SKIP Barts - India

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Location

India
22° 55' 4.5228" N, 79° 43' 0.4692" E

A team of SKIP volunteers embarked upon a project in Viratnagar, India during summer 2011. This was a fantastic opportunity for healthcare students from Barts to develop their personal and professional skills whilst gaining an understanding about how cultural values can influence one's understanding of health.

History

During summer 2011, a team of volunteers spent four weeks on a project in the Bal Ashram, an orphanage for rescued child labourers in Rajasthan, India. Our aim was to focus on improving the health, education and welfare of local children and their communities through sustainable and integrated projects. This gave us the opportunity to promote health to the children. We hope that in the long term this intervention can help sustain better healthcare amongst the children, their teachers, their families and the local communities.

What does our project do?

Interventions including:

  • Healthcare teaching on HIV/AIDS, nutrition and many more important issues
  • English teaching
  • Drama and Bollywood dancing - a massive performance at the end of the trip!
  • Sport
  • Being there generally to help and assist teachers

    • We ensured that all children engaged in the activities that were planned for them. We used an interactive means of teaching about various healthcare issues, with the goal to essentially improve the quality of life of each child. These activities were designed to help stimulate the children and help them develop new ideas and clear any misunderstandings that they may have had.

    We had daily meetings with all volunteers to discuss our progress and whether we needed to make any amendments to the project.



    What are our goals?

    To establish a sustainable project in India that can benefit children through simple interventions. The focus of the project was on basic healthcare using both the English language and an interactive medium to educate the children at the Bal Ashram.

    Another aim was to develop links with the local community, especially women and children, to discuss any personal or health issues. This may be something that we will develop in the future.


    How do we raise money?

    In addition to our annual project, SKIP gets involved with a number of fundraising events to help raise money for the project, namely Barts Got Talent, yummy cake sales and Skip for Skip!!


    Contact us

    For more information about SKIP Barts or our project please contact us at skip_bl@hotmail.co.uk.