free volunteering CALCUTTA – IIMC

Live your Experience… Come to the City of Joy to work as a Volunteer

Volunteering at IIMC – Indian Institute for Mother and Child 

Calcutta is a city of contrasts that always leaves its mark on those who visit. It is the third largest city in India, where its 14 million inhabitants speak many languages and boasts the highest concentration of artists. Calcutta has been home to two Nobel Prize winners, Mother Teresa of Calcutta and the writer Rabindranath Tagore. Until 1912 Calcutta was the capital of the British Raj, something that can be seen in its colonial architecture, of which the Victoria Memorial stands out.

A city proud to recover its cultural and spiritual heritage that always offers a warm welcome pleasant to any traveler.

The main objective of the Mission of Dr. Sujit (Indian Institute for Mother and Child) is to give the possibility to educate children, which otherwise could not be due to the poverty of their families. India is a country where there is currently no real guarantee of primary education. This is due not only to an economic problem, but also to access to structures. Although theoretically all children have the right to almost free education from the state, in practice this is not the case.

People in rural areas live far away from schools (which are often in cities, with very few in remote areas), and travel is often unthinkable and impractical for poor villagers, who have generally never left their village. For this reason, IIMC builds schools where they do not exist. Education will give them not only culture, but also health and a future with job possibilities.

We leave you the link of the Spanish NGO, our friends of the “IIMC – Spain”, where for sure will treat you very well.

 

IIMC España – Indian Institute for Mother and Child

 

Day by day of a Volunteer

The volunteers who will live with you come from all over the world and are very different people. But sharing this profound experience imprints the volunteer shelter with a warm atmosphere of fellowship and friendship that is perceived as soon as you land. It’s something close, something special.

So, among friends, your day begins with breakfast before you go to your project, where you will be welcomed with open arms as volunteers are highly valued and respected in India. You will work in the morning, you will eat on your project, and in the afternoon you may have more work, which is just an enormously gratifying time where your help will bring more to you than to them.

When you finish you will have free time to visit the city or do cultural immersion activities.

And on weekends… free to rest, or to travel!

CALCUTTA has a lot to see…
  MAKE YOUR VOLUNTEERING A PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE

The Victoria Memorial, an imposing white marble palace dating from the early 20th century, was built in honour of Queen Victoria after her death in 1901. Inside it houses a museum of Indian history. The Victoria Memorial is located inside Maidan Park, Kolkata’s “Central Park”, where locals gather for walks, cricket, yoga or horse-drawn carriage rides. 

Kalighat, in the “red light district”, is the mother temple of Kolkata, dedicated to the goddess Kali, patron saint of the city. It is an important center of Hindu pilgrimage, and inside are animal sacrifices. The Howrah Bridge, also known as Rabindra Setu, is one of the symbols of the city of Kolkata and one of the busiest bridges in the world.  The river Ghats are the setting for traditional Hindu rituals. 

And of course, the home of Mother Teresa, which is in the Mother House on Bose Road. Here we find her intact room, as well as her tomb, where the Sisters of Charity gather several times a day to pray. A small room gathers some representative objects and several photographs of the nun’s life. 

The Sudder Street area, near the park, gathers most of the volunteers and travelers. In Sudder Street we will be able to find cheap lodgings, restaurants. There is even a “Spanish restaurant”, a meeting point for Spanish-speaking volunteers, where they prepare typical dishes of our Spanish cuisine.

WHAT IS A FREE OR FREE VOLUNTEER in the IIMC?

Helping is what moves us. And the more volunteers we can send, the better. That is why we have specifically evaluated and selected these volunteer programs, always under two premises:

  1. Maximum usefulness of the Volunteer for society.
  2. Minimum cost for the Volunteer.

Our mission is to select these projects as well as the volunteers. And it is not an easy task; we have visited, evaluated and discarded many projects because we understood that the usefulness for society did not justify the effort we all make. And it’s not easy to find volunteers like you either. For our work and to cover dissemination costs, we only ask for a donation to our own project CiENViDAS Jaipur. And we will send you the corresponding Certificate of Donations, with which you will be able to deduct your help.

We take care of evaluating and selecting these projects for you, and you take charge of working and being useful… That’s the deal.