Volunteer Positions Available

Leading Light, New Light and Inspiring Light

Leading Light, New Light and Inspiring Light are our three schools, where we teach approximately 90 children, Monday to Saturday. We teach in English, using the phonics system and we require experienced teachers and teaching assistants with good spoken and written English to work with our permanent staff. We ask volunteer teachers for a minimum commitment of two months and all volunteer teachers must have CRB clearance. We also ask for a minimum of three days’ week commitment in order to provide continuity for the children.

Morning Light

Morning Light is our mobile project where we visit children and their families in the rural slums as needed. While there, we play with the children using educational toys, we wash them and treat them for head lice, scabies and other parasites, we provide a nutritional meal which includes milk and fruit and our resident doctor and volunteer nurse treat ailments and provide medication.

Many volunteers are extremely shocked by what they see when we visit the slums but they also tell us that supporting Morning Light is one of their most rewarding experiences.

Anjuna Market (Wed) Ingos Market (Sat)

We have stalls at Anjuna Market, held on Wednesdays and Ingo's night market held on Saturdays, we require help from volunteers in giving out leaflets, explaining about our work, taking contact details for the mailing list, asking for and accepting donations and answering any queries.

Calangute Beach near Big Banana

We have a table where people can donate money, toys and clothes and where we take their details and add them to the mailing list. We also need volunteers to hand out fruit and support the supervisory team.

Events

Sometimes we take the children out to events (such as carol singing) or out to sing and dance in local venues and we need volunteers to accompany us, help to organise the children and assist with fund raising (selling raffle tickets, taking round a collection tin) and handing out leaflets.

Tips for Medical/Nursing Volunteers

Having spent some time with the ETI team this year I have decided to put together a pre-volunteering information pack for medical and nursing volunteers. This is so that they can adequately prepare for their time in India and make the most of their time whilst here.

Roles for volunteers include:

Medical and Nursing work:

In my opinion anyone with medical or nursing experience will be able to make a big difference here; medical and nursing students, doctors, nurses and members of the allied health professions. There is plenty of medical work to do here, but my suggestion would be to plan before hand what you would like to get involved in and how much time you would like to spend doing it. Examples may be:

Routine medicals – checking the new children who join ETI and documenting their health. Treating any problems you may find.

Foot clinic – most of the problems here are related to foot wounds and infections as children walk barefoot in the slums. You could set up a clinic in the slums or at any of the training centres dressing and treating foot problems.

General clinic – there will be acute medical problems to deal with all the time. The usual paediatric stuff that you'll be used to dealing with e.g., ear infections, skin complaints. But there'll also be stuff you won't be so familiar with. For example, febrile illnesses here could be malaria, that wound that won't heal could be leprosy. So it's definitely worthwhile reading up on your tropical medicine and infectious diseases so you can make the most of your time here.

Health promotion – you could set up a health promotion project on something simple but effective. Past examples include the Oral Hygiene Project, Footwear and Keeping Feet Healthy Project. On beginning the routine medicals here, we have found that most of these children are underweight and have short stature for their age. We have therefore started a medical record for each child and we will re-check their height and weight in 3 months time to check their growth. If there are any concerns at this point we will put interventions in place. From my experience of routine medicals here, I can see that there is a place for an immunization awareness programme. None of these children know their immunization history and only one child had evidence of a BCG scar. There are lots of reasons for this including an inability to access healthcare from the slums and fear of vaccination and preference for non western medicine.

It is worth bringing along a basic medical kit with things you cannot find here. We had no problem in purchasing most antibiotics, painkillers and antifungal creams. However, trying to get hold of emolients, trimethoprim and dressings was difficult. Perhaps spend a few months asking local doctors and nurses to donate their excess supplies and dressings nearing use by date before you come. Otherwise, stock your kit once you arrive. You will find that if you need to treat someone with medication that is not in yours or the ETI medical kit, you will have to go to the pharmacy and buy it yourself as ETI doesn't have the funds to pay for treatments at the moment. Bear this in mind when financially planning your trip, you may wish to fundraise in order to sponsor your trip before you arrive.

There is a retired British GP living and working here with the charity, Dhiru, and a retired British Nurse who lives here for half the year, Beryl. If you have any interest in volunteering medically it would be wise to talk to Dhiru and Beryl in order to plan your time and discuss your potential projects. It is also worth getting into contact with me so that you can use my experiences to plan your time here.

Just because you have a medical background, doesn't mean you have to only do medical volunteering. You are also welcome to get involved with other aspects of the charity.

Fundraising

This could involve joining the ETI team at the Anjuna market stand. We give out leaflets and talk to the tourists about the charity work we do. We collect donations and tell people how they can get involved with the charity should they wish to do so. The Anjuna market day isn't for everyone. It involves approaching strangers and asking them for their time to talk about the charity with the ultimate aim of raising money and awareness of ETI.
We also spend some of our time giving out leaflets and putting posters up at local restaurants and travel agents. If there are potential medical volunteers at the market you are best placed to talk with them.

Office work:

This involves writing reports on what we've been doing and sending them to the UK office. For example, a report on the Morning Light project will involve a narrative on what was done, what was achieved and photos attached so supporters at home have an idea of what we are doing over here.

There may also be some letters to reply to and flyers and posters to re-design or update.

Again, this may not be your thing. An alternative would be to send your pictures with a short sentence on what you did, to the UK office. They can use these to populate the website or Facebook for example.

Teaching

If you wish to get involved, again I would suggest speaking with any of the employed or volunteer teachers, past and/or present, before you come. You may wish to teach regularly or just do a one off lesson but the kids will appreciate anything you do with them. They particularly love learning new songs, and having a new animated teacher to help with their numbers, drawing, reading and writing.

You may wish to bring teaching or play materials with you so it's worth chatting to the teachers before you come.
Louise Grant

louisegrant@doctors.net.uk