Volunteer and Intern in India
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About
Leave UR Mark aims to be the leader in India for meaningful internship and volunteer experiences for all types of travelers coming to India, while positively growing the communities and projects we work on. We are focused on training the next generation of leaders and change-makers that will engage with India more intimately and discover their own passion, become completely immersed, and have a hands-on learning experience that is impactful for all involved. We get a diverse group of change-makers from practically every country in the world that come to India for their first or second time. We welcome students, graduates, gap year travelers, university professors, career transitioners, travel groups, retirees, and everyone else in between. A love for India and an inclination to grow yourself and the world around you is the common denominator for all participants.
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- We scout out companies that are active and handle international clients and projects.
- We monitor your placement on a weekly basis to ensure you are getting meaningful work.
- We ensure your skills are being properly utilized.
- We ask our placements to continually challenge and grow your skill sets and comfort zone.
- We offer post-internship help such as resume guidance, references, and recommendation letters.
Response from LeaveURMark
Hi Nina,
Thank you for your valuable feedback as we always strive to improve our services in order to make sure our customers feel supported during their internship experience in India. We are sorry that you had such a bad experience with our services and regret any miscommunication as a result of. Our pre-departure support services for every intern focus on helping provide you health, culture and safety information through a 2 hour pre-departure orientation, a 25 page pre-departure orientation packet, and an email chain of over 35 exchanges answering preparatory questions for our interns. As for the visa, besides providing a reference for your visa application and/or a visa sponsorship letter if an intern applys for a student visa, there is not much we can do. The visa websites throughout the world do not allow us to login to your account and input any information for you. We do not have access to what is confidential information between each applicant and the visa consulate. Therefore apart from visa reference and/or letter if needed, internship program providers like us are limited in what we can do. We do not list out visa processing as part of our services as that is something we are neither registered or qualified for. In cases of emergency where interns have not received their visas before their flights, we have gotten on the phone with visa processing centers to figure out what the delay is. However, this was never requested by you and thus we did not know you needed us to step in. In terms of what flights to book, our interns come from all over the world and book tickets according to what they think is cheapest, what routes they find to be most convenient and what dates work best for them. We are not and never will be a travel agency that books airfare for our participants. This is generally a good thing as if we were to add that to our services, we would have to upcharge. If an intern was having real trouble finding flights, we would step in however, this was not the case with you where it was communicated that you needed extra help with flights. In terms of medications, we have an extensive section in our pre-depature guide regarding 'health'. However, we absolutely cannot legally provide medical advice in terms of what innoculations and medicines that interns should take and bring because we do not know your medical history. We advice every participant to book an appointment with their physician and/or travel clinic so that your doctor who knows your medical history can provide you the safest advice on what would keep you healthy in India. We also link out to resources from the CDC (Center for Disease Control) India section so interns know to follow the advice of qualified medical professionals. In terms of confirming your payments, if there was any delay from a pre-departure support coordinator, it would have been because it takes us 5-7 business days to receive your payment in our account as it is an international payment. Each intern should get an automatic confirmation in their email via Paypal that the payment has gone through--but we go through our own verification after Paypal gets the money and it hits our account. So if you had to wait 5+ days before getting a confirmation, it is because we were waiting for us to receive it. No harm or negligence was meant. We have never lost interest in an intern after payment. After payment what normally happens is that we provide a 2 hour pre-departure orientation, airport pick up (which our records show that you did not want to receive), on-arrival orientation (which you showed up for only 1 out of 2 days), internship placement (which you did not commence), and checking up on your internship with a personal visit from our internship coordinator every 2-3 weeks. We absolutely understand being frustrated when you are in a new country and a programs deliverance not being up to an interns expectations. However, we strongly recommend all participants to properly read the actual services that are provided, to communicate with in-country staff, and to allow improvements to be made. We hope those that don't find us a good fit are able to continue on their Indian adventure with something that is more meaningful for them! Email communication is always open with us so we can properly iron out grievances and make improvements for the services we actually provide.