Tattva

After graduating from college last May, I decided to take a year off because I wanted to pursue medicine and needed time to apply to schools for the next year. I also strongly believe in social responsibility and taking action to improve society. Therefore, I applied for a fellowship with the Youth for Seva NGO in Bangalore, India hoping for an experience to broaden my perspective, to apply all the knowledge I’ve learned in school, and of course to affect positive changes in people’s lives. I chose Bangalore because I’m already familiar with the language and culture and therefore I could affect more direct change with spending minimal time adjusting to the atmosphere.

 I arrived in Bangalore on September 10th not knowing what to expect. I knew I wanted to make a difference and get an idea of all the projects that need to be done. Because of my interest in medicine, I wanted to work on projects relating to healthcare. However, at that time volunteers were not being properly engaged in hospitals and clinics. Nevertheless, there were other health-related activities such as the mobile clinic and sporadic health clinics around the city.

My project coordinator, Venkatesh Murthy, helped me organize my time in order to get an idea of working in different settings.  During my time in Bangalore, I helped initiate several health-related projects. One of my aims was to design and implement a volunteering system in Kidwai Cancer Institute to facilitate a framework for the willing volunteers in the society as well as to help hospital staff and administration. Though it was difficult to work within the bureaucracy of the hospital, it turned out be a great success. Working with the children diagnosed with cancer and enabling others to come teach them on a weekly basis was extremely fulfilling.

I also interviewed low-income patients in the Breast Cancer ward of Kidwai and documented how they mobilize funds for their cancer treatment. Since most of the patients in Kidwai are from rural areas with little property or income, they often sell most of their belongings to afford cancer treatment. I hope to submit the survey report as a grant proposal to the state government.

Furthermore, I worked with mobile clinics both in Bangalore and in remote Tribal areas in B.R. Hills and supplemented health education to the medical care. I felt that many of diseases and minor ailments could be prevented by the appropriate addition of health education to the medicine the patients were receiving.

During my time in Bangalore, I met a diverse group of people and worked with motivated and skilled volunteers. I definitely met with difficulties in achieving my goals, but the support from my team-mates and from the patients was a huge motivating force. Overall, my experience volunteering in these projects cannot be described in words alone. It was an experience I would not trade for anything in the world. The things I learned, the people I met, and the positive change that I helped affect has changed my life and the way in which I view the world. I hope everyone gets an opportunity to have such experiences.

Dwijavanthi Kumar graduated in May 2008 from the University of Iowa with a degree in with Biomedical Engineering. To learn more about her experience as well as the experiences of other youth volunteers, please visit www.sewausa.org/yuva-sewa/yfs-experiences

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This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 10:55 am and is filed under Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.