foundation have many schools withing them. So it took us quite a lot of time to hand out those ID cards to everyone. I was doing this work first but the others took over and my friend and I started asking around if anyone else needed our help cause we felt a little useless as volunteers. No one gave any work which was bummer.

Some time later they called for one volunteer but her and I come in one package so we went together. That's when we got to know that there are quite a lot of corporate volunteers as well. They had apparently fallen short of one corporate volunteer so they asked (one of) us to take their place. They gave us 5 backpacks with some books, stationery and snacks. This meant that each volunteer is responsible for 5 kids throughout the time the kids were on campus. It was a good thing I had another person with me.

Since I sensed that the kids were Maharashtrians I began talking to them in Marathi and I was happy to see that they seemed to be very comfortable. The kids were good and listened to us well which was a blessing! We took the kids to the first room/workshop which was for something called 'Assisted reading'. So the kids would be reading whichever book they wanted and we would be helping the kids whenever they got stuck with the big words or just pronunciation in general. It felt nice to help the kids.

That went on for about half an hour after which we took them to a room where the kids had to pick 5 books based on their level of reading (as indicated on their ID cards). Thank goodness we had two people. I swear I would have lost the kids. If we were confused about something (because we didn't attend the breifing session), one person could stay with the kids while the other went and got that doubt clarified.

Then went to the second workshop room where there was a professional story teller. Woman was damn good. At one point she asked us to make a wish. All these kids were wishing to be great at studies and extra curriculars. Meanwhile,

My friend: I want to fly.
Me: I want to be a rock. (What am I? Suga?).

Lol generation gap.

Then we dropped the kids with their teachers, took pictures, bid adieu and left. Nice kids they were. We had snack boxes which had a samosa, a cake, a pack of potato wafers, a chocolate filled biscuit and Frooti. It was filling.

Friend and I needed a longer break so we went out for the school campus without any bag or money and roamed around aimlessly along narrow roads for a while, inspite of it being very sunny.

We then came back and realised there still is no work for us. We finally attended a briefing session and realised there are three batches. There were enough corporate volunteers this time so we didn't get to handle kids again.

We then looked around trying to get more work but with no luck. Apparently none of the other volunteers from our college got a lot of work but they eventually sent us to a store room and gave us a task of filling the bags with books, pens, frootis, journals, etc. We automatically had a supply chain sort of a thing formed with one person taking the bag, one person filling one thing, and finally me, counting how many bags we had made.

It was actually fun though. Cause there wasn't any commotion but there was a lot of noise because of this and we worked together as a team and finally finished packing 300 bags! We all screamt as if we achieved something big.

Later on we all got very tired. As it is we weren't getting any work. At one point,  friend and I sat on one of the benches and I felt so sleepy that I felt like singing. I refrain from singing in front of people and here I am, sincerely singing Lost Boy directly to my friend. She complimented my voice and I'd be lying if I say I didn't feel flattered.

After that, we really had had enough and wanted to leave. The coordinator wouldn't let us leave tho. Apparently we had to stay there till 7:30PM and it was only 3:30 by then. But what she failed to understand was that there are three different batches and separate volunteers for each batch. We had done our bit and could leave. Besides, we weren't getting any substantial work. The NGO peeps had it all covered.

Ofcourse we had to get some work right then.

This time we were behind the counters for the books that the kids had to take after their assisted reading session. I automatically took over the Marathi books section. The kids arrived and goodness this lot was rowdy. It literally felt like a stampede and these little ones didn't budge even for a second when we asked them to step back. This times' volunteers were doing a terrible job with handling the kids. We did such a better job.

Eventually, we got done by 4:30 and after thanking the authorities, finally left from the place. Friend and I had tentative plans of going for a movie or doing something afterwards but we were legit too tired to do anything but sleep. The heat definitely got to us.

I think the coordinator really fell in love with us today. I don't know what her family background is like but she was very happy with how the day went and that she bonded with us volunteers even when she was doing too much nakhras when we wanted to leave.

Honestly, tiring but a good day. Might go for another NGO thing but not anytime soon.