Graduate Study Abroad Experience

I had the opportunity to volunteer abroad with CCS as part of my graduate studies. My interest was in women and children within the culture and I volunteered my time at a local school where I taught English. Having had a background in teaching, this was helpful but I can only imagine the stress of a volunteer who has never taught before might have.

In order to 'teach' English, we were given a key to a supply room in our apartment that had various games, workbooks, activities etc which could be copied by CCS staff. At times, I felt overwhelmed with the large task of teaching English to 2-5 year old children in only two weeks (I stayed three weeks but we were only introduced to our site within the first week) and truly did not feel like an impact was made.

At times, I did not feel safe within the community and wish that CCS would have provided more social events for its volunteers within India in addition to the cultural and 'touristy' events although oddly enough certain events like going to the Taj Mahal had to be arranged on our own.

We arrived during the week of India's Independence Day yet oddly there were no event scheduled for us to attend except an invite to the Director's home with her family yet we had just met her and many of us did not feel comfortable attending. There was a lot of down time which included watching English shows on the TV or going to their movie library and watching English movies.

Overall, I was not satisfied with my experience in Delhi but would recommend using CCS given reviews I have heard from friends regarding the organization (they went to other countries through CCS)