How did I come to volunteer?
I hail from a small town in Maharashtra called Gondia. To lend some perspective, it’s a place near Nagpur with a population of around 10 lac. Although I was afforded every help financially by my parents, I grew up under immense lack of opportunity both co-and extra-curricular. For example, I remember having had to drop badminton – a sport I played well because we couldn’t find a proper coach. In Gondia, you couldn’t learn a fourth language if you wanted to. Of course this was pre-internet revolution.
When I moved to Mumbai in Class 11 and joined R. A. Podar College, meeting so many diversely talented students at one place, I realized the extent I had missed out in my childhood. I struggled to find my feet while going through a culture shock and became unsure about my capabilities. If it was not for the friends and mentors I met there, I would have probably given in and would have never found back my self-belief. Podar threw me out of my comfort zone but also facilitated my growth challenging me in ways I’d never imagined.
Fast forward to 2016. I took part in Jagriti Yatra – essentially a 15-day train journey across towns and villages of our country to study most successful social enterprises. On this journey, I visited a school called Kalkeri Sangeet Vidyalaya in Karnataka (Dharwad). This was a unique free school for it taught underprivileged students complementing academics with classical music which they had found, helped their IQ and grasping.
At this school, I interacted with a little girl from the school when she asked me for my camera. To my surprise, she went on to click beautiful photos with professional-like ease and confidence despite her less privileged background. Meeting her, I completely flashed back into my childhood and realized how underprivileged kids suffer from the same lack of opportunities that I’d suffered from. In her, I saw myself – how I could have been if I had those opportunities in my little town and realized what access to equitable education and learning opportunities can do for such children. This drove me to start volunteering and I joined an NGO in Mumbai to teach kids at shelter homes on weekends.
Experiencing impact
When I started teaching a Class 11 youth, I found that his ambition was to start earning after Class 12. I also found that he didn’t know simple math shortcuts. For example, he would use pen and paper for 10% of 5000. Over the next few months we gave him extra practice lessons for these shortcuts. By the end of the year, his scores had improved and in Class 12, he started thinking about pursuing higher education. The time we spent with him boosted his self-confidence and made him fall in love with learning. If you think about it, his decision to pursue higher education instead of finding a job could change not just his life but was a decision that could impact few generations altogether after him in his family.
Launching Break Free to aid rural education
Three years of volunteering at this shelter taught me how underprivileged kids today don’t lack so much in opportunities and resources than in mentorship and motivation to use these resources. I also realized that my efforts were most required in rural and semi-rural areas like those around my hometown where there are no NGOs making continued efforts in underprivileged education. In Feb 2020, with help of few friends, I launched Break Free Foundation to connect urban volunteers with rural children in government schools supporting them in academics through online classes and imparting exposure to life skills.
How continued volunteering helped my career?
So far was about how I found my impact in volunteering. Let’s talk about how volunteering influenced me back and impacted my decisions. How it changed my career trajectory and how it can help you grow and flourish in yours:
I am a management consultant and in the last 4 years I have got promoted early twice in 2 different organizations viz. Deloitte and Alvarez & Marsal. I owe large part of this success to volunteering as it helped me develop soft skills I couldn’t have added sooner.
1. Structured thinking
Teaching is not so easy and tougher is teaching an underprivileged child. I remember in my first session on Accounts, I had ended up explaining a Class 11 youth about Clearing accounts in SAP – a fairly sophisticated accounting software. Volunteering helped me understand how to structure my thoughts, sequence and withhold them if needed so that my audience understands my point. This helped me develop structured thinking, ask the right questions and understand client problems better in helping them build solutions at work.
2. Convince better
Teaching trains you in looking for signs of disagreement in children. Many of these children are very quiet and hence, you slowly start picking up slight expressions or air of discomfort to understand what is not clear enough and address it to convince them better. This same I have noticed in work place at times when you are leading and your team disagrees but isn’t bold enough to confront you. It helps in reducing this communication gap and convince others by understanding their discomfort.
3. Problem solving
When we started Break Free, we thought of teaching students using Video conference equipment in schools. That model got turned upside down when Covid hit and schools closed. But we found a way to onboard students and teach them using their parent’s smart phone / neighbour’s. Much of the problem solving here that we did was basically asking the right questions to right people. This did not come from better skills or intellect. It came from the fact that we were extremely determined to solve this problem. Determination is more important than ability to solve any problem and working in social space taught me how to be consistently more determined than others while approaching a problem even at workplace.
4. Analogous angle
Explaining to underprivileged kids is a task. More so because their grasping sometimes is much lower than kids from privileged background for their age and you don’t know how low. When the child doesn’t understand, you need to quickly try and give them all possible analogies and real life examples. You improve at attacking any problem from different angles. In consulting, this is called having an analogous angle that every consultant must have to be able to find collaborative solutions between businesses.
5. Bold beyond doubt
While volunteering at shelter home in 2017, I was put on a project in Bangalore with no flybacks to base on weekends. This meant I couldn’t continue teaching the youth at the shelter on weekends. Realizing how well we were getting along, I really wished to continue to teach them. So I went upto the senior leadership in my division and made a case for weekly flybacks explaining how it could actually save hotel cost if flights are booked in advance. This interaction emboldened me in front of my leadership and also taught me how to push back and ask for what I need in a mutually benefiting way.
6. Audience orientation
You learn to ask the kids what they are interested in or need to learn before structuring your lesson. Focus is always on what they would be able to appreciate and understand. This is audience orientation and this helps you empathize with your audience – finding if they really want to hear what you have prepared and what is it that they are interested in. This is exactly what most boring presentations lack, isn’t it?
7. Time management
In a survey that we did on volunteering, we found that most people list the top reason as not signing up for volunteering as “having not enough time”. Ironical isn’t it that volunteering actually teaches you better use of time. Its kind of funny that even I had not enough time before I took up volunteering and after I did, I had more even after committing almost 6 hours a week. Its just like when you are busy you end up managing to do more personal work than you would have if you had no work at all. Making sure that children learn in those 2 to 3 hours a week that you spend makes you more conscious of time.
8. Focus on results
Does any one here think if you put in the hours of hard work, may it be in any direction, the results will follow? Well, I have seen projects failing because of this exact strategy. I have seen people putting late nights but still not getting promoted. This is because most people don’t focus on the results and just keep working under guidance without questioning. Volunteering gives you the opportunity to lead projects where you will learn to maintain focus on the result. We question every approach we take with our kids right down to “whether giving them a reminder for class would get them to expect that every time and take us for granted”.
For me, the result oriented approach has now inspired me to now question the overall impact that my work for the client has on economy and society. This has also made me stand out in my promotion pitches to my leadership at work.
9. Leading with humility
When you take up leadership position in an NGO, its definitely more challenging because you need to lead people who are volunteers meaning they will do things by their own will, pace and time. They don’t work for you and hence, you have no tacit control over them. This trains you to lead with humility and learn to inspire people towards the common goal. You learn how to create excitement, ignite passion and identify like-minded people to achieve impact as volunteers will follow you only out of choice and not out of any compulsion.
10. Sense of alternate purpose
Every professional has those lull periods in office. Times when you are put on a project that you don’t want to do or when you work with people you don’t like to work with. Those are the times when you take the most rash decisions like hanging up your boots and moving on to things you are not prepared for just because you hate your job. I have faced this often. But volunteering has recued me every time because I have had another purpose in social work that I have always done good at. It is the one thing that I have always felt great about and hence has managed to distract me from issues or bad days at work. This has perhaps been the greatest thing I have benefited in.
I credit my success at work place to these lessons and skills I have learned from volunteering. I have got back more than I have given so far and that is one of the biggest motivation for me to continue volunteering.
So if you are looking for a hobby or a way to contribute out of your work, you should first go and experience “continued volunteering” which means regular volunteering for longer period of time for one particular cause. If nothing else, it would add more perspective, give you a chance to know more about yourself and perhaps, ignite another a passion you never had. In the very least, it would transform your career.
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