Raghav Binani, a MBA aspirant who is pursuing B.COM from Bhawanipur Education Society College. He is a Social Activist and has volunteered for different causes. He is known for his ‘out of the box’ thinking and some people call him ‘Idea Guy’. He loves swimming.
He attended Volunteer Orientation Session at Kolkata on 6th August 2016. Here he shares his experience post the session.
On 5th August [Friday] I received an email and a message from iVolunteer that I was invited for the Volunteer Orientation Programme in Seva Kendra. When I reached there I saw that 13 people were already there excluding Tanveer who was the lead for the session. To break the ice we were told to tell our name and also an adjective that starts with the first alphabet of our name that describes us because of this I had found a hidden talent of mine. I realised that I am a researcher. In the introduction session I got to meet new people with different backgrounds and got to know about their unique skills.
Tanveer then handed us a page of human bingo and we were told by him to get it filled by other people within 5 minutes. We can either fill it horizontally, vertically or diagonally. I think that purpose of doing this was to find out the communication and coordination skills of the volunteers and also to make volunteers interact with each other. Then we played another game which was both fun as well as educational as two groups were made one was organisation group which was told to find out the qualities which organisation look in a volunteer and another was volunteers group which was supposed to find out the perks which volunteers expect from organisation. Then the volunteer and organisation group exchanged their roles vice versa.
This time the task of the organisation group was to decide the general information to be revealed to volunteers for a project and volunteers’ group task was to find out the information which they require from organisation regarding a project. Then both the groups presented their tasks and Tanveer had shown us a presentation which he prepared on the tasks and many of the points which we had found within 10 minutes had matched with the points he told us and explained it beautifully. The aim of this game was to inform us the key things which volunteers and organisation expect from each other. Through this game I also learned how to look at things from others point of view and teamwork.
Then Tanveer briefed us about iVolunteer and many of its programmes and told us about many benefits of volunteering. Till that moment I thought that the only benefit of volunteering in an organisation was to get a good feeling by helping others and making a difference but I also got to know that day that volunteering can also improve my communication skills, make me feel confident and I will get to meet new people from different social and professional background so I will become more worldly wise. When the session ended we all were a little hungry and were given refreshments after two hours of brainstorming session, although it did not feel like two hours because time flies when you are having fun!
Thanks to iVolunteer and Tanveer for organising this wonderful session
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