Volunteer your skills

By becoming a HELP volunteer in India or Nepal you will be able to make a direct, personal contribution to the education of young Himalayan people. In so doing, you will be having an unforgettable experience in a new and fascinating world.

"Volunteering with HELP offers all the good things of working with a small, personal organisation: in-depth local knowledge from the HELP organisers, and the feeling that one is doing something for the first time."

Dan Cook (Algarah School)

"We think the thing you do is a great idea, that you do it very well, that your fees are volunteer-friendly (unlike those of other organisations), that you know the region very well and can give the volunteers a realistic picture of it before going, and that you have a wonderful contact in Kalimpong..."

Nikola Capla and Petra Cvancarova (Everest Boarding School)

"I want to let you know that I have looked at a lot of volunteer organizations since I did your program and you have (as far as I can tell) one of the best. I really like how much you personally care about each volunteer and each school."

Anne Gilliland (Denjong Pema Choling Academy)

"I didn’t really appreciate how great HELP was until I got the chance to talk to some other teachers in Kalimpong. I met at least four or five others who were teaching and all of them seemed to say their placements were unorganized and boring. Some also paid as much as 6 times the amount I paid and they didn’t know where any of the money went. HELP gave me the opportunity to work very independently with the comfort of having a number of reliable contacts in and out of my placement. I can’t say enough how glad I am to have chosen this organization over some of the other available opportunities."

Justin Bradley (Bright Life Academy)

See more testimonials...

Volunteering with HELP

HELP is looking for idealistic and competent people willing to give up some of their time to do something positive for the children of the Indian and Nepalese Himalayas. In the process of contributing to their educational needs, you are likely to find that your own need for self-development is met. Most of our volunteers have an amazing, life-enhancing experience.

Skills

Most, but not all, of our volunteers serve as classroom teachers. The greatest need is for teachers of English as a foreign language (TEFL). If you don't have any experience in this field, don't worry. We can point you in the direction of a basic TEFL course, and we will supply you with a starter pack of TEFL materials that will help you get through the first couple of weeks.

Other subjects needing assistance from our volunteers include Maths, Science and IT.

In addition to teachers, we are looking for medical staff: doctors, dentists and nurses for a clinic in the western region of Nepal.

Culture shock!

Living and teaching in a remote Himalayan community is not for everyone, and is certainly not something to be taken on lightly. In deciding whether or not you should volunteer, you should carefully consider the following facts, and ask yourself whether you could cope:

A typical homestay family

You may be living with a Himalayan family. This will be an experience of a lifetime, and you are likely to make friendships that you will treasure for the rest of your life. However, you must be willing to share much of your life with other members of the household. Can you cope with the lack of privacy?
Your family and colleagues are likely to adhere to values that may seem ridiculous or excessively strict to a westerner. For example, corporal punishment is a common way of chastising children both in the home and the school. Also, views on the role of women will seem very old-fashioned. This could affect the way they relate to female volunteers. Can you live with people whose values and beliefs you may disagree with, or even despise?
A typical volunteer bedroom

Religious families may look askance at the drinking of alcohol, and no homestay family can be expected to approve of a volunteer using recreational drugs. Can you live without these things?
You may also be sharing a bedroom with another volunteer. This has the advantage of providing company and support, but you will need to be tolerant of other people and their ways. On the other hand, you may be the only westerner in the village. This will provide you with a once in a lifetime opportunity to get to immerse yourself in a new culture, but could you cope without any of the familiar props of your own culture?

Example of volunteer room
The community you will be living in will be a poor one, and you may be a long way from a major town. Many of the things you consider to be essentials (e.g. shampoo, and possibly toothpaste) are luxuries in the Himalayas, and are not likely to be available in your village. You will need to take such items with you.
Life in your accommodation may be basic and possibly uncomfortable. Toilet facilities are likely to be in an out-house, and you may need to wash at a communal tap. How important are your creature comforts to you?

An Indian-style toilet
The terrain is, naturally, mountainous and you may need to walk long distances. You must therefore be fit.
Medical facilities are not as well-resourced in the Himalayas as in the West. It is essential that you declare any outstanding medical conditions that may affect your well-being. Do not consider applying if you have an on-going heart condition.
The typical Himalayan diet is basic and monotonous, typically consisting of rice, lentils and vegetable curry. It is healthy, but it is not haute cuisine!
Some of your fellow teachers may see you as a threat, particularly if they teach English or use English to teach their subject. After all, your English is likely to be better than theirs. They may even be reluctant to talk to you, for fear of making a fool of themselves. You will need to work out a way of reassuring them that you are there to supplement their work, not to replace them.

Is this you?

It follows that, in addition to having a useful skill, the qualities you will need to make a useful contribution to your school are: resilience and adaptability, an open mind and an interest in other cultures, good mental and physical health, and tact and diplomacy.

Because these opportunities are best suited to mature people, our volunteers are likely to be (but not exclusively) from one of the following categories:

working people taking a career break.
retired people who are not yet ready to put their feet up!
graduates wanting to have an adventure before starting their careers.
students aged at least 20.

If you are still reading this, and feel you have what it takes, please read on!

The recruitment process

STEP 1: Shortly after we receive your on-line application (see below), we will phone you so that we can find out more about each other, and decide together whether volunteering with HELP will be in your best interests, and in the interests of the Himalayan community.
STEP 2: If both you and we decide to proceed with your application, we will then contact two referees nominated by you. One should be a past employer, while the other should be someone who knows you well in a personal capacity (not a member of your family).
STEP 3: Provided we receive two positive references, we will make you an offer.
STEP 4: As soon as you have signed up, we will send you briefing materials, and subscribe you to our on-line network which you can use to get information from our past volunteers.

Your commitments

Volunteers must be able to commit themselves to an attachment of between 6 to 8 weeks (an exception can be made for practising teachers who are fitting their volunteering into their summer vacation), and will need to be able to meet all their expenses. The school will provide accommodation (either at the school, or with a host family) and all meals.

The cost of the programme includes:

a fee payable to HELP to cover your placement, pre-departure briefing materials and advice, as well as the services of a local HELP representative and our administration expenses. Receipt of this fee secures your placement.
a monthly payment to your host family for board and accommodation
a donation to further HELP's work in supporting schools and children. The amount you pay depends on your status (see the table below).

	Non-student	Student	Couples
Administration fee	UK£150 [currency converter] (UK£250 per couple).
Monthly payment for full board and accommodation	Nepal: 11,000 Nepalese Rupees or India: 7,000 Indian Rupees These local currency payments are equivalent to approximately £100 per person at current exchange rates.[currency converter]
Donation (voluntary for applicants from India and Nepal)	UK£250 [currency converter]	UK£100 [currency converter]	UK£150 each [currency converter]

Where we feel that your school can and will make good use of the money, we will ask you to give part of your donation (typically £50) directly to it. Not only does this save on international bank transfer charges, but, being on the spot, you will be in a position to check that it is spent in the way you agreed with us and the head teacher. We ask you to account for the expenditure at the end of your assignment. This is a real responsibility, and requires a good deal of maturity, not least because we are placing a good deal of trust in you. In return, there is the satisfaction of being able to actually see your contribution being used to good effect in a school with which you will have formed a personal attachment.

The remainder of your financial contribution goes into HELP's donations fund. For information about how this fund is used, visit our donations page.

In addition, you will need to meet the following costs:

International and domestic airfares
Immunisations
Visas
Every day expenses such as snacks/drinks/email contact (approx. £35/month) [currency converter]
Medical/Evacuation Insurance

How to volunteer

Simply choose either Indian projects or Nepal projects.
Choose the school you are interested in volunteering at, and send us the completed application form.

What our volunteers say:

"At least in my experience, there seemed to be the general expectation amongst friends and family that the ultimate good that would come out of my travelling abroad to volunteer was in the extent to which I had a life changing experience resluting from my "helping" a poor community.

To be honest, however, what altered my perspective were my initial feelings of complete uselessness. I encountered a village of people that seemed to me to be incredibly happy and a school on track in terms of education. The children behaved themselves beyond belief and spoke English with better grammar (obviously not better pronunciation) than some 4 or 5 or 6 year olds I know. All twenty-five of the villagers wanted me to experience everything about their culture and lifestyle--their food, their songs, their language, their traditions--and took such measures to be sure I felt comfortable.

What did I have to offer? I'll admit, I went with a bit of a colonial attitude, the attitude that I have something to offer simply because I come from the West and I have an education. I went thinking I was there to HELP and ended up, for the first month, feeling like I had less to give than I originally thought. It did, however, evolve into a reciprocal relationship--a give and a take--and I left feeling that the difference was made in the mutually co-operative exchange I was eventually able to have. The differences that were made were subtle and they occurred on both ends. In my opinion it's the subtle changes that will eventually make a difference. And in a short two months one can only hope for subtle changes....

The aim of HELP is to enable young people from poor communities to go beyond their perceived limitations through the use of education. We avoid being 'new colonialists' by first learning their culture and their ways and then helping them learn how to improve and enhance what they already have. We help by gaining perspective on their lives and then by helping them to gain perspective on their lives."

Jane La Mesurier, 2006

"Perhaps it's a positive attribute of humanity that some of us do have a true desire to help and make a change in this world of ours. Of course, we can stay at home and make a difference in our own neighbourhoods, but I think if your intention is sound then there is a case for volunteers to go and form a 'symbiotic' relationship within another community.

Maybe its only after returning from the volunteer period that you have time to fully reflect on the experience and to gauge the impact you have made.

Perhaps that's the value of volunteering through a program like HELP. I know that Jim keeps his finger on the pulse and I remember going through a selection process before being introduced to the host school. By keeping lines of communication open before, during and after the volunteer period there is a better chance that primarily the needs of the local communities are met and of course, the well being and needs of the volunteer are also considered.

So while it's not possible for many of us to volunteer for the extended period it would take to build a fully functioning and adaptable relationship between community and volunteer, by having an umbrella organisation whose mission statement.... aims to best serve the community, hopefully we can contribute positively and in some ways redress the damage done by our colonialist forebears."

Megan Flynn, 2006)