Xinyi (India)

In the summer of 2015, I volunteered for three weeks at New Rise Academy in the village of Kashyem with my friend Rose. Our stay, though brief, was wonderful and memorable. I don’t think a week has gone by since the trip, where Rose and I haven’t fondly recalled memories from our experience in one of our (many) conversations.

We stayed at the house of New Rise’s headteacher, Asim, and his family. Asim also had a couple of New Rise students living with him and from Day One we felt part of this big, happy family. Every morning after waking up and breakfasting, we had a 10 minute invigorating uphill walk to the school, trailing and being trailed by groups of schoolchildren from the village and their faithful dogs, set against a stunning backdrop of green hills and the distant Himalayas. We taught English to nearly all the classes in the school, taking on children of quite a large range of ages; from around 5 to 16 years old. This was definitely a challenge as we had to adapt our teaching to the very varying standards of English. The children are typically taught from textbooks and stick to the textbooks, learning through memorisation.

We tried to instead encourage creativity in our lessons and imbued an element of fun through games like vocabulary bingo, storywriting and class discussions on topics such as what the students want to be when they grow up. I genuinely enjoyed all our conversations, which sometimes veered very off topic to their favourite Pokemon characters (the current craze!), but the important thing was that our discussions enabled them to use English in real life situations and away from the less varied monologue of their books. It was such a great feeling to see them grow in confidence and become less afraid of making mistakes whilst talking with us.

The school building was built thanks to donors and has had a recent extension thanks to funds from a previous volunteer’s family. The desks and benches in each classroom are provided by Mondo. Each child also receives a bag containing learning materials, also issued thanks to Mondo. However, classrooms are still very basic and the education system is certainly lacking in many areas. We certainly got the sense that volunteers have had a positive impact on the village and felt like we were immersed in the culture and the community.

Many thanks to Mondo for all the amazing work they do and for enabling us to taken on this unforgettable opportunity to try and make a difference in an area that really needs it. A special shoutout to Jiwan, the India country manager, who was almost superhuman in his ability to juggle all his duties and still guide us around a country we’d never been before with such efficiency and patience, making sure that we were safe.