Volunteering with RLEK India

Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK) is an NGO which helps to get rid of injustices in many areas of life in India. Especially in the Himalanchal region. They also have 17 schools in and near the Himalayas withing a 200 km radius of Dehradun. I went there in 2003 with 5 pupils from my school in Dublin. We wanted to do 3 weeks of voluntary work and taught a few hundred children in the RLEK hill schools. At the end of this I made myself a promise that I would come back in 2005 and teach the teachers English as that would be of much greater benefit.

I found a few other volunteers who could join me and I also got an English Reading Scheme published  in India to save on printing costs. We did some fundraising for this.

It was of some benfit to the RLEK teachers, so we decided to come back the year after as the teachers needed to learn a lot more.

We printed a larger number of books in the second year and in the third year we not only had 9 teachers from England and Ireland, we also had MP3's to give the teachers a chance to learn English the other 50 weeks of the year.

We have gone back ever since teaching around 40 teachers who would take a two-week break from their schools and we would all meet up in the well-equiped headquarters of RLEK. We have always been well looked after by Mr Kaushal, the founder and his team. We get very posh double ensuite bedrooms and delicious food for breakfast and lunch. We usually spend the first six days teaching English and the last five days practice for a performance on the last day to close the event. We use songs, drama, art, reading and writing and we go on excursions. We like to use the local tradional literature from India rather than imposing our stuff on them. Last year we had two training teachers from sister Cyril's amazing school in Kolkata to run the event and we assisted and supported them. We have become more down-to-earth in our aspirations and are helping more with the 'how to teach' end of things and pay less attention to training the teachers just in English. We are always looking for volunteer teachers in the first two weeks in August. Just send me an email if you're interested: rutger@johnscottus.ie . All you need to do is make your own way there and back. You're looked after royally by RLEK while you're there.