Hello my Name is Sharmila Pushpakanthan and I’m from Germany. I’ve started my work as a volunteer at the SAMA foundation three month ago. Besides me there is two other german volunteers
working at SAMA (Lea and Bettine). I stay together with Lea in a Guesthouse in Mahalaxmi Layout. We share one room with 2 separate beds and one common cupboard. This is quiet comfortable. Some volunteers even have no bed or cupboard at all. Our place is 15 min away from the SAMA Foundation office by b
us and almost 1 hour away from the Day Care Centre in Hegganahali, the place where I actually work. My regular week starts on Monday with an ‘office day’. The rest of the week I’m in the day care centre where I
work with disabled children. There are seven children between 8 and
18 years who have different disabilities. Some children are physically some mentally disabled. The day care centre consists of one small room in a public school complex.School days begin with relaxing exercises
(like yoga) for the children. After that they get simple exercises according to their skills. Then it goes on with puzzling. This is ideally suited for the children because here they learn to understand which kind of component belongs to which part of the puzzle. Also drawing is another lesson. Here the teacher and me draw outlines of flowers or trees on a piece of paper so the children can fill it
out with color. This is not easy to do because most children don’t have the balance in their fingers to achieve that alone.
We have to lead them. If there is some time left at the end of the day we try to do
some simple maths like counting till 10 in English and Kannada. At 12.30 pm children get food at school. Sometimes children take a rest after lunch or we are playing games outside.At t
he office where I go once a week I write blog or other reports. It is nice to have one office day because here you get the chance meeting the staff members of SAMA. I enjoy tal
the workshops are quiet good. The Workshops usually require more than 3 days of time. Within those days you’re not only able to come to know the staff members better but also get the chance to meet people from different organisations. The staff members of SAMA are really nice and friendly and treat you as a full value member of the organisation. You easily get in touch with them not least because they are really interested in you and ma
ke sure that you feel good. Especially in the beginning is it hard to get along in India. You don’t speak the local language and the country with its people show different behaviours which you’re not used to. Though, at SAMA you know you are not alone.Every new day in India is inteking to them and get to know them better. This is not the only field of work at SAMA. You also get the chance to participate in very interesting workshops like psycho social care, life skill educatio
n, training on teacher, student and family enrichment which is really great. Not all workshops are in Bangalore. Some of them are in other states like the one I atte
nded in Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu). A very nice place. Also
Vistar outside from Bangalo
re is a beautiful place. Not only the places have been interesting itself also the contents of
resting and holds new experiences. The traffic in Bangalore and the pollution are probably two of the most notable things you will recognize when you’re new in town. Despite that I like the area in Bangalore where I live, Mahalaxmi Layout. It’s all go! In the beginning I couldn’t fin
d any good words for the city of Bangalore. But now my mind is changi
ng. You cannot describe Bangalore in one sentence it is too multifaceted. Here are so many different places which makes it impossible to say Bangalore is just like this or like that. To understand what I mean you have to come here and experience this place on your own
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