Over 50s volunteering in Kerala

If you’ve ever asked Google ‘Is my old laptop worth anything?’ you’ll know that the answer is often disappointing. You’re asking in the wrong place. Instead, ask Ridhi Patel, the founder of our Kerala-based specialist, Volunteering Journeys: “We want to start IT classes, but we need a lot of computers,” she says. Two years ago she set up a women’s group, where local people could learn English from international volunteers who come on a volunteering vacation here. Now she’s asking that they come with their tech in tow. “If anyone has any old laptops they can bring, a lot of the ladies want to learn IT.” It’s enough to make you slide that old Dell out from under your bed again.

The women in the center are keen to learn. “They come from conservative families; they got married at an early age and couldn’t pursue an education,” Ridhi explains. “They’ve always wanted to but then they were raising kids. They don’t have that excess income to pay for lessons, so they come to the center.” Ridhi is based out of Fort Kochi, a historic region in the seaside city of Kochi (or Cochin) in Kerala.

To the women’s group in Kerala, an old laptop is very valuable indeed – but so is its owner, especially if the owner comes with a bit of life experience, “maturity and openness,” Ridhi says, are the best attributes a volunteer can bring. She explains that the women’s center is a real draw for many volunteers in their fifties and over, who can bring some dinner party wit to a new setting. You don’t need IT skills to help out – just an ability to hold a conversation with someone new. “Initially I felt unprepared,” says Gillian Perrott, who went on this trip in 2017, “however it was all in my head, everything that I needed was there.”

If you’re slightly intimidated, you’re not alone. Coming to the center in the first place can be intimidating for Fort Kochi’s women. Lessons are totally free but the center isn’t at capacity. Ridhi and her team have done a lot of work to encourage local women to enrol. “Slowly but surely, it’s growing,” Ridhi says. She tells the story of how at first, they were going into local homes, then squeezing into a room at their volunteer house as demand grew. Now, they have the women’s center, suitably equipped with whiteboards, teaching resources and a small but growing collection of laptops. Since the beginning of 2020 they’ve had 13 new joiners, and been teaching 35 women.

The women’s center isn’t Ridhi’s only project in the area. She started by enrolling international volunteers in the local school to teach English to underprivileged primary school children. “Volunteering Journeys started in Kerala – this is one of our flagship operations,” she explains. The organisation now supports three local government-run schools. English-speaking volunteers supplement the schools’ traditional rote learning with a more hands-on approach, teaching kids social skills as well as conversation.

The United Nations has set a number of global sustainable development goals for 2030. India’s gender parity targets – set to make sure that men and women receive the same education and the same advantages – are ambitious, but the country has made good strides in women’s education.

Women now have 100 percent enrolment in primary school and for every 10 literate male youths aged 15-24 there are nine literate females in the same age bracket. In 1991, 0.6 women attended secondary education for every one man – but more recent statistics from the World Bank show that this disparity is closing rapidly. The benefits of gender parity will be felt by the current generation, not so much their mothers. Ridhi’s center helps women aged 20 to 70, who have missed out.

You will choose your project before you go, and see it through for the duration of the stay. You can help at the primary schools, or, if you have a specialised skill – for instance, in healthcare, you could assist in that line of work.

If you volunteer at the women’s center, you’ll take part in morning and afternoon sessions with the group. You’ll be assigned between two and five women to speak with for each session, and given topics to talk about. You could speak about anything from healthy eating to the environment, and you might get together and play a few games, too. You are expected to spend an hour or so every day planning your lessons. The center is slowly starting to introduce business skills and IT skills to the sessions, but it’s harder to do this than you’d think. “It’s very difficult to implement a strict structure on lessons,” Ridhi adds, “because we don’t know the skills of the volunteers.”

The volunteer project runs all year around, but you might want to avoid the summertime, unless you want to work alongside a lot of students. “The best time for over-50s to come is November to March,” Ridhi says. “This is the best time in terms of weather. In the summer it does get a little bit hot.” She warns against coming in June and July: “There are a lot of students out volunteering, so we don’t recommend over 50s come then.” In spring, there are a lot of vacations and school children in Kerala are off for their long break between April and May. If you want to help at the school during this time, you’ll be helping at a special summer camp.