Why Kolkata (formerly Calcutta)

India’s 2nd largest city is a daily festival of human existence, simultaneously noble and squalid, cultured and desperate.  -  Lonely Planet

India with its 1.3 billion population still has a large section of its struggling to make a decent living. There is a huge requirement of volunteer services for overall social development and for providing the minimal education and support for children and women who can only barely support themselves on a daily basis.

The Kolkata metropolitan area, including suburbs, has a population of more than 15-million with migrant workers from poorer states and villages who flock to the city every day and the presence of large slum areas for the urban poor.

In Kolkata we partner with non-profit organizations that mainly work among the urban poor  and for the welfare and empowerment of downtrodden children and women in Kolkata. We also help our volunteers find placements at organizations that are devoted to the prevention of substance abuse and alcoholism, drug counseling. Many of the organizations in our network promote hygiene in disadvantaged neighborhoods through active intervention and awareness campaigns. Many others are involved in preventing HIV and STDs amongst sex-workers through education-campaigns and enforcement of safe-sex practices. As a volunteer, you will be given a placement depending on your schedule and the need of outside volunteers of all these NGOs.

Why Northeast India

In India, Impact Abroad also helps with volunteering placements in Itanagar, the capital of the North-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. If you are on the look out for snow-capped beautiful Himalayas, astonishing scenic beauty and riveting displays of ethnic cultures then Itanagar is your perfect getaway. However its wild mountain scenery and pristine beauty often betray the untold hardships that its tribal population has to put up with on a regular basis.

Arunachal Pradesh encounters economic problems mainly stemming out of its poor connectivity and seclusion from the major metropolises of India. Rugged and inhospitable terrain, fragile infrastructure system and resource base, dependency on the central government for mobilization of resources, sparse population and a sheer absence of the private sector has resulted in serious economic backwardness. Most people of Arunachal Pradesh live in scattered villages and its educational sector is markedly underdeveloped.