My ICS Experience - The Placement

This is the first in a series of blog posts I will be writing about sustainable development in the world today. This blog is the main part of my 'action-at-home'. Action-at-home is the culmination of the work all ICS alumni must complete following their programme.

Before we get into my experience in ICS, it'd be a good idea to go over exactly what it is. The International Citizenship Service is the volunteering wing of the British Govern
ment's Department for International Development. It is entirely funded by the government and it is run by a combination of Britain's most successful NGOs. The combination of good finances and expert knowledge makes it one of the best of it's kind in the world.

ICS sends young adults (18-25, 23-35 for team leaders) to communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America and immerses them in that community under the leadership of a grassroots NGO. All volunteers from the UK must fund raise at least £800 to prove their commitment - all of which then goes straight into their NGO. Each British volunteer is then paired with at least one volunteer from that country and together they decide what where they focus their attention depending on the needs of that community. Since setting up in 2011, ICS has sent over 25,000 volunteers abroad, and those volunteers have given back to their communities through their action-at-home works.

Understandably, people often doubt organisations like ICS. Firstly, it does seem a little too good to be true, but there is also the issue of voluntourism, those dodgy little companies that charge you thousands to go abroad and play with abused animals or build a shitty well with no knowledge of how to do so. ICS takes great lengths to avoid this. Firstly, it acts more like an agent. It provides the funding and connections as well as some training, but then you're sent to your in-country organisation and ICS steps back and does logistics. For us, we were sent to Pravah ICS, set up after India's dreadful communal violence following the demolition of Babri Masjid. Pravah's experience is entirely Indian, and yet they felt it best to pair us with yet another organisation, Jatan Sansthan, who's experience was entirely Rajasthani. The focus here is immersion, it's expert local knowledge and it's getting the most out of the volunteers. There's no painting schools in ICS. It's hard work that can take an emotional toll and 99% of the time it gets the best out of those chosen.

So this is ICS. It's awesome, you should do it. And now, for my placement.

One of the mandir, and our favourite place.

I was placed in a village in Rajasthan called Khadbamniya. In the district of Rajsamand it is one of the poorest and most backward (using the Indian use of the term, not the derogatory British sense). And it was tiny. Like, really small. I grew up in Maidstone, Kent. At 160,000 people, it never felt particularly huge. I often see people I know on the street. In contrast, Khadbamniya had just over 1,000 people. The people I saw on the roads were the same people I would see and interact with for the next three months. It was divided into mohallas which indicated caste, or more specifically, jati. Where I stayed was the Brahmin Mohalla, the where the Sharma families stayed. Then there were Gadri's, Salvi's, Sargara's, Jaat's, Bhil, Yadhav, Kumhar, Sen and Rajput homes, among others. My host family, which I shared with my amazing counterparts and brothers Kunal and Vishnu, was the home of Ganeshji Sharma. At first I found them terrifying. I didn't speak or understand Hindi or Mewadi, and they knew no English. I thought for about a fortnight that they hated me (a couple of silly jokes about my caste, and the odd comment about colonialism made things awkward) but eventually I grew so comfortable and so happy with them that I was refusing invites to eat dinner with my friends because I didn't want to miss an awkward dinner rife with misunderstanding and annoying children. I grew to love that family as my own, I still call weekly so I can shout down a bad connection with even worse Hindi.

The rest of the village knew us already. They'd already seen one of the three ICS batches roll through, and we had to quickly pick up where they left off. They were eager to practice their English, or rightfully torment us for our lack of Hindi. I remember thinking I would hate Kunal on our first night when he left me alone with Laxmi didi on the roof for 45 minutes so I could repeatedly say "Mere naam Simon hai". I still hate him a little bit for that.

Kunal, our fearless leader and absent counterpart

Arguably, the bridge between us and the rest of the village was the children. They were so eager to get involved, eager to learn and direct that for the first week we pretty much just followed their lead. I think a lot of us thought we'd lose weight until we realised the amount of chai we would be consuming on a daily basis. I think every batch will say the same about the kids of Khadbamniya - without them, a huge amount of the amazing work we did would not have been possible without their help, although they were also infuriating and made us want to cry on numerous occasions.


Regarding our work, we started off slowly, I think every batch does. To enter a brand new community (brand new for UK and Indian volunteers) and immediately start work wasn't possible. So, for a week and half, we followed our illustrious leader (but not actual leader, don't worry Kunal) Pooja in preparing for an event for International Women's Day. Women in the village lived a bloody difficult life. I reckon my host mother went to sleep at 23:00, and I'd often wake up at 04:30 am to her sweeping on the roof. From then on, getting the children up , clothed and fed, getting water, cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, working on the farm, all of this came down to her. She would eat after the men had eaten, she'd put everyone else in the family first. That's not just her reality, it's the reality of women globally. So, having a night to highlight that hard work, to get the village to show their appreciation, we thought that'd be a good call. I won't go into too much detail, as blog posts following this will focus on specific areas of development, but it was a great start to our time there. After our mid-phase review, we really took off. Where initially we struggled in a two week time frame to design one event, we were holding three or four events a week, sometimes two in a day. We had great turnouts (save a couple of embarrassing flops) and I believe we started or contributed to productive discussions and changes. This wasn't our success, it was the success of Jatan's support, of the locals who gave us their time and their knowledge and the rest who gave us their vital free time.

International Women's Day 2017 - Photo Credit to Ayesha Tinuviel

Our work, of course, was centred in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are the successor to the UN's Millennium Development Goals, and are likely the most ambitious the world has ever been about sorting out the plethora of crises threatening humanity from poverty to climate change to peace & justice. I'll be honest, when we were in the village, we didn't really pay attention to them. We had the issues in front of us and until our debrief we didn't realise just how much we covered. When you look at them and get caught up in the ambition (eradicating poverty is ambitious, but its necessarily so), it is easy to think it's beyond you. But something as simple as cutting a plastic bottle in half and using it for storage is living by the SDGs (shout out to Pooja Singh). ICS showed me that everyone can be successful in sustainable development because those levels of ambition need everyone. When it's a little inconvenient to carry that plastic bottle rather than leaving it in a refuse bin, remember that it'll take a couple hundred or thousand years to break down, and that your inconvenience is far less than Gaia's.

The goals

This post comes a long time after my placement. I went back to India almost immediately, I worked with the Telegraph in Kolkata and then travelled, but the whole time I was pushing myself back to Khadbamniya, back home to my family and friends. After a rendezvous with our ever patient programme supervisor, I returned to Khadbamniya. 18 hours on a train, 4 on a bus and then trying to find our auto in the dark of Railmagra I made it back. There were new roads (no claim here, that was all them, but it added to the image of a changed place in my arrogance), the dogs were cleaner (the hard work of our trainees Manju, Deepak and Vikas which I'll detail in my next post). In terms of great change, that's not our place. We did our best but the elderly will still see menstruating women as dirty, they'll still consider Bagariya people as untouchable, and that's their lot in life. That's the hand they've been dealt and one that was emboldened during British colonial rule. However, individuals were reached. Whether it was my Dadaji promising that his children would no longer be allowed to abuse dogs, the children's hard work in collecting rubbish bins for all houses,  the women who boldly spoke out against the patriarchy during international women's day or those that went way out of their depth in accepting training on handling dogs and treating mange. Change doesn't happen overnight, but I truly believe that ICS was conducive in helping many people at least develop a different outlook on life.

ICS changes lives. Whether it's the volunteers or the locals, even the people running the show in the NGOs. If you're unsure of where you currently are, what you're currently doing. Look up ICS, look up the SDGs, get involved and be a global citizen