Dear Volunteer,
Please kindly evaluate the volunteer program of New Hope Volunteers and assist us to further improve our services and program.
Your name: Teagan McCaskie
Your address: 39 Fiona Street, Bellbird Park, Brisbane, Australia
Volunteer date/country: 13th Feb 2011 – Vatsalya, Jaipur, India
How do you assess the services of New Hope?
The services of New Hope were fantastic. I was looking at a few volunteer companies and New Hope was the most prompt in getting back to me and was very detailed in answering all of my questions whenever I needed. Good priced projects and many to choose from. Shalav was the main person helping me via email and they were great.
Please evaluate the support, meal and accommodation we received during the program
Udyan Orphanage had very good accommodation and facilities for their volunteers. The toilet and showers were cleaned every day and there was always hot water for showers. The food was exceptional and a clean well for drinking water. The support was ok, however it took a few days to be able to talk to the manager and be told what I can do to help. I was able to do the everyday things like help dress the children, take them to school, help in the kitchen, pick the children up from school, play with them in the afternoon etc. I was asked by the managers what I would like to really help with and I advised them that I would like to teach English every day for maybe 45 minutes to the young ones during the week. They said this was fine, however did not help me in any way to make this happen by saying to the children to get together at a certain time every day (with the language barrier this would be difficult for me to organize). Udyan has a very well organized timetable for their children so I understand this can sometimes be hard to get time for the volunteers – but I think if they have volunteers who really want to have an impact on the children by teaching them things, then they need to have an hour or 2 a day that is for the volunteers to organize things. I know this was felt by many of the volunteers who were there.
My one last comment is there was 9 volunteers there at the same time, which I feel is too many. There was allot of spare time for us and I know many really wanted to be able to do more and nothing was offered.
Overall though, they were friendly, really well organized for the children and the children were very happy. It was an amazing experience and I plan to come back again and hopefully have more of an impact with the children by teaching English and Yoga.
Please review/evaluate your overall experience with New Hope
Overall New Hope was great and I only have good things to say!
- Do you recommend New Hope Volunteer program to your friends/families? Yes
- Can we forward your email address to our future volunteers? If yes, please write your e-mail: Hiteagan@hotmail.com
Please only give to other volunteers if they need help to decide to go there or help when they are there.
Thank you!
Thank you and all the best for your future endeavors! |
d New Hope services to be very accommodating. I had specific needs in terms of expediency as I only had a few weeks to organize a trip and my dates were inflexible. It was a little frustrating to be only able to manage one email response per day but that was nobody’s fault and just a result of the time difference between Canada and India. I was grateful for the patience of my New Hope Correspondent though and her ability to find me another placement when the first didn’t work out. I found my in country coordinator to be very nice, supportive and concerned about my safety and how I was doing at the project.
out the language and being able to speak Spanish would have enhanced my enjoyment, ease and usefulness a hundredfold but given that I did not have the language, I still feel that I was able to make a worthwhile contribution to the facility I was in as I was able to support the children and the workers and offer them help, caring , encouragement and love. In retrospect I would not have liked to be precluded from participating because of the language difficulties and given that I had such a short time to prepare I am glad that I had the opportunity to be there.