iVolunteer Blog - everything about volunteering

Just when you think you finally understand the ground reality, the field humbles you. It shows you how much more there is to learn. That’s exactly why I love fieldwork. It never lets you live in assumptions. For the past few months, I’ve been on field and visits almost every day. Bastar, with all its […]

During the months of September and October, custard apples in Maharashtra are ready to harvest. My project is about establishing a value chain of custard apple through processing, value addition and market linkages of custard apple. In those times, I was managing the processing unit, people and paperwork, and rarely I woke up with a […]

Life is strange . And full of unexpected turns. The train which is usually on time and was on that day as well, till that point, got late, as Priyanshu reached 1 full minute after it’s usual on time departure. We got the train, which felt nice. We had nice south indian neighbours next to […]

Once our 5 day slot for exhibition at Udyan Utsav was booked, there existed a sense of worry about who will visit our stall, how much public will come, what will sell, how much will sell. Questions about how much we should take, about restocking our products every next thing was panicking us more before […]

Imagine this situation: you are traveling to a completely new place and do not know much about it. Then, you take a shared taxi to another place, which is also unfamiliar, in search of a hotel for the night. The weather is not in your favor. Finally, you reach this second new place, but it […]

As I stand at the verge of completing my fellowship journey, I often find myself reflecting on the past few months and asking- what has been my greatest learning? More than any technical skill or field exposure, the answer that comes to me most clearly is this: learning how to be a good manager, and […]

After Three Months… I Finally Got a Table Before that, my work life had one small but very important problem – I didn’t have a table. Yes, a table. Just a normal piece of furniture that most people don’t even think about. But when you don’t have one, you suddenly realize how important it actually […]

For decades, the name Anantapur District in Andhra Pradesh evoked images of drought, struggling farmers, and parched landscapes. With one of the lowest average rainfall levels in India, scorching summer temperatures, and severely over exploited groundwater resources, agriculture here often felt like a gamble against nature. Farming families lived with constant uncertainty, never knowing if […]

The words “ have to go to the hospital” always trigger a deep worry. And if that news arrives suddenly at night, there’s no escaping the anxiety. Around 3:30 in the early morning, I too had to head out. On an empty, silent road, just Dheeraj dada and me. Under a relentless downpour, our destination […]

How do you fry an omelette without letting its smell escape? Seriously, do you know any trick? No matter where you are on planet Earth, making an omelette isn’t exactly rocket science. Still, thanks to my overthinking, I managed to sweat an entire bucket over this simple task.Right after beating the eggs, I landed myself […]