I signed up to volunteer for one week. I ended up staying for three.
My name is Priya Sharma. I am a software engineer from Pune. I had taken a week off work, read about Laraware Welfare Foundation online, and impulsively applied to volunteer at one of their field camps. I expected to feel useful. I did not expect it to reshape how I think about almost everything.
Day One: The Arrival
The village of Sarauli in Faizabad district is about 45 kilometres from the city. The last 12 kilometres are on a dirt track that turns treacherous after rain. We arrived at dusk in a tempo loaded with medicine boxes, rice sacks, and water purification equipment. Twenty families came out to meet us. I did not understand what they were saying. But I understood the way the older women touched the medicine boxes — like they were something sacred.
Day Three: The Medical Camp
I have never felt more helpless than when a mother placed her malnourished toddler in my arms and looked at me with absolute trust. I am not a doctor. I was just holding the registration clipboard. But in that moment, the distance between us collapsed. She did not see my city clothes or my hesitant Hindi. She saw someone who had come.
Dr. Rakesh, who leads our medical volunteer team, later told me: "The hardest thing in this work is not the medicine. It is sustained attention. These communities have been overlooked for so long that simple eye contact from someone who is genuinely present can be healing."
What I Learned
- Poverty is not a character flaw. It is a structural condition — and it can be interrupted.
- The most valuable thing you can bring to a community is not money or medicine. It is your presence and your consistency.
- The people here are not waiting to be saved. They are solving problems every single day with almost nothing. They need partners, not pity.
Why I Stayed Three Weeks
On day six, a group of women asked if I could help them write an application to the local panchayat for a handpump repair. I spent the next two days helping translate, draft, and submit. The pump was repaired within ten days. I stayed to see it happen.
I cannot describe what it felt like to watch water flow from that pump for the first time — watched by thirty women and children who had been walking two kilometres to fetch water every day.
Come. Just Come.
You do not need special skills. You need time, a willing heart, and the ability to show up. Laraware Foundation will match you with the right role. Apply to volunteer here. I promise it will give you back more than you give.