Internship at Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled
Name: Diya Baid and Aashmika Varma
Internship duration: 4 weeks
Spending 4 weeks at Samarthanam was a wonderful experience and has taught me a lot. I got t to meet many different people. On my first day at Samarthanam, we were sent to the ‘vocational and counseling unit’ where we made paper bags. Over here, we also met Baba Jaan who helped us with our paper bags. In addition to making paper bags, we met our fellow interns Kamro, Sandra and Abhishek. Kamro instructed us about what we have to do daily. She was very friendly and also very hardworking. Towards the end of the day, we went to the recording studio where we recorded books for the visually impaired. Recording books was a completely new experience for us and we had a lot of fun doing this.
From our next day onwards we got very different work. We were sent to organize a summer camp for children from grade 4 – 10. This summer camp was sponsored by ANZ so each day a few volunteers from ANZ would also come. All the children were divided into 2 groups- 4th to 7th and 8th to 10th. On our first day, we went to higher school kids. Our topic for the day was indoor games and we enjoyed talking to all the students and we were truly surprised to see their positive and happy attitude. The summer camp lasted for 2 weeks and we enjoyed each and every moment with all the children even though sometimes the language barrier made communication difficult.
Once the summer camp ended we had work involving computers and data entry. We did a lot of data entry for Parisara in the field of dry waste collection. In addition to data entry, we worked with Mr. Subash (centerhead).
We helped in developing content for a dictionary for rural kids who have little to no access to modern education and English. During this time we also met many different interns who had very pleasant personalities.
Every single day we would record books as it was one of the most fun things to do. We also saw a few ‘speech and hearing’ impaired people who were communicating through sign language. This really fascinated us. We spent the next two weeks of our internship doing data entry, preparing dictionary content and recording.
On the last day of our internship, we got field work. We did gardening. We started by loosening the soil, then adding manure, watering the soil, planting the seeds and then watering the seeds once again. We also got to learn about the composting setup Samarthanam has. They prepare manure by using kitchen waste. We also got to see their STP, where they reuse and recycle water. This recycled water is used in the washrooms. With this, our internship at Samarthanam came to an end. We enjoyed our internship very much and also learned a lot. Lastly, I would like to thank our school and the authorities at Samarthanam for giving us this opportunity.
To make our internship more memorable, my friend Aashmika and I have prepared a blog. Here is the link for the same: aashmikav502.wixsite.com/samarthanam
