I helped start a volunteering group in December 2012 to give back to the Indian community. It was a lot of work to start the youth group with my friends but I would say it was a very fun experience. As part of this group, we would go to various local nursing homes and perform a music/dance show to entertain the senior citizens there. Today it's still active and new people have joined the group so I would say that it was successful. Our website can be found here . I was invited to give a speech at the Ekal Vidyalaya national conference about how other people could start similiar youth groups and give back to their communities.
I also helped volunteer with the organization March of Dimes which helps prevent premature births and provides support for premature babies. As part of this organization I was asked to raise money for an annual event known as Rangeela, an Indian cultural show in the local community. I made a promotional video for this event as well.
To raise money I went to local businsses and asked if they would want to sponsor the event. There were various sponsorship levels and each had different benefits.
I raised money for both the 2013 and 2012 events and over the course of both these events I managed to raise over $4000! This money surely went a long way towards preventing premature births and I am very proud that I was able to raise this amount of money. I learned a lot about how to work in a team, pitch the idea of sponsorship to companies and also about the cause of premature births. I visited one of the neo-natal intensive care units in a local hospital and I saw firsthand the type of intensive care that is needed to treat these premature babies and it gave me a good perspective of where all my hard work was going to.
Here I will outline some of the volunteering I am doing today.
Website
Volunteered as part of SASE (South Asian Society of Engineers) for this event.
Helped teach kids how to make a simple motor (Instructions found here.)
As part of this club I volunteer at various events in the local Troy area. I will list some
activities I have done with this organization below.
I help tutor kids at Hope Seven an after school program for kids.
I also volunteer at the Wit's End support
group working with the kids there.
I also help organize cans for the Mohawk Hudson Humane Society which is
a great animal shelter.
I volunteered at Accepted Students day here and got a very cool RPI Computer Science T-Shirt! I went talked about life at RPI and how the Computer Science department is / how the classes are here to prospective students. It was a lot of fun!