As a volunteer teaching English in India, you will encourage students to develop skills, helping to achieve future goals. Conversing with fluent, native English speakers greatly improves student’s language skills, essential for future employment. This project provides the perfect opportunity for India English teaching volunteers to put leadership skills into practice and make a profound positive impact within poor communities in India.
BACKGROUND TO THE TEACHING PROGRAM
India has made some rapid economic advancements in recent years. Despite this, around 28% of the Indian population lives below the poverty line. The disparity of wealth in India is plain to see. It can be shocking to witness the extreme differences in living conditions. However, unfortunately, the slums are a regrettable fact of life in India.
Indian culture places a major emphasis on education, but unfortunately, the education system in India is still a work in progress. For one thing, class sizes go far beyond suitable capacities. Additionally, schools are highly understaffed. PMGY, therefore, supports two schools located within Faridabad’s largest slum community. Our team provides free education, school supplies and uniforms to local children. This aims to encourage parents to let their children go to school. Without this, they may be forced to wander the streets, begging and collecting rubbish to earn money.
The children at the schools range from 3-16. The schools we support are located within the slum areas, making facilities extremely basic with cramped conditions. However, you will find the spirit of the children and their passion to learn a real joy to behold. English teacher volunteers provide invaluable support to the limited local staff. In particular, the presence of a fluent English speaker brings a major boost to the children’s educational development.
When there is a higher number of volunteers teaching English in India, we may also be able to support more slum communities or disadvantaged areas with English classes. Consequently, as a volunteer organisation, this helps us to further community development. If you need motivation for gap year ideas, then our volunteer projects in India provide some fantastic options.
TEACHING VOLUNTEER PLACEMENT EXAMPLES
Sector 10 Program - Established by the PMGY local team, this volunteer teaching English abroad project provides education for children from the Sector 10 community. For context, this is the community in which the local team is from and where volunteers are based during their time in India. Hence, the team has been passionate about establishing community childcare and education program within their immediate local area to keep giving back. The aim is to provide children from underprivileged backgrounds the opportunity to receive free basic primary education.
Around 50 children attend the Sector 10 program each day typically aged between 3-15. Many of these children come from the local slum communities. The children usually split into two groups, with younger children and slightly older children.
As an English teaching volunteer in India, your role is to work with older children where activities are more education-focussed. For instance, teaching basic English and Maths amongst other subjects and planning lessons and activities accordingly. However, volunteers teaching English in India are welcome to discuss other ideas with their project coordinator. There will still be plenty of fun and games along the way!
It is common for the older children you teach to be responsible for their younger siblings across the day. The childcare volunteers will provide support for the younger siblings so the older siblings can focus on their education, learning and improving their English. The childcare volunteers will work more with the younger children with arts and crafts, playground activities and hygiene education.
The project usually runs in the morning for around 3 hours. The morning will start with the national anthem, nursery rhymes and some exercise with the whole group. For the next couple of hours, the childcare volunteers will work with the younger children and the teaching volunteers will teach the older children. The group then reconvenes for the final hour usually involving some Bollywood dancing and snack time. A local teacher and coordinator are on hand to support volunteers with the tasks and activities of the project.
Volunteers teaching English in India may have the opportunity to engage in or learn about our medical projects during their time on the India volunteer program. Since our medical outreach campaigns are also based within the Sector 10 community.
Nehru School - The Nerhu School is a high school, based in a neighbouring local community to that of the Sector 10 Program. Unlike the Sector 10 Program, students here are required to pay a fee to receive an education. Several students have received sponsorship to attend the school through the local team initiatives. Specifically, students from the deprived communities that the local team endeavour to support. This funding has largely been generated by volunteers.
This is an additional project that some teaching volunteers choose to support, and here lessons can be operated more formally. The children are a little older here and usually aged from 10 to lower teens. This can be a good project for volunteers who are looking to work with children who may be a little older. Volunteers are actively encouraged to lead lessons and teach more advanced English and Maths to the students. There may also be the opportunity for volunteers to get involved in other areas such as assemblies, sports and drawing/painting. There will usually be a local teacher present in the classroom for support.
OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER TEACHING IN INDIA
Return Airport Transfer - Your return airport transfer is not included in your Program Fee. Our local team can help arrange onward transfers to the airport or an alternative destination from the volunteer accommodation. Making specific arrangements once in India provides more flexibility as plans can often change and participants may be on similar flight plans. Alternatively, a more common and cheaper method is to use a ridesharing app. Participants can often be travelling across their final few days and therefore are not necessarily heading back to the airport directly from our accommodation. The costs depend on your method of transport and your final destination. This can often be split across multiple participants if you are travelling with someone else on the program.
Experience - For the English teaching program, teaching experience is not essential as the mere presence of a native English speaker is invaluable. As long as you are creative, determined and resourceful you can have a constructive impact on the development of the children’s education.
TEFL Course - We encourage volunteers to prepare as much as possible for their teaching program overseas. You can make the most out of your time by completing our convenient, inexpensive and international accredited 60 hour Online TEFL Course. The cost of this course is only 120 USD.
Resources - On the teach English in India project, resources can be very limited. Volunteers are recommended to bring materials to the project each day to maximise their productivity and day to day involvement. It is therefore important for volunteers to prepare well in advance to get the most out of their teaching English project experience.
Project Flexibility - There may be an opportunity as a volunteer in India to get involved with other India volunteer programs. However, there may be instances where this would lead to overcrowding on these volunteering experiences, and thus limited project work opportunity. Therefore, such flexibility on a volunteer trip to India is not always possible. Priority will always be given to those signed up to that specific program in India.
Weekends - Your project work in India runs from Monday-Friday and weekends are free. You are welcome to relax and hang out at the volunteer accommodation but most participants will use this time to travel and explore the country. As a result, you can check out our India Weekend Travel Guide for top tips on how to spend your weekend.
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