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Creating a Task-force of Youth Volunteers for Disaster Risk Reduction and Emergency Response

Creating a Task-force of Youth Volunteers for Disaster Risk Reduction and Emergency Response

Creating a Task-force of Youth Volunteers for Disaster Risk Reduction and Emergency Response Preparedness EduCARE India chose to scale down most of its projects to focus on covid-19 response in early 2020. The NGO continued to invest heavily on mobilising youth volunteers for Creating a Task-force of Youth Volunteers for Disaster Risk Reduction and Emergency Response Preparedness.  Through early 2020 to early 2022, a total of about 5000 volunteers were trained in various skill-sets (Basic Fundamentals of Disaster Management, Volunteering,…

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Expansion of Medical and Healthcare Outreach initiatives through 2020

Expansion of Medical and Healthcare Outreach initiatives through 2020

initiatives during the coronavirus / covid-19 pandemic response through 2020 – EduCARE India has been providing volunteer support services to local Red Cross and a charity hospital during COVID-19 pandemic response in capacity building and strategic initiatives, including infrastructural development, community kitchen, new strategic initiatives, training and development,  community disaster education, and emergency first aid. EduCARE India volunteers and international students in internship, namely Freja from Denmark and Julia from Netherlands had initiated a “Kangra Fights Corona” initiative in the…

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‘Grassroots Innovation’ and ‘Waste is Resource’

‘Grassroots Innovation’ and ‘Waste is Resource’

When I first arrived in Naddi after resigning from my comfortable sales job at a tech giant in Mumbai, I had limited knowledge about the development sector and the catastrophic environmental challenges daunting our planet. The radical decision to leave a prosperous career in advertising technology and join Educare as an intern was fueled by my persisting urge to find a deeper purpose in my professional life. I started the Solid Waste Management project of resource recovery with my two…

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On the Move – Chemical to Renewable Engineering

On the Move – Chemical to Renewable Engineering

On the move – Chemical to Renewable Engineering Making a portable solar light   After studying Chemical Engineering in UK, I got interested in renewable energies. I came across the internship opportunities offered abroad in India by EduCARE India NGO in micro-scale renewable / alternative energy projects in EduCARE India. I spend the month of July in induction training and settling down. Prof Kalia, a resource person / mentor with EduCARE India listened to my interest and ideas. He gave…

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Steps towards a sustainable future

Steps towards a sustainable future

(towards-a-sustainable-future-swash-project–educare-india-intern-steps) Just a short walk away from the main square in the village of Naddi lives a small community that we refer to as the “Shanney community”. It consists of eight families, about 40 people and although they are only a short distance away from the main village they tend to live their daily lives somewhat removed from it. Like every person around the world they have basic needs and wants with regards to their health and sanitation but due…

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The EDUCARE life!!

The EDUCARE life!!

To give you all a bit of a back story to myself my name is Ethan Donovan and my mother Rachael Donovan moved to India to work with EduCARE in 2011. I have been a part of and known EduCARE for a long time now and watched the organisation develop and grow. But only this year, after I graduated secondary school, did I take a gap year to follow my mother’s footsteps and undertake an internship with EduCARE myself. I…

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Falling in love with India

Falling in love with India

Did the time fly or did it crawl? I honestly can’t tell. The last six months have not always been easy. I’ve cursed India, I’ve loved India, but in the end I’m leaving EduCARE feeling pretty good. I didn’t always embrace this experience, but about half way through my internship my attitude started to change for the better, and I think this can best be demonstrated by my very different coordinator’s retreat experiences. Back in July I attended my first…

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An experience in India

An experience in India

Being part of EduCARE weaves some sort of spell – It constantly requires you to grow and change. Unexpectedly, several things have left a lasting impression on me. In no particular order: Cows, dogs, birds, spiders, leeches and slugs. Enough said. Girl’s Club While working on the field for a grassroots organisation in particular, it is hard to see progress unfold in front of your eyes… Unless it’s Girls’ Club. When I met the young girl’s in early July I…

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Feeling free and alive, a feeling of belonging to nature.

Feeling free and alive, a feeling of belonging to nature.

Gajner has got a treasure, a treasure that not a lot of people take care about. It is unique, huge, beautiful, amazing. I am talking about the desert and the wildlife sanctuary. My experience in the dessert started during my first week as an EduCARE intern in Gajner. Léa Monin, the SWASH coordinator when I arrived there, used to run for an hour twice a week. She told me about the wildlife sanctuary in the desert, which seemed to be…

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Feeling free and alive, a feeling of belonging to nature.

Feeling free and alive, a feeling of belonging to nature.

Gajner has got a treasure, a treasure that not a lot of people take care about. It is unique, huge, beautiful, amazing. I am talking about the desert and the wildlife sanctuary. My experience in the dessert started during my first week as an EduCARE intern in Gajner. Léa Monin, the SWASH coordinator when I arrived there, used to run for an hour twice a week. She told me about the wildlife sanctuary in the desert, which seemed to be…

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Lessons learned from EduCARE India Internship

Lessons learned from EduCARE India Internship

Even after 1.5 years of EduCARE India Internship, I have laughed, cried, been thoroughly stressed, and also overjoyed many times in what feels like a blink of an eye throughout my internship in India. Now that it is time for me to move on, reflecting on what I have learned has showed me that I am leaving EduCARE India as a completely different matured person than the girl I was when I first arrived. I wanted to first join EduCARE…

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EduCARE India –the good, the bad, and the disgusting

EduCARE India –the good, the bad, and the disgusting

Seven months ago I remember saying to a fellow intern, “wow, time is going by so slow,” and he responded, “wait until you start working.” He was right. The past few months in Educare have flown by and it has been an amazing experience. For someone like myself who didn’t join Educare as an internship requirement for university, my reasons for coming to India were a little different. I wanted to leave the regular 9 to 5 job in the…

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Coordinators Retreat in Rajasthan

Coordinators Retreat in Rajasthan

The retreats for Coordinators were developed during 2015 as an opportunity for the management team to come together and talk about changes that might have come about in the organisation, what they want to change, issues they face, their job roles, etc. This was the third Coordinators retreat of the year, but it was my first. I had come back to EduCARE after three months in Nepal and decided to take up the role of Centre Manager in a new…

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Community Cook off!

Community Cook off!

After 2 months of intense nutrition work with the community, the cooking competition in Chenni successfully finished one part of the project, opening the door for more workshops and raising of awareness amongst the girls and women. Everything started months ago when, after one more dinner with a family, I could not walk home because of all the rice I was fed. I decided that it was time to start a nutrition project. After some planning and discussions with Mr….

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Protesting in Harike

Protesting in Harike

During the whole time I have spent in India or any country, I have never experienced anything like what recently occurred in a rural town of Punjab. It was the biggest and most extreme protest I had ever seen. It all started because someone had ripped pages out of a holy book. People started protesting about that and while the police was trying to deal with the situation, one officer shot into the crowd and killed two people. The protest…

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Colourful and exciting India

Colourful and exciting India

If there is one thing to know about India, it’s that they love a good festival and celebrating in style. Luckily, we got to experience every first hand and on a quite a personal level. We started small and by the second day, it turned into one of the most intriguing events in my life so far… We spent the first night (Saturday), at a small celebration in Janauri, there was some delicious free food, a makeshift temple near the…

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Trekking to Triund

Trekking to Triund

I have a tradition of sipping a freshly brewed coffee on the brisk mornings of a hike to take in the sun rising over the beautiful view in front of me. However, after a cold and unexpected trek to Indrahar pass with Mr. B, Rachael, Daikin, Jakob and fellow interns, all I needed to wake and warm me up in the morning was a hot, spicy chai. It all started with a call from B early on a Thursday morning…

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Camel safari in Thar desert

Camel safari in Thar desert

One of the nicest aspects of volunteering in EduCARE’s Gajner office is the seemingly unlimited options for travel on the weekends. Situated in a central location in Rajasthan, Gajner has access to more interesting places than imaginable. A short overnight train or bus can bring you to the blue city of Jodhpur, the white city of Udaipur, the pink city of Jaipur or, my personal favorite, the golden city of Jaisalmer: I decided to do a short weekend trip to…

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Leaving Dal Lake

Leaving Dal Lake

September 30th, 2015 is a day that we, the Naddi interns, won’t forget. Everything had to be removed from the office/intern house of Dal Lake on this day, after months of waiting for the new houses to be built. There, some facilities are still not available and the shower room has apparently no wall to give intimacy in one of the houses… But the houses are built and most of the rooms are ready to welcome interns. So, in the…

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An amazing trek for my holidays

An amazing trek for my holidays

“I’m not going to make it, I’m not going to make it,” I kept thinking to myself as I focused on my feet while trekking uphill. I didn’t want to look up because I knew it would be hours of uphill until we reached the pass. In fact, there was so much uphill I couldn’t even see the top.  I was trekking through the most beautiful part of India, and I was dying. During the two weeks of holiday I…

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Burning to leave

Burning to leave

I have been in EduCARE long enough to see two dozen interns come in my life and leave it. Most likely forever. No hard feelings there, just a cold fact. The life of every EduCARE intern flows more or less the same course: confusion, understanding, hard work, leaving party. In between, the glances at the life we all know back home are few. Some search for them harder than other. End of the line, everyone had to abandon such things…

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Coming full circle

Coming full circle

Sitting on the rooftop of the Gajner intern house, I hear religious melodies travel across the desert’s horizon by speaker. The horn of a passing train blows in the distance, as below, the engine of a tuk tuk shakes in anticipation of its next customer. Looking up, the moon illuminates a slowly dimming sky. Looking around, I see hues of green, blue, and brown— Gajner is decorated with buildings of brick and cement, sandy roads and footpaths, isolated trees, and…

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Garmi Garmi, dealing with the heat of Punjab

Garmi Garmi, dealing with the heat of Punjab

Before I arrived in India at the beginning of June 2015, the news at home was displaying stories on a near daily basis about the insane heat waves across India. The south was experiencing temperatures nearing 50’C, Delhi was a toasty 44’C (112’F for my fellow Americans), countless photos of people guzzling water crossed my BBC news app. My friends and family loved to alert me of these temperatures, but I assured them I wasn’t going to places mentioned in…

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The monster in my stomach

The monster in my stomach

First of all, I’m not pregnant. Gajner is not one of those places where young people go and parents are scared their girls will come back with a baby in the belly. No sex, drugs and rock n’ roll around, trust me. Still, somehow a monster came to live in my stomach when I arrived to India, and it’s always hungry. I used to eat a lot back in Spain, but I never reached the levels of the monster. NEVER….

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Why an EduCARE India internship won’t be what you expect; and why that’s ok

Why an EduCARE India internship won’t be what you expect; and why that’s ok

I find myself at the end of a six-month internship with EduCARE India. As I was saying my final goodbyes, finishing up the last monthly report and making travel arrangement, the Project Director, Mr B, asked me if this internship met my expectations. And I had to say no. Not at all. Any undergrad, recent graduate or anyone at the “entry-level” of their career knows the importance of experience and how hard it can be to get that experience on…

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Only in India

Only in India

My intern flatmate Lea and I sat upon the marble wall fencing in the Birla Mandir from its gorgeously kept gardens below, looking out at the busy streets of Jaipur. Nightfall in big cities is always such a rush; I’ve almost forgotten the feeling after being in the village for so long. The streets are always jammed with auto rickshaws, cars, scooters, bikes and young lovers and friends setting out to drink chai at nearby, trendy tea spots or local…

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My international family

My international family

I am here above my past, above negative people, I am here in search of new learning, some good friends and exposure, I am here to serve people, understand myself & to deal with my fears, I am here to make a change, I am here to listen to every word so I can make a change, I am here for a beautiful world of sustainability, I am here at EduCARE. I have always been a family boy, born and…

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Living in Beautiful and Messy India

Living in Beautiful and Messy India

While working on my project at EduCARE, I’ve found that many days are emotionally draining and challenging due to my interactions with the local culture. Yesterday was definitely no exception. I’m based in Gajner, a little village in Rajasthan, and my project is to implement a waste management system. I only started two months ago, but I’ve managed to set up a system in the Intern house and Manoj’s shop, a neighborhood restaurant. After I’d implemented a sorting system in…

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Cluster Coordinator Retreat

Cluster Coordinator Retreat

Over the past 6-months, EduCARE India has seen a lot of development and improvement, and many incredible interns to help lead the way. Job roles have been given more clarity, more resources and tools have become available to interns and overall it has really strengthened the team dynamic across all clusters, from Himachal to Rajasthan. Although the entire COM (Collaborative Operations Management) team strives to ensure this happens, there is one position above all that seems to have a lot…

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Working in India: you reckon yourself flexible enough?

Working in India: you reckon yourself flexible enough?

 “It happens, it will happen again. It’s complex, it’s India.” ~Mr B Hai, my name is Bruno. One of my strengths is that I’m flexible: I easily adapt to new environments, I am able to blend into unfamiliar cultures and lay contact with people unknown.” At least.. that is how I used to reflect upon myself. ‘Self-reflection’: a major aspect in my studies ‘Regional Development and Innovation’. Flexibility.. I’ve never been so wrong. I arrived in India somewhere in the…

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