01 Feb 2007
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Children transporting heavy rocks
Charity Challenge in India
In October 2004 a team of 15 employees from Australia, Germany, Saudi Arabia and the UK spent four weeks living and working with charities in Bangalore, India.
This initiative, organised by our joint venture in India, benefited five local charities. Here two of the volunteers describe their experiences during the trip.
Tina Brock, Edinburgh Parks Australia
"Hello India!" These were two words I used during my amazing four-week trip, an experience that has been life changing and one I will never forget. I worked on two projects - installing a new kitchen for the Cheshire Home for physically disabled women and girls and the construction of an outdoor stage at the School for the Deaf.
Both these projects involved hard manual labour with limited tool resources. There were no local hardware stores down the road to pick up a wheelbarrow or powered garden tools. Instead we had gardening gloves, shovels, chisels, hammers and buckets to complete our projects. I lived with a great host family of four who made me part of their family from the moment I stepped into their home. Their hospitality was beyond anything I could imagine."
Sattam Al-Bukhari Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
"I spent most of my time working for the Centre for Learning, some 50 kilometres out of town. We lived in a small hostel, sleeping on bunk beds, washing our clothes on stone and rubbing them with a bar of soap. The most challenging thing about the project was the fact that there were practically no tools or machinery, almost everything had to be done by hand. That included heaving large pipes that took 6-10 people to lift and positioning them with levers and spades.
Although the work was hard, I wouldn't have missed it for the world. In terms of my personal development I learned a great deal about teamwork, thinking problems through laterally and experiencing a culture that I will never forget."
