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Actions Speak Louder Than Words

“Kuch to Karo Yaar – Just Do Something!” asks Volunteer Ahmedabad, Indicorps’ local volunteering initiative. Well, for every Sunday for the past eight weeks, over 25 local young people are hitting Vastrapur Lake, a popular weekend hangout in Ahmedabad, taking up that challenge. Tired of just complaining about garbage on the streets, these volunteers are doing whatever it takes to build the simple habit of throwing trash in the can. As part of Volunteer Ahmedabad’s weekly “Action Items,” volunteers are picking up trash, speaking with local vendors, rallying new volunteers, performing street plays and providing trash cans, all in an attempt to instill pride in their city!

Rain, Rooftops, and a Celebration

Recipe for A Celebration:

15 Hard-Working Kids and their Parents
10 Volunteers and their Families
3 Months of Sweat, Tears and Classroom Management
4 Different Locations in the Ahmedabad Heat
Food Served with Love
A Dhol (Drum)
A Rainstorm.

While this recipe sounds simple, the Asmaa team can attest that the celebration on May 29 at Seva Café was a well-deserved one! To honor the hard work and effort from countless individuals, and to start off the next chapter of Asmaa’s journey, the team threw the party of the year at Ahmedabad’s Seva Café. The love and respect between the teachers, students, parents and volunteers were unmistakably clear to all that danced in the rain that night.

Ahmedabad Service Leadership Course

Volunteer Ahmedabad - Indian Summers Now Mean Service for the City!

The universal definition of summer vacation is usually two months of doing nothing – sleeping late, watching movies, playing games, hanging out with friends and most importantly, not doing work! This summer, 15 Ahmedabadi college students decided instead to use their summers to work for the city and develop their leadership skills. As participants in Volunteer Ahmedabad’s Service and Leadership Course, these students committed a minimum of 20 hours a week to service projects around Ahmedabad and attended workshops and sessions on leadership, management, civic engagement, life skills and character building. Over the course of six weeks, the students have become a formidable team of youth, energetically creating change through street plays, sanitation awareness, teaching at Aasma, Indicorps’ street school, volunteering at Seva Café, and by adding vibrancy to Ahmedabad’s Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram.

Street Kids Reach the Sky

Indicorps is pleased to welcome Ahmedabad-based NGO SAATH as a partner in continuing Asmaa, a learning program for street children in Navrangpura, Ahmedabad. Initiated by Indicorps Intern Ajlai Basu, Asmaan is an alternative education program that gives children who have dropped out of or never gone to school an opportunity to develop a foundation in math and language as well as life skills. Asmaa is taught by a group of committed young volunteers, ranging from a current Montessori schoolteacher to participants from Volunteer Ahmedabad’s Service and Leadership Course.

Did You know?

Indicorps offers a variety of programs and opportunities that encourage leadership and civic engagement. While the fellowship focuses on empowering people willing to do whatever it takes to affect change, we also have local volunteer programs in India, an established internship program, an emerging domestic program, an effort to engage late-careers seniors in development, an online volunteer opportunity site, and more....

NDTV Feature on Indicorps

New Blog Entries

From the Gallery

See images by Kajal Patel, a talented UK-based photographer, that are part of an Indicorps project to capture the journey of India's people. Her work particularly focused on widows and the nature of the rag-picking industry in Gujarat's largest slum.

Aasma

Learn about the Indicorps / SAATH partnership, started by Indicorps intern Ajlai Basu, that has lead to Aasma - a volunteer-driven school for street children near the Indicorps office in Gujarat.

The Fellowship

The next fellowship applications are available for fellowship classes starting August 2008 and January 2009. To apply, click here.

Inspiration

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.

- Lila Watson