iVolunteer Blog - everything about volunteeringNarayanpur is the land of the free. Or was . Everything here is so full of nature , full of potential, of future possibilities, full of rich historically informed culture and practices. But it is hard to reach here. It is like an island. You get down at Raipur airport and ask the taxi waalas […]
Food often arrives on a plate without revealing the long journey behind it. In the hilly villages of Pati, tucked deep into the Kumaon region, small kitchen gardens are bringing that journey back into view, transforming empty patches of land into spaces of learning. Here, adolescents are slowly learning that food is not just nourishment […]
I work with Shiksharth in Sukma, deep in the forests of Chhattisgarh, as part of the SWAR Fellowship. Along with an incredible team, I’ve been working on Menstrual Health Management (MHM) identifying and training Menstrual Health Champions who will become voices of change in their tribal villages. Our project began with a baseline survey in […]
When I first began my journey as a Swar Fellow, I carried a mix of excitement and uncertainty. I came with my training, my notebook, my frameworks, and the belief that I was ready to understand the community. But community work, I realised, does not begin with knowledge. It begins with surrender with letting go […]
May 27, 2025. I still remember that date-my first day in the field. Everything felt foreign: the geography, the society, the communities, even the way people looked at me. I was an outsider holding a clipboard, armed with theories and frameworks from the classroom,thinking I knew what “development” meant. I didn’t know anything. This moment […]
Recently, I found out something new about myself, the fact that I’ve become afraid of phone calls. I am engaged in an initiative at present regarding the construction of a Common Facility Centre on rice value addition. The rationale behind such an initiative is to support farmers in improving their livelihood and increasing their incomes. […]
Are you from a small village or town? If yes, do you have even a rough idea about the collective expenses of your community? I guess no! Sits together and calculates it once, you will be startled. When the people of a small village named Papadmela in Odisha’s Malkangiri district went to calculate this, they […]
There’s a creeper in my bathroom. Well, there was a creeper. Let me tell you how it got there, because this isn’t really about a plant, it’s about something we all do. Two months ago, I noticed a thin little creeper peeping through my bathroom window. It came from a tree outside, barely visible, almost […]
One of the most powerful parts of my Swar Fellowship has been learning how differently women experience life, opportunity, and oppression. In the beginning, I used to think “women’s issues” were similar everywhere mobility, safety, income, workload. But as my fieldwork deepened, I realised something more complex: every woman’s struggle is shaped by the multiple […]
This blog is a comparison on the friction existing in getting community interventions done in the plains versus the hills, primarily in terms of geography. I’m currently in Uttarakhand, working with INHERE, my NGO, on increasing millet productivity and its self consumption amongst the local communities. At the same time, being a native of Kerala […]
iVolunteer Blog - everything about volunteering 