Teaching - INDIA Daily Life

Volunteering in India

Teaching volunteers are usually accommodated in local Indian families. These families are those of either the principal, a teacher, or parents of school children. The volunteers are warmly welcomed and are free to share all the facilities of the accommodation with the family, but are also given separate rooms to ensure their privacy.

Depending upon the distance from the accommodation to the school, volunteers either use bicycles, auto rickshaws or local buses to get to work. The school day normally starts with assembly around 9:00 followed by the timetabled classes. The schools have a lunch break of around an hour and so the volunteers normally go back to their host family for lunch. School finishes at around 16:00. In the evenings many volunteers go into their towns or villages to use the internet, shop, or generally enjoy the cool of the evenings.


On free weekends, volunteers often spend the time with their host family visiting their relatives and friends, attending marriage functions, festivals or visiting children's family on invitation. Otherwise the volunteers are free to travel and often go for short weekend trips with small groups of other volunteers. The Projects Abroad local team is always on hand to give help and advice with regard to traveling ideas.

Every other weekend, the staff at the Sivakasi Office organises group trips for all of the volunteers in India.  This is a great way to get to know other volunteers, and also a convenient way to explore southern India.  Past trips range from trekking and elephant watching in Thekkady; watching the sun set and rise over three separate bodies of water (the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal) at the southern tip of India in Kanyakumari; and getting together in Sivakasi for the legendary staff vs. volunteer game of cricket. These weekends provide a chance for the volunteers to meet up with everyone else on the projects and see more of the country.