Why might I consider volunteering with Asha for Education (Asha)?
Volunteering for Asha for Education enables you to get involved with an organization doing important, meaningful work to support the education of underprivileged children on-the-ground in India.
Asha has three India-based Asha chapters (Asha Bangalore, Asha Chennai and Asha Mumbai), which allow our volunteers in these chapters to have direct contact with and impact on the education-focused projects that their chapters support in their local communities.
However, even if you are not based in India, you can have an immense impact on the lives of the children on-the-ground. In fact, much of our volunteer base supports Asha from abroad – with a majority of our Asha chapters based in the U.S. as well as a handful of chapters based in Europe.
Asha also provides a wide variety of volunteering opportunities – from PR marketing, to event planning, to project stewarding and more – along with a unique. mission-driven community and hands-on leadership experience.
Asha is an all-volunteer run organization that has achieved a 4-Star rating and a 100% rating on Charity Navigator.
What have been the experiences of other Asha volunteers in working with the organization?
While each Asha volunteer has their own unique set of benefits that they draw from their involvement with Asha, many volunteers have shared that some of the biggest aspects of Asha that have drawn them to the organization is the impact that Asha enables to have in India and the unique community that Asha has fostered for them.
But, don’t just take our word for it – check out what some of our past and current Asha volunteers have to say about their Asha experience: https://ashanet.org/asha-volunteer-shares/
How is Asha organized?
Asha for Education is structured as a decentralized organization, meaning that even though we have a Central Asha team to facilitate key organization responsibilities (financial filings etc.), we primarily act through Asha chapters across the U.S., as well as a few internationally, that operate fairly independently of our Central Team. These chapter’s volunteers determine which eligible Asha projects they would like to support, and how they would like to raise funds locally for their projects.
What does Asha do to support education in India?
Asha raises and disburses funds to projects run by NGOs in India that support education for socioeconomically disadvantaged youths. We work with a variety of project partners and community groups in many educational and development related endeavors. Our mission is not only to look at issues concerning access to education, but also to ensure that every child has access to an education that is meaningful. We also try to ensure that nutrition and health care needs of the children are met. As our rapport builds with our partners and communities we provide support to make the community impact more tangible by supporting areas of need such as women’s issues, community awareness related issues and more. With these thoughts in mind we have invested our energies in supporting different types of endeavors. Our support in each of these areas not only helps the individual efforts but also guides our work in terms of how we invest our energies as an organization. It helps us realize the problems faced by different communities and the important role played by each type of endeavor. For a list of our supported projects, please visit https://ashanet.org/projects/.
How does Asha decide what projects to support?
Project partners may be introduced to Asha from a variety of means – from an Asha volunteer being knowledgeable about a project in India and bringing it to Asha’s attention, to a project partner reaching out to us directly via email or through an application at http://proposals.ashanet.org/. What goes into determining whether a project is picked up for funding – along with a chapter’s interest in the project’s work and a capacity to fund it – is a whole range of factors, including: demographic and focus area diversity, potential learning outcomes for the group of volunteers, feasibility of site visits, FCRA clearance, whether the project’s work aligns with Asha’s goals, whether Asha’s support is needed, whether they have a recent financial audit report, whether they have credibility, how many years the project has been around since infancy, the impact potential of our engagement, can we help them scale and sustain and more.
What does it look like to volunteer with Asha for Education?
Asha is an entirely volunteer-run organization so volunteers act in all roles within the organization, running our fundraisers, and interfacing with the projects we support in India. There are a range of volunteer opportunities to support these roles, including acting as a steward for projects in India, organizing fundraising events, and volunteering in leadership roles within a chapter or central organization.
What types of volunteer opportunities are available to new Asha volunteers?
There are a range of volunteer opportunities open to new volunteers, including helping to organize and participate in fundraising events, participating in chapter meetings, and helping out with functions within Asha such as website management and PR. Most chapters typically want new volunteers to participate in a few meetings before taking on certain types of volunteer roles but there is a lot that volunteers can do from day one. Once joining an Asha chapter, you’ll be part of a core team of active volunteers, and may have the opportunity to join a sub-team and volunteer to support the chapter’s efforts, projects, events, Treasury, PR, website or another area of interest and need.
What types of skills or qualities are you looking for in new volunteers?
The main quality we encourage in all volunteers is a passion to help improve education in India and provide opportunities to socioeconomically disadvantaged kids. Having certain technical or other skills can be very helpful and may make you more suitable for certain types of volunteer opportunities. However, many volunteers have found they can learn what they need to know while volunteering and many volunteer opportunities don’t require any special skills.
Volunteers who are proactive and willing to take initiative help us out tremendously! Because we are an all-volunteer run organization, we take on a ‘roll up your sleeves and let’s get it done’ approach to our work, and this offers a great opportunity to build one’s leadership capabilities on-the-go.
How can I get involved with on-the-ground work in India?
One important task our volunteers fill is acting as the project steward for the projects we support in India. Each project partner typically has a ‘Project Steward’ (Asha volunteer) assigned to the project, who serves as a liaison between the project’s point-of-contact in India, and the U.S. (or other abroad-based) chapter. The Project Steward is responsible for checking in with their project contact each year and ensuring that they bring any concerns or challenges to the chapter’s attention. The Project Steward also receives the chapter’s annual budget request and then presents this to the chapter’s volunteers for discussion and voting. We also require regular site visits for all our projects so often the project steward will do these as well, especially if they are already traveling to the area where the project is located.
Will I be working directly with kids in India?
Typically our support for our projects is limited to providing funding. We also try to provide advice to the extent we can based on our experience working with many projects. Volunteers will often meet the kids our projects support through doing site visits but we typically don’t do remote tutoring given the time differences. However, if a volunteer was interested in volunteering for one of our projects while in India, we may be able to facilitate this.
Can high school, middle school or elementary school students also volunteer?
Some of our Asha chapters (Danbury, Princeton, Seattle) have Junior Asha and/or Asha Teens programs that allow students under age 18 to volunteer. However, we do not currently have a program to volunteer remotely for students below age 18.
What if there is no chapter near where I live?
We have a virtual chapter, Asha Beyond Borders, for people in the US who are not near a local chapter. Many of our physical chapters, including chapters in other countries, allow remote volunteering and do at least some chapter meetings online. Currently we only have chapters in the US, Canada, India, Sweden, Germany, UK and Switzerland so we are currently limited to these countries.
How do I get started with volunteering with Asha?
It’s easy – complete our New Volunteer Interest form, and if there is an Asha chapter near you, we’ll get you connected to that chapter!
We also encourage you to look for an Asha chapter in your area by visiting https://ashanet.org/chapters/ and reaching out to the chapter directly for volunteer opportunities.
How can I learn more about Asha for Education?
Great question – check out our website and follow us on our social media channels to learn more about the impactful work we are doing as an organization!
- About Asha for Education
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