On this Occasion of Mothers Day, We decided to Showcase a Super mom from the Development sector, She is Kareena Immanuel our Senior relationship manager from the iVolunteer Banglore center.
Read how she narrates her experiences being a professional working in this sector and also juggling the duties of motherhood whist making a difference!
“After I completed my UG in Psychology, I was very keen to keep working in the space of developmental psychology but there wasn’t an appropriate course in my city back then…This lead me to do my Masters in Social Work, specializing in Family and Child Welfare. During my course, the field work opportunities with various NGOs helped me understand myself better and realize my strengths and weaknesses and the kind of organizations I could work with. I started my work life with corporate employee volunteering before moving into CII, where I worked in the Development Initiatives Department mostly facilitating training’s, conferences etc. Marriage happened….transfer to Bangalore happened….and a few years later the baby happened!!!! That was when I took a break from work to take care of my little one and enjoyed his growth through infancy and toddlerhood.
Over the years, I have realized the causes most close to my heart are women, children, disability and environment..Apart from work, NGOs in this space have also made a positive influence in my personal life… As a family, we purchase gifts for family and friends from an array of NGO products available in the market; Personally I have tried to create and connect NGOs to work together and possibly source from one another (eg: women from a SHG (Self help group)help with some process of a product making which cannot be completed by say people with intellectual challenges);I learnt from another NGO that we need to go back to millets for climate change reasons… which as a family we have started including in our diet; We compost our own wet waste which we use back in our small garden, and again all the saplings I have (both at home and for corporates engagements) were sourced from NGOs with a horticulture unit. At a recent corporate volunteering programme, I also learned to create vegetable patches and we soon hope to start something on our terrace. We have also volunteered as a family with an NGOs to help make products during Christmas.
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