Indian Volunteer working in Developing countries of Asia and Africa

Book on Indian Volunteer Experiences!

Welcome to the family of returned & serving VSO volunteers from India! Some of us had the opportunity to get together at a recent Returned Volunteer Weekend organised by IVO in Delhi on 13-14 March! It was so great to share the excitements, the challenges, the surprises & what was more interesting was how most of us had found tremendous inner strength & motivation to carry on in the face of difficulties. No matter how good or bad the placement or accommodation or social life was, we all shared one thing in common: the experience was absolutely unforgettable!

One exciting thing that came out from discussions on how we would like to carry on our association with VSO was about creating a book on our experiences! Many of us had maintained some sort of record (diary, regular email updates, reports, blog) about our adventures. We can see several benefits of a book like this:

* it would allow us to share our stories beyond family, friends & fellow volunteers
* we all have a chance to be real authors
* it would be of great learning to those who are thinking of becoming volunteers
* it would make interesting reading for those who want to be inspired of stories of resilience, courage, and change amidst chaos
* it would help us to break stereotypes of the countries where we worked

Four of us (Bana, Neela, Rashmi, Mana) have volunteered to take this idea forward and the first thing we need is for you to share with us your volunteer story--your experiences as a volunteer. (You can refer to the email request for stories by IVO which provides a good guide for your story). You can also share with us the following:

* photographs
* articles written by you or on you
* anything else which you have which you think will make your story come alive....

Please email these stories & materials to rvstories@gmail.com latest by 25 April 2009. We will go through these stories and ask you for any clarifications or additional materials.

This will be a book about volunteers and by volunteers!

Looking forward to your support & participation,

Rashmi, Bana, Neela, Mana

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3 Comments

Comment by VASANT SAPTARSHI on April 30, 2009 at 4:29pm: Good initoative,but are we getting the on line ,internet connections in remote countries-underdeveloped...what is ur expe.....