INFORMATIONS FOR THE NEW VOLUNTEERS!

Thank you for your email and interest in Project Why!

To explain a bit more about PW first:
The Sri Ram Goburdhun Charitable Trust using the name ‘Project Why’ is a non-governmental Non-Profit organisation engaged in education support and life-skills enhancement in New Delhi, India for the past 8 years. Since educational system is very unequal in India, our mission is to provide education to the less advantaged and give them means to access knowledge and employment: the Project Why is empowering people and giving people and especially children from the slums a chance. It was created in May 1998 by Mrs Anouradha Bakshi.

Thanks to the donors that have believed in us for the past 9 years, we succeeded in the creation of up to 9 centres today, divided in various levels of courses from the kindergarten to secondary school. Besides, we launched as well a computer centre and a women centre to empower people, teaching them new skills that they could benefit from and sell on the market place.
I suggest that you have a look on our website www.projectwhy.org


The projects current focus is primarily on the slum and bastion children of South Delhi where it runs an education support program which has 8 distinct modules:

early childhood support / kindergarten
primary education
secondary education
special needs centre
Foster care scholarship program
computer centre
Open heart surgery centre
women’s centre

In each of this module, we have teachers from the local communities (sometimes previously students themselves of Project Why) and coordinators.

Volunteer work:
The main idea to volunteer with us is to be a teacher as well. You can assist the local teachers in their class and work with them, having the class/a part of the class for yourself. Depending on what is your background and skills, you can teach them a lot of various things from painting/drawing, to English, through creative work, dance, mathematics, IT, …

We like the volunteers to feel free to decide what they want to teach! And the children are generally happy with everything the volunteers have to offer.
It is of course better to have a strategy and an idea of what you want to teach in before coming.

Our approach is to arrive and try to feel the project, visiting the different centres for couples of days before choosing the one you want to settle down in. In actual fact, it is strongly recommended for the children but as well your ease to spend the length of time you are volunteering with us with the same group/class. The idea is that you can have 2 different locations: morning and afternoon to be less redundant.

NB: you might have chosen in advance the centre or level of education you want to work with.

Then of course we try to satisfy everybody’s choice, as much as we can!!
It has to bring us something…but you as well!



Organisation:

Shamika and Rani are the ones who will help you for all your day to day volunteering and organisation.


Schedule:
We generally work from Monday to Sunday (but volunteers can have their Saturday off as well!) and from 9h30 till 17pm everyday. But you are free to arrange something special with the girls from the administration if you want to do less or more!


Accommodation:
Concerning the housing, there is a possibility to stay at Mrs Anouradha Bakshi’s house, not so far from the project in South Delhi.
Another option is to stay at the Foster Care, in one of the centre, with the children.

The price has to be fixed in advance and is lower for the long term stay. You can arrange price and options with Shamika Bakshi: shambakshou@yahoo.co.in


Costs
This is more to give you a vague idea since it mostly depends on you and your needs! New Delhi is becoming very expensive BUT you can still manage some cheap options.
The minimum would be around 400/500 dollars per month if you stay reasonable but not too tight!

Hope you got a better picture of what we do and how you can involve yourself with us, for further question don’t hesitate to contact us!

Project Why’s staff