Avni Yadav and Ishan Bhavsar have made a difficult commitment: to promote vermicompost in Ahmedabad as a means to reducing trash. After completing the Volunteer Ahmedabad Service and Leadership Course, the dedicated volunteers were determined to continue contributing to their communities. With the help of worm experts Dev Tayde and Falgunni Sachdev (Indicorps staff), they hunted down earthworms to kick off their project. By organically composting food waste through the vermicomposting technique, they are hoping to make Ahmedabad a haven for gardening and environmental consciousness.

They young volunteers have started their experiment on the Indicorps office terrace as well as at volunteer Ishan’s home. While they learned their first lesson the hard way – earthworms don’t like the harsh Ahmedabad sun – they are determined to keep learning and eventually hit the streets, apartment complexes and schools to promote the easy concept of vermicompost!

These young volunteers have two very important things on their side: a deep understanding of gardening as well as the passion to make Ahmedabad an environmentally friendly place to live! If you have suggestions or would like to get involved, contact Avni and Ishan at va@indicorps.org.

Not Your Average Spoken English Class

On July 2, 2007, Indicorps Intern Veronica Huang started a unique four month long spoken English class. Indicorps has partnered with Adarsh Ahmedabad for to provide a service while inspiring others to serve. The English class combines personal growth and spoken English skills with a focus on civic engagement, allowing us to spread the message of selfless action to an unusual audience. The draw of a free English class was tremendous. Over an intense two-week period, Veronica interviewed over 100 applicants and selected 30 students. The class is an interesting blend of students from different age group and coming from different professional backgrounds, and all showed openness to exploring participation in creating a new type of culture.

Using a variety of speaking activities such as ice-breakers, tongue-twisters, role-playing, and short speeches, students have gradually gained familiarity with their fellow students and comfort in speaking English in front of the class and now will continue to explore topics dealing with service and the self. Last week, for example, the readings used dealt with different approaches to self-perception, namely, Walter Anderson’s “Three Ways We Know Ourselves” and Dr Howard Gardner’s “Multiple Intelligences”.

Indicorps and Adarsh Ahmedabad hope that engaging students into a rediscovery process of the abilities, goals, and potential they possess will provide a solid base for the next steps, understanding the society and being aware of social responsibilities.

Behrampura Kids Explore Science City

Every so often throughout the evening on July 8, a shout to “get back into your numbered line!!� could be heard throughout Ahmedabad’s Science City exploration park. 17 kids, ages 4-16, would scamper anxiously back into a misshapen line, reeling with excitement. Thanks to the relentlessness of Indicorps Fellow Shaila Parikh (August 06), for three hours, science and learning came alive for a group of kids who don’t often get the chance to touch, smell, run and explore the world of learning. The children are residents of the community Shaila has been living in and working with over the past ten months. Every week, three times a week, the kids come together for an interactive education course in which Shaila brings reading, science, math and their community to life for the kids. A group of these kids, a few chaperones from the community, Shaila and Indicorps staff member Archana Patel spent the evening on Sunday running through the energy park, learning about forms of matter and watching an IMAX movie on space exploration. Highlights for the kids included a slide-turned-treadmill that demonstrated concepts of force and played music when enough friction was created, a human hamster wheel and a series of fountains and watermills that showed the force of water.

Throughout the week of June 11, the Volunteer Ahmedabad/ Indicorps office was bursting with people! All the Service and Leadership Course (SLC) participants were fervently decorating the VA office, coloring the walls, placing maps, flag, posters, flowers and art work, and most importantly displaying the work they have done during the course. All of this was in preparation for the June 15 celebration for the twelve dedicated VA members who spent 15-20 hours a week on various projects. A graduation event was held, giving the participants an opportunity to reflect and inspire others with the successes and learnings from the six week service experience. The graduating class did short demonstrations of their street play and expressed what they have learned in the course to the audience. Parents, Indicorps staff, volunteers, interns, NGO partners and friends of VA members were present for the ceremony.

Parents of the participants were amazed at the diversity of things done in the course and how it has helped their children build confidence. One student, Avani’s father said, “I thought she was just working on HIV/AIDS. Today I know she was doing a lot more with a holistic approach.� The parents were supportive of their children’s desire to do something for the betterment of Ahmedabad, and have expressed that the skills and values that the children learned by volunteering are just not taught at their colleges. In a climate where volunteering is not often rewarded, this marks a huge achievement in the Volunteer Ahmedabad’s history.

As chief guest of the ceremony, Bharatbhai Shah, founder of Adarsh Amdavaad (a local partner working to create “ideal� citizenry in the city) inspired everyone to start thinking about what kind of Ahmedabad they would like to live into and how can they create it. The climax of the festivity was when the twelve course graduates shared what they are planning to do now that the course has finished. All of them are going to give at least two hours a week for Ahmedabad, by teaching at Aasma, Indicorps non-formal school and action items. Two youth groups are emerging from the course; one will promote vermi-composting and the other will spread awareness about addictions amongst youth of Ahmedabad. Some will continue on to be interns with Volunteer Ahmedabad, assisting in creating opportunities for young people such as themselves. The celebration ended with a screening of the moving short film “Power of One.� (www.karmatube.org)

Indicorps is growing and as we increase our scope, we’re also increasing our space. We inaugurated the new Volunteer Ahmedabad office, above our current location on Ashram Road in Ahmedabad, last week. The new office will house the headquarters of our domestic volunteering initiative, a conference and meeting room and additional space for staff to utilize.

Since the opening, the new office has been booming with activity. VA volunteers are excited to get their own space, and are working to decorate it with slogans,drawings and information about volunteer opportunities. We have already christened the meeting rooms with the INSPIRE workshop as well as new staff orientation.

Indicorps is in the midst of orienting 4 new staff members on our operations, philosophy, mission, history, and culture. Staff orientation is upstairs at the newly rented and renovated portion of the Indicorps office in Ahmedabad. The new staff members present are Ketki Sheth ‘06 (joining the Fellowship Team), Falgunni Sachdev (Program Manager - Leadership), Sunil Kurup (Manager - Communications), and Shishir Sawant (joining the Project Development Team).

As the next phase of Indicorps’ evolution, we are developing a weekend dialogue and leadership program targeted at emerging Indian and South Asian leaders around the world. The weekend program will start in select locales across the US and Europe in the fall, and will be designed to engage young people (21-35) holding leadership positions in community organizations in a conversation about identity and vision-building for the future of a growing diaspora. For more information, write archana@indicorps.org.

Volunteer Ahmedabad (VA), driven by 2005-2007 Indicorps fellow Juie Mahajan (who has been tirelessly working on efforts to inspire a service culture domestically) and new staff member Drashti Patel, has been engaging young and old volunteers across Ahmedabad in service of their city. Their efforts include an intense, 20hr/week “Service and Leadership” course, weekly “Action Items”, and numerous innovations in involving communities. The program seems timely, catching a growing wave of people across Ahmedabad and India who are looking to do more in the world around them.

The Grassroots Development Laboratory, a partnership between the Piramal Foundation and Indicorps, has a new blog - participate in our experiments to affect change in a focus district by leveraging the dedicated efforts of Indicorps fellows and volunteers in pursuit of solutions. Visit the blog today.

Our passive volunteer opportunity platform, Indiserve, has been completely re-designed. It is now far easier for NGOs to register and post opportunities, and more straightforward to find the right way to serve in India. Our project development team aims to have more than 1,000 organizations participating by the end of 2007 (up from 250 currently). Visit Indiserve today.