International Volunteer Day
on Jen's Indian Adventure (India), 05/Dec/2009 18:07, 34 days ago
Today, 5th December, is International Volunteer Day. To mark the event, all of the new VSO intake, attended a Yamuma River clean-up (the main river that flows through Delhi), organised by a number of organisations, including Swechha, an NGO who specialise in this area. Gerry, one of our group, will be spending the next year with Swechha, so it was important we all support him.The sun was shining as we pulled up to the river bend chosen. We were then met by Vimlendu (the MD of Swechha and the event organiser )who explained that as adult volunteers we were there to supervise the secondary school children who were being bussed in from all parts of Delhi. The organisers had been expecting approx 1500 to attend the event, but it was more like 3000 that turned up. With our blue rubber gloves on and some shovels in hand we found our way down to the river bed and started picking up rubbish that was lying on the river banks, while others brought in some of the rubbish that daily flows down the river.Delhites are becoming very aware of their city with the 2010 Commonwealth Games fast approaching and this was one of many events taking place throughout the city today. Being the main event it was streamed live on NDTV and the head of the UN in India as well as American Embassy Cultural attaché made a speech on volunteering. This was followed by the main event – Liam from Canada, a fellow VSO volunteer made every effort to encourage the students attending to consider volunteering again, tomorrow, next week, next month.We were entertained royally while we worked. The live music was provided by 3 great sessions– Indian Ocean, Terra Naoimi and Menwhopause. Everyone seemed to enjoy the music, with people dancing while they worked, and some who just danced.Today wasn’t about the amount of cleaning up that was done. Today was about the spirit of volunteering. If only 20% of the students who were brought here by their schools told their friends about volunteering or got involved themselves it would be the great achievement of today.Tonight we had a party in the VSO office to mark the day and to also send our group off to the various parts of India from tomorrow– Jarkhand, Chennai, Orissa and some are even going as far as …… Delhi.