What would be your reason for volunteer work in India?

machadinha

You may or may not be aware that BJP is an acronym for an established Hindu ultra-right-wing and fundamentalist party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party).

It had struck me too when I first noticed you as a member; however I've seen no indication in your posts that that's where you're heading, so I assume you were not aware of it. Or maybe you were and just don't mean too much by it otherwise.

It is as such an established party btw (have been in power even once or twice), and members here will feel differently about it, far from all will be against them; but you can expect it to raise a few eyebrows yes. Anyway, no bother, and there's little to do about it now; save for asking the admin to change your username then. Not very necessary I don't think.

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Paleface

Is Kirtananda your diksa name, or is kirtan something you regularly participate in...

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bjp

ohhhhh It never occurred to me. My initials.
The BJP, yes, they won election some years ago and [afaik] helped to get India moving after too many years of communist-influenced economic policy.
Other than that, although I admit to some bias, I'm not into voting or supporting any politics whatsoever.

Paleface No, it's just...an expression I thought of when I set up my profile. My name is Brian, so it'll have to be something like Brhad or something.

Nick-H

It is the main opposition (currently) party of the country!

Paleface

Badmaash Jan Party - The conclusions we jump to? You may not have heard of The Kirtananada catch up here ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtanananda_Swami

Ho ho, I'm sure it's an entirely innocent connection - BTW I have nothing or have never had anything to do with Iskcon, even though i spent much time in Vrindavan, Radhe Radhe.

fdskjalf

My reason would be that I want to do it. I'm a med student and I'm going to work in a medical clinic for a month. The most important thing for me is to get some experience of that kind of work, even as it is not doctor's work but rather one of a nurse, as I'm in the beginning of my studies. It won't straightly help with my studies, but I hope I'll get a point of view of clinical work in less developed countries.

Of course it's also really great to be able to help those in need, but I do realize that if i worked in my homeland for one extra month and donated my salary instead, I would help the project more than by participating. So it is in a way balance between my own interest and other's well-being.

Tnau

My wife supervises several health centers for teens located in schools in a poor inner city neighborhood, where close to 100% of the students receive welfare. The major medical school in the city requires that its students must do 'poverty rounds' to complete their education successfully. They often work at my wife's place. Would similar programs make better sense than going to India? Are there poor people in Finland?

Aside from the point that giving a month's salary to an Indian clinic would do infinitely greater good, there is the point that needs to be repeated. India produces many talented and very able people in medicine, the allied medical professions, and much more. The problem in India is often funding to deal with anything beyond the catastrophic or at least the very basic. The westerner arriving "to help" reminds me of "lady bountiful" in the 1800s. I would like to see more political action to provide the kind of development funds to allow payment of good wages to qualified Indians, with supervision to insure that they are indeed doing their job as expected.

Hope this does not sound harsh, it is not meant to be, just my views on what most help India and Indians.

fdskjalf

Of course there are subjectively poor people in Finland too, but we also have a government provided healthcare system, which is used by most of the low and middle class people. Private healthcare is mostly used by significantly wealthier individuals and if one has insurance (usually employer provided, personal health insurances are quite rare here when compared eg. USA). Clinical work in my basic medical studies happens in the government system, so within it I will see most aspects of Finnish population.

The reason why I'm going to volunteer in India, is that I'm going there anyway on a longer trip, and thus can participate in this project when I'm "in the neighbourhood". I understand your points on development aids and pretty much agree. The project I'm heading to is concentrated on educating locals to work in the clinics, but they still take a few foreign med students every month to bring some internationality to the project. Much of it's funding comes from foreign sources too.

I forgot to mention that when I talked about getting experience from the project, I mainly meant how I would get a glimpse of managing without all the resources and equipment that we have in our clinics in more developed countries.

alouise

First thing to do here would be to convince the central government to risk spending more than 0.1 % of GDP on health care. Good luck with that. I mean, there are obviously so many competing priorities of supposedly greater import, developmentally speaking. Such as defence spending on cluster bombs from the US, missile tests, nuclear enrichment for weapons testing that nobody in their right mind would dare mention with the world watching, and of course, providing the sort of first world infrastructure so as to be able to realistically market SEZ tax-free zones to foreign companies. Ah, "incredible India".....

federica

That's a very valid point. Bringing this international atmosphere helps both, the Indian NGOs and the volunteers for mutual understanding. International volunteers give the NGOs a kind of credibility, in India and also for sponsors from abroad. Building these international networks and relations between people may not bring much money to a charity, but in the long run it might be more helpful than a huge donation. It needs both - money and people.

Boston123

Thanks for volunteering.. If I can add my 2 cents( paise?) to this:
Please consider joining the effort to eradicate Polio among Indian children. In 2008, India had roughly 500 cases of Polio, out of a worldwide total of approx 1500 .. roughly a third of worldwide cases. Vaccinations for all children remains a goal, and much progress has been made, but the final push to eradicate polio can use your effort, for sure.
The vast majority of cases are in the Northern belt of India( Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, moving Northwest towards Pakistan).

Paleface

the NGO's ? There are a few International ones and heaps of unheard of local ones. I feel that what delivers a sustainable credibility (which is what you want) is exampling to community, that is not usually very glamourous - and i use that word as i've never got why it's useful for actors or muso's to be ambassadors of this or that. A moment's dash around the World splashed all over and the next we don't know, does that sort of thing actually manifest benefit such as Lady Diana Spencer did with Landmines.

Teaching is obviously brilliant for experience and for the passionate it will go much further, but it's not a fluid issue. The class is present, one teaches. I guess there are those types of activities that can benefit more from international volunteers, but with most local NGO activities, volunteers are a passenger rather than a practical help in dispensing a service. And i should qualify this by thinking aloud that the greatest quantity of work beng done is at the local level by locals and for locals. Activism, grass roots groups pressuring for solutions, information or justice, locally is all nigh impossible for a non local to get their head around and as equally frustrating for that foreigner who would be expecting outputs from him/herself. The outputs are not always tangible locally, gestation, fruition takes time, see how long justice will go denied.

Which is why the mechanisms of international sponsorship or temporary capacity building for local NGO's attempting to inculcate best practices, are not able to quantify and calculate output as their indicators cannot compute fluidity, the ebb and flow of the forces an agent of change for the greater common good is dealing with. Of course there are scamsters and we need to be careful but equally we need to design an architecture to reach funds locally, where locals are not able to reach out. It is why we have a domination of certain types of PC activities and NGO's that reap the maximum available because of this culture of credibility, connections and communications. It's lazy along with the perception that reaching out is fraught with problems, au contraire.