Service And Leadership Award: Global Hope India.

At my university they run an award called the “Service and Leadership Award”. I got introduced to it as an undergraduate but never had time to do it often working two jobs as well as trying to balance my academic work with having a social life, I just couldn’t do it. Then when I realised I would be studying my masters at the same university and only having six hours of lessons a week and working part-time as a Senior Resident Tutor in halls, as well as recently having broken up with my boyfriend at the time I thought it the ample time to do it. I attended the mandatory sessions which gave an overview about volunteering and advice which gave me confidence when picking a project to volunteer on. I attended a session on global leadership which taught me that there is no universally good leadership style but many and that it is okay to make mistakes but also to learn from other people’s mistakes when reflecting on previous jobs I’ve been in (and believe me I’ve had a fair few jobs). It also gave me confidence to take new risks and lead my own life and to say yes to opportunities which came my way and ironically the following week. I was then approached by my boss at the time who asked if I’d like to go on Global Hope.

Team Building and Training:

The university runs a charity and they send students and staff on projects all over the world for 2-3 weeks where you volunteer and teach activities in different settings from Uganda to Brazil. I applied and was appointed a Senior Student Position so I had to fund-raise £800 and after the second week of the project when the other staff members left I and another Senior Student would have to help lead the group. My global leadership training gave me the confidence that I could do the role in the third week and so I said yes. You have to attend training sessions which allow you to bond with your group and plan before you embark on the volunteering itself. During the sessions we did scenario training, group trust excersizes and we were also encouraged to hang out together in a social setting outside of the training which we did. We went for meals and the thing that brought out team together the most before the trip was the fundraising events that we did.

The two staff members who went with us Laura and Faye went above and beyond to aid us with our fundraising efforts. We did a bake sale, a few cooking events where we made and sold curry as well as a fashion show. The tasks such as cooking the curries and making sandwiches and cleaning up the fashion show was an opportunity to dish out jobs to each other and work as part of a team to create the end product of a clean kitchen or a nice curry.

Communication Skills:

We were leading English language workshops and teaching to female university students studying at JAC college. There were two classes a day, one in the morning then we would rotate and teach a different class in the afternoon teaching six days a week. The classes consisted of between 50-90 students. English was not the students’ first language and so we had to think of tasks and workshops to improve their English language. The girls’ first language was Tamil and they also knew Hindi as well as English. During our planning stages we used our knowledge from our degrees. I’m currently studying for my masters in English Literature and my undergraduate was English Literature and Drama combined. So I used drama techniques to help the girls with their confidence when speaking out loud. We did a lot of tongue twisters in order to help their pronunciation. We did story tasks where the students would form small groups we would give them a word such as horse and they would have to write a short story in English about that word. After writing the stories we would read them and correct the grammar and spellings with them we then chose the best stories and the students would read them out loud improving their written and spoken skills.

After we had done a few of the story workshops we collected example sentences from the stories that the students had already written. The sentences were incorrect sentences grammatically or the words hadn’t been spelled correctly. We put the sentences on the screen and as a group the students would tell us what was wrong with the sentence then come and correct it. We also played games like hang man in which they learnt how to spell some difficult words as a group. They beat us pretty much every time.

I was asked by the English department to give a lecture as well on Greek theatre. So I gave my lecture to 60 postgraduate students with a question and answer session after the hour long lecture. Teaching these tasks to the Indian students whose first language was not English whilst developing their communication skills allowed me to develop mine. I had to rethink the way that I phrased and explained things as sometimes the wording was too complex or alter the pace of my speaking to suit the students. I also learnt the importance of dividing tasks equally between each other as well as rotating who was in which group and changing who we worked with every day.

In the third week at the beginning we taught in a primary school for a couple days. Teaching the early years standard one and two (reception and year one here). The children between 4-5 and 5-6 could barely speak Tamil properly let alone learn English. So we quickly learned how to communicate with the children through body language nodding and frowning if they starting acting naughty. We also lead activities using their chalk boards drawing numbers or pictures with them. We also sang English nursery rhymes and songs to the children and taught them dances such as you’re happy and you know it and they enjoyed it a lot. We prepared for the sessions thinking that we would be with the older children who knew some English. But having to work with the younger ones who spoke no English assisted us in our improvisation and thinking on our feet. It also helped us develop our body language and facial expressions as a the main way of communicating and we soon learnt that they are so important when expressing emotions in both a personal and professional setting.

What went wrong?

With the students being older and adults around our own age we didn’t expect that there would be behavioural issues. But there was, some students got confident and a little cheeky some even fell asleep during our sessions and knowing how to gain control back of the lesson or task was hard when these things occurred and it wasn’t something we planned for so we had to think on our feet and improvise.

You also can’t plan for if a team mate is sick or cannot teach sessions, we experienced this and I myself was one of the people who ended up not teaching for half a day as my leg  came out in an allergic reaction after being stung by a plant. You just have to be flexible and willing to work that extra bit harder when having to teach with less numbers. We managed it fine it just meant we had to rethink tasks that involved the smaller groups and did more main group work.

I also didn’t realise how limited the resources there were. The only computers we had access to were in a computer room that was open until 5:00pm when we finished classes at 4:30/ 4:45 most days. So I had to prepare an hour lecture over the course of five days as I didn’t have the resources or time to just sit at a computer as and when I wanted. Which makes me appreciate my libraries facilities a whole lot more especially when their internet took 10 mins to load one webpage.

On some days we also ran out of tasks to do as the students had gotten through them all very quickly compared to other groups so we had to again improvise and add onto tasks that they’d already done to make them harder. For instance we’d make them do word searches and if they finished that quickly we’d ask them to put the words into sentences. Then make a story with all of the words in if they finished the sentences. So this helped with problem solving and developed our creative thinking.

Leadership:

At the end of the second week of the project the two staff members left and me and another Senior Student were left in charge of the project. This meant that we had to liaise with the staff who run the college. We were also given a choice of staying at JAC or going to another college for disabled students two and a half hours away in Madurai. I decided to speak with the staff member who runs global hope and she advised us that we could go to Madurai if we felt confident in a new setting for the final week. I decided that it would be good for us to have a change of setting and experience something new and some new teaching settings.

 We went to the small college in Madurai where we taught university and postgraduate students lectures and seminars in psychology and English literature. We had to divide the tasks and lectures between us. I also had to assist in navigating the airports and making travel arrangements for our return to the UK. Leading the team through the airports and following signs and making sure we were in the right terminals as we travelled back together through three different airports on three flights. 

It’s given me confidence now and I have no trouble stepping into a leadership role. Most of all it has helped improve my decision making skills. I’m a very indecisive person at times and having to choose to go to Madurai or not for the final week tested my choice making skills. I am now able to communicate effectively, I know the importance of working as part of a team but also when to step up and be a leader.  The SALA and Global Hope programme have helped develop not only my professional skills but also my personal skills and my outlook on life has altered since doing the volunteer work. Its not just something for your CV its an experience that  allows you to develop skills, friends, experience a completely different part of the world and culture as well as make memories for life. If anyone is thinking of volunteering abroad on projects similar or is interested in Global Hope. My advice is to do what I did just say yes and do it!