Do it to Experience it!

Sometimes it’s all about how you can change someone’s life. The complete transformation that happens in that person’s life because of your little efforts is a feeling worth experiencing. It gives you inner happiness and joy which cannot be expressed.

It all started in May 2020 when I got an opportunity to teach conversational English to Mrs. Ashwini Bhagirath, a stitching trainer of Srujna Charitable Trust, Mumbai. Because of the COVID situation I had to virtually teach her but it was an experience I really loved.

On the first day, when I interacted with Ashwini, she was very shy, scared and lacked confidence while speaking- thinking people would judge her. I understood, before teaching, my first task was to boost her confidence and remove her fear. It was definitely not a day’s task, so in every session I conducted, I used to motivate her and encourage her to speak fearlessly without thinking what others would think of her. I started teaching her English from the very basic and also gave her timely appreciation which in a way boosted her confidence and kept her motivated. After 2-3 weeks I started seeing the change in her. The person who couldn’t read and speak properly in the beginning started doing it confidently. There was a complete change in her personality.

Ashwini was really very enthusiastic to learn and wanted to implement her learnings in real life. So, one day, I tried to give her a hands-on experience of how she could use English at her workplace. I did a role play with Ashwini wherein, I acted as her student & she was my stitching trainer. She very nicely gave her introduction and explained different types of stitching work. We later had the entire conversation of different situations that she usually faces at her workplace in English. Yes, you read it right, she spoke all this in English!

Right now, Ashwini is in a situation where she can confidently speak in English with her stitching students. I was overwhelmed, when recently she sent me a video recording of hers which had a thank you message for me in English. The inner joy of seeing her speak confidently in such a short duration is really inexpressible. I’m very sure she’ll be able to impact lives of her students at Srujna Charitable Trust.

All this wouldn’t have been possible without the support of iVolunteer. Thank you iVolunteer for providing me such a wonderful opportunity.

P.S.: Here’s the link of her video recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C1noV9v54cEIiaNHY_ndWeU6eWStEQWE/view?usp=sharing