My Experiences As A NGO Volunteer So Far

It was March 2014 I suppose; I was discussing my new goal of joining a NGO where I could work in volunteering capacity with few of my friends. We searched for NGOs that we could join on the net and I stumbled upon Citizens Association for Child Rights. We contacted Dr.Richa Singh, who explained the working of the organization, the need for more volunteers as well as of people who could spread the word through the net and I was hooked.

          The truth is that I never gave any thought to the plight of children who were not as privileged as me or the people I interacted on a daily basis. I volunteered to work for the organization by going to schools and spending 2 to 3 hours to teach the students basic computer courses. However, I soon realized that I was more interested in spreading the word about this organization via my writing skills. I contacted Dr. Richa and she appointed me as a volunteer in maintaining the blog.

How to get in touch with CACR

          Writing and editing the blog posts was a major exposure for me. The experiences shared by the volunteers told a horrific story of neglect suffered by the children in our country. We shared these stories on the blog which garnered an impressive response. However, it was not enough. The fight is to change the condition of children all over the country; we had to reach a larger audience to make a significant change. We decided to change the look of the blog and the technical team played a major role in that endeavor. Guest writers played a crucial role in branching out and spreading the information to a larger audience.

          I did not have a history of working with NGOs but CACR gave me a strong platform to help the organization spread awareness about its cause with my talents from day one. I understood the various fields in which we could help our society and the rising need for the efforts to make it a better place. It also brought in sharp focus the fact that for uplifting each section of the society it is necessary that the whole society works as a single body. For this the citizens need to know the problems faced by the various sections, and hence spreading knowledge about it is equally important as making efforts to solve the problems.

     CACR. The team working for is efficient in planning as well as execution of events and plans. The smiling faces of hundreds of children are a mark of their efforts and the milestones that this organization that CACR has achieved.Writing has become my passion and I am actively aware of the society I live in. This has been the gift of joining CACR. It has given me the incentive to fight for the deprived classes and to make the country we inhabit a better place to live. 
        Working with an NGO can be a frustrating experience if the organization is not organized to meet the demands. I am proud to say that I faced no such qualms while working for

-by +KAVISHA SHAH is a engineer by profession who loves to blog and volunteer with +Citizens Association For Child Rights 
website : www.ngocacr.com

Images : https://instagram.com/p/1j8KUTG2Rh/

Are we cognitively blind OR conveniently ignore the truth?

I love walking. I believe I have inherited this habit from my father. Walking helps to alleviate my stress, improve my concentration, and focus on the events of the day. But it has added benefits too. This hobby provides me with a means to observe my surroundings, analyse the real estate market, and get a glimpse of not only the economic conditions of our country, but also the changes in the cultural trends.

Now, that I am volunteering with NGO CACR I use this activity time to come up with ideas and to observe our society.One of the most important questions that has been on my mind lately is the living conditions and future of the street children that we come across every day.


 I see children living on the footpaths, railway platforms, and makeshift tents. One of the best observations is perhaps the sheer joy that I saw on their faces and in their eyes when some of them were using the newly installed escalator on a metro station. That kind of joy, which comes from deep within, tends to get imprinted on one’s mind.

I know I am not the only one who has seen them. Sometimes, I see authorities passing by and I question myself, “Are we all blind or is that only me who has misconceptions?” There are documentaries on rag pickers and I wonder if we need more proof to understand that there is a need to change their living conditions. We cause hue and cry on child labour in mills and factories, but what about these kids who live on the roads and platforms, who beg and sell items for a living?  We, 'busy' citizens , usually turn a blind eye to these children who beg for a rupee or two so that they can buy something to fill their bellies. If these children do not have access to the basic right of food, how can they even dream about education? Aren’t these technically child laborers too? 

When I wanted to define this condition that we suffer from, I came across the term "Cognitive Blindness". This term is heavily used in the US TV series, Perception. The term can be defined in lay man’s language as something that is ignored in the environment because its existence is taken for granted. If you  look around, you would find that we are blind to most of the things happening around us because we have accepted them as a fact and believe they wont change...because these occurrences don't concern us directly. 

What about the construction workers and their families who have to move to new places each time based on their new construction project. This is a common scenario in Mumbai, where there is either a road development or building development taking place. Their makeshift tents are on the pavements near their sites. so what happens to the kids of these workers? Do they go to school, do they go the same schools, or do they change school each time the job site changes. Do they have proof of identity attesting they are citizen of India and are they  beneficiary to subsidies? Do they have access to water and education? Are they eligible to open a bank account? They might have been residents in their villages, but that too is questionable. The government does talk about labour insurance for the poor and RTE Act but who will ensure their implementation?  


I agree there are a handful of organizations just working for street children.  But the mammoth task of getting the child off the street and into a school is a slow and difficult process. Are these agencies enough to deal with  such a large number of kids? 

There are so many questions.

CACR has been to many BMC ( innercity)  schools for their work. Few have closed down or on the verge of closing down because of lack of students. Some schools have closed down certain linguistic mediums because of insufficient number of students.These schools or classes close down when there are so many illiterate kids on the road, railway station, and orphanages. Ironic isn't it?   Some orphanages are looking city out for teachers when there is a Government school nearby.Shouldn't there be a rule making it a mandatory for kids to be sent to school ? If there is such a rule, its time the Government takes action for it to be executed successfully.

Nitin Sir the founder director of CACR had once told us that he had spent days to make the street dwellers understand the importance of a education and had to fight tooth and nail with the authorities for it. Isn’t it time we wake up from this artificial blindness and stop relying on breaking news to make us ascertain about the apathy of our society?

We need to find a solution for these streets kids so that they don't wind up as their parents did.We should see to it they get admission in Government schools, they attend it daily, and a suitable penalty is imposed on their family if they miss out.

Should there be an agency or separate branch of police for  monitoring street kids and the public/ALMs (Advanced locality management)/LACNs(Local Are Citizens Networks) / Neighborhood watches/etc be notified the  of such kids who are begging, loitering around, and not going to schools?Its time for the Government, media, NGOs, and schools to come together to take necessary actions.

-JZ volunteers with Citizens Association for child rights.  Website :www.ngocacr.com
(edited by Kavisha and Richa )

Does Women Empowerment truly create a EQUAL world?

The concept of equality of sexes has been taught to us right from our childhood  and in support of the same concept the idea of  women empowerment was born and since then this movement has gained  popularity. But the question that should have been asked before the rallies for equal rights for women gained strength is :What exactly is women empowerment? The question itself is quite simple but the answers are varied and complex.

The gender gap captured in Media 

According to the document published by the United Nations, the term basically entails the following five components:

• Women's sense of self-worth; 
• Their right to have and to determine choices; 
• Their right to have access to opportunities and resources; 
• Their right to have the power to control their own lives, both within and outside the home; and
•  Their ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just social and economic order, nationally and internationally. 

However, as more organizations joined the fray to fight for women empowerment the definition became vague.

  Women empowerment should enable women to fight against any injustice done to them or should enable them to fight for their rights. In the earlier days, when India was a young free country, many laws had to be laid down to bring the status of women at par with the men in the society. However, as time passed these arcane laws were never changed. The quota reserved for women in every government institution and in most  fields was a necessity in those days. To continue in the same vein even now when most women are at an equal footing with men in all walks of life is a violation of the ideology in the support of which this initiative was first taken. These laws automatically put men at an disadvantage.They are not given even a fighting chance at grabbing the opportunities that in a perfect world should have been available to both the genders equally. 

The society has various means of twisting the definitions of concepts in a way that suits itself and the definition is generally distorted to such proportions that the original meaning of a coined term is forgotten. Such is the case with the term ‘women’s empowerment’. By granting women freedom, it no doubt aids them in making conscious choices and also makes them independent, but it doesn't entail handing them opportunities like gifts for it only makes them weaker. A child only becomes strong when it has fallen time and again, only to make one more attempt at walking till it takes its first step. If the women do not fight for their own rights and do not compete with the men in a world apparently dominated by men, they will never realize their self-worth in the true sense and may never reach the peak of their potential. Granted that women are considered to be the fairer sex and they are weaker than their counterparts in terms of physical strength, it should not result in the male gender bearing the brunt of unfair practices to compensate the wide gulf.

The concept of women empowerment will be truly implemented only when the women make themselves capable of competing with the males on an equal footing. Only then will the scales of equality be balanced.The men of today’s age understand the importance of their female counterparts in more ways than we can possibly count and I guess the time is ripe for women to pick up their arms and walk down the path to the new world as equals with the men and not as the underdogs that need special offers or concessions to make their presence felt in the world.

Dream for a EQUAL world 

Hence, when we teach gender equality in our schools today to girls and boys, let's tell them that both the sexes are truly equally-equal opportunities, equal importance, and equal reward-punishment standards for both.But for these values to get ingrained in the minds and hearts of our children the teaching should start at home and continue in our schools. Hope, this would lead us to a equal world where women are respected and treated as par with men. Neither women are  discriminated against nor granted undue favors. 

I AM

“I have hopes,

I have dreams,

I want to fly high,

 I want to swim deep,

 I speak many languages,

 Of love, peace and silence,

 I have been crushed many times,

 Yet I get up every time bearing the bruises,

 I give u birth,

 And at death, I am the one you melt in,

 I am a vortex of emotions,

 I am your shore in a storm,

 I am simply.... a woman!!”

-Kavisha Shah

--by Kavisha, a volunteer with Citizens Association for Child Rights a  non profit education start-up working to improve quality of health and education in municipal(inner city) schools of Mumbai