I started my volunteering journey in 2006. I still remember the day I met Anna, she spoke to me at length & said “We have a school called Vidyanikethan. Right now there are no volunteers there. Go handle it". I was thinking “Is this lady OK?". I had no experience of volunteering & she wanted me to handle it. But it was all thanks to Anna; she had understood me & had more confidence in me than I had in myself.

I landed in Vidyanikethan - a school run by Susheela & Nagraj (2 great people who have dedicated their lives to social service). Vidyanikethan is also an NGO that works on a number of social causes like women empowerment, rag pickers bridging school, universal birth registration, watershed projects & the list goes on.

At first, I was alone & didn't know what to do at Vidyanikethan. Nagraj asked if I could start an English communication class for their teachers & field staff. It was fun doing these classes. At first, it was difficult to break in, then I started taking chocolates & gave them 1 chocolate for each correct answer. The response was amazing.

Parallelly another volunteer was expected to join me at Vidyanikethan. We both began to help Vidyanikethan in many their activities. We started helping out with documentation work of their projects, talks for their leadership program for panchayat members & many more such programs. Vidyanikethan also recommended us to Bangalore University to start English classes for post graduation students in rural management.

The Volunteers group at Vidyanikethan started the project called "Sponsor a Child" Program. We collected sponsorships from corporates & helped 72 students get free education for a year. We are a strong 25+ member group with 10 very active members in Vidyanikethan. We also won the best Volunteering Group Award at the "iVolunteer Volunteers Meet" organised by iVolunteer in 2007.

It’s been a great journey till now & I hope to have a better one in the days to come. I thank iVolunteer for introducing me to this wonderful world & this opportunity to share my thoughts.