Volunteering Reflection: Gautam Chanda

Today we share with you special volunteering reflection… Goutam Chanda, he takes interest in conducting workshops, interacting with youths. He comes with a reach experience; feedback on his ways has been very impressive.  Here he shares his experiences as a volunteer…

My blog…Goutam Chanda

In the Seva Kendra Calcutta Livelihood Center, a bright group of young aspirants are being coached for Employability after their basic formal educations. These batches consists students coming from High Schools and Junior colleges .

The entire syllabus contains modules that make them ready to work in Retail selling environment .

I undertook the ‘Social Grooming’ and ‘Communication skill  improvement’ parts .   I felt these are two vital pieces they need more than anything to face the real Job-world.

Classroom sessions started very enthusiastically with lively interaction  and active participation by  these intelligent boys  and girls .

They were most enchanted by the life like Mock drills , wherein the students themselves were guided to assume different roles and do live sessions with each other ,,. Those were very intense, focused , invigorating , and at times rip roaringly hilarious .

It was my chief pursuit to drive in an important message to the students by theory and by live demos , that it is critically  important that we all learn the methods of effective communications , in all walks of our lives … The quality of our communication  is directly related to the volume of success we can attain in our Social, Emotional and Professional lives.

Gradually I observed to my biggest pleasure, that the students have imbibed the subject so wholeheartedly , they have started actually practicing it in the next classes  among their own regular class-mate interactions.. The teaching was liked , taken and implemented so spontaneously by the students that , to see its heartening results during the run of the course itself..

Students discovered a new persona of themselves armed with more confidence , skill and grooming …The new Confidence build-up is so ‘Happening’ & visible among the group .

This experience opened up an interesting ‘Learning’ for me as well , I learn that , if rightly motivated and guided , anybody can draw confidence from her own reserve and hand it out to the world, which is also awaiting her active participation . I also felt their is huge demand for this kind of structured teaching by this groups, particularly the lesser privileged ones from our society .

I plan to take it to next level by to impart Practical knowledge and experience by making them witness ‘real-life Work situations’ . . This is to be done in collaboration with some Retail units and the NGO activists together… My role shall be to pick out the right and the best suitable outlets for the students which shall cap their journey into next Retail business placement opportunities .

My journey of social volunteering  on this interesting module has happily taken shape and want to stay course firmly until I have made enough difference to enough number of young lives .. I believe skills can change lives, thanks to iVolunteer for this wonderful opportunity