My Job

Some of you have asked regarding my job, as contrary to the blog entries so far I’m not here just here for travel! The organisation I am working for is called iVolunteer. It is a small Indian NGO (non governmental organisation) of 17 people. Principally based in Delhi with around 10 staff, 4 of us here in Mumbai, and a couple of people based in Chennai and Bangalore. The organisation has two programmes, firstly it recruits people to do volunteering projects, working in both rural India as well as in the slums in the cities, and secondly it also recruits Indian professionals to do VSO in Africa and Asia. My principal objectives are to grow the organisations brand awareness in India to promote volunteering, both nationally and internationally. A large part of my role is also to work with corporations based here in Mumbai to build partnerships. Corporate Social Responsibility is growing, and with the increase of home grown companies, the desire to do something about the mass poverty here is also thankfully on the increase. Despite the double digit economic growth and India now having the largest number Billionaires (US$) in Asia (more than Japan), there’s other statistics that seem to escape the world press. For example, India also houses over 25% of the world poor. Basically 1 out of every 4 people who live on less than 1US$ a day, who do not have access to running water or electricity, who live from a hand to mouth existence are in fact Indian. The other unfortunate fact is that the wealthy emerging middle class in India, who live mainly in urban areas are not really that aware of the extent of poverty in their own county. I already feel very detached from it, living in Mumbai, in my nice little flat with running water. It’s easy to become quite distant from the extent of the problems. This is some of the problems we are encountering with the organisation, when trying to get people to volunteer. So on that note, to endeavour to become more aware of reality and understand what my organisation does, I am going to volunteer. I will probably spend one day a week working with an NGO which supports street kids here in the slums of Mumbai. Another depressing fact, Mumbai has the biggest slum in Asia and it is growing at an unfathomable rate.