Volunteer in India
Letter from the President
Thank you for your interest in the Rising Star Outreach 2008 Summer Volunteer program! Your desire to serve some of the most disadvantaged people in the world speaks volumes about who you are.
The Rising Star Outreach volunteer program seeks people who are likely to have a lifetime commitment to humanitarian service. While it may not turn out to be a full-time commitment, those selected as Rising Star Outreach volunteers will make humanitarian service a priority throughout their lives.
Over the years, selection for our volunteer programs has become very competitive. The work is challenging and exhausting, and the conditions are often very difficult. However, the Rising Star Outreach volunteers have made a name for themselves as people who are truly dedicated to serving others despite the unique challenges of rural Indian life.
Our volunteer sessions are much more than a “summer camp” experience. Volunteers are provided meaningful opportunities to serve the leprosy-affected families of Southern India in ways that dramatically impact their own lives and the lives of the people they serve. We applaud you for your interest in being a part of this impressive group and we look forward to getting to know you better!
Four Areas of Challenge
The preparation to serve actually starts long before you arrive in India, and your service continues long after you have arrived home. Those selected as 2008 Summer Volunteers will be expected to participate in four areas of challenge.
1. Share India
To begin with, we are challenging our volunteers this summer not to pay for their own program costs. So who will pay? That’s just it—we want you to involve as many people as possible in your service. The most effective way to do this is to include them as investors in your experience.
One of the core values of Rising Star Outreach is that sacrifice brings great blessings. If you pay for all your program costs yourselves, you reap all the blessings. Instead, we suggest that you share your experience with people who are close to you.
We are asking every 2008 volunteer to send out at least 25 letters to friends, relatives, and family members asking for participation in your service. These letters should be written by you and come from your heart, but we’ll provide you a sample to get your ideas started.
If at least 25 different people help by each contributing $50-$100 for your trip, they become involved personally in what you’re doing. We hope they will include you in their prayers. We hope that you will bring all of their email addresses to India so that you can keep them abreast of the amazing experiences that you will be having, as you experience them. We hope you will acknowledge them as partners in your service.
Chances are that while you may get all your program costs paid for this way, the reality is that you will probably still have to come up with some of the funds yourself. This allows you to invest in your own experience as well. However, please remember that the ultimate goal is to include as many as possible in your service.
2. India Prep Project
Each 2008 summer volunteer will be invited to organize an “India Prep Project,” or IPP. The goal of the IPP is to fund the work that you will be doing in the leprosy colonies. For example, if this year the volunteers are building a community center for a colony, there will be great satisfaction in knowing that you have helped not only by contributing by blood, sweat, and tears, but that the community center will exist as a result of your commitment to this work financially.
In the past Rising Star Outreach has funded most of the volunteer projects in the colonies through outside donations. Even so, over the years we have had volunteers do some creative, and very fun activities before coming to India. Many have raised over $1,000 to fund their activities while there! In so doing they have enhanced their own experience significantly. This year, through the IPP, we are providing that opportunity to each one of our volunteers.
Over the course of the 2008 summer we will send close to 50 volunteers in India in three sessions. As each volunteer participates in a successful IPP, the volunteers will not only cover the costs of all their activities, but will make a lasting contribution to India.
Through the IPP, not only will you have left love and service in the colonies and children’s homes, but you could conceivably have even left a mobile medical unit, a water treatment facility or perhaps even a children’s home that will house literally hundreds, and perhaps over time, even thousands of children —a home that will stand as a beacon of hope to so many! Wow! What a legacy for the volunteer class of 2008.
The IPP program is run by a committee of very enthusiastic past volunteers. One of these past volunteers will be assigned to mentor each incoming volunteer in preparing and pulling off their IPP.
They are every excited and have many ideas to get you started. They will encourage you and assist you in any way possible. Many of them have already orchestrated very successful IPPs themselves, when they were volunteers, so they understand the challenges and can guide you toward a truly successful project.
3. Service Time in India
The third area of challenge will be your actual time in India. You will find yourselves doing things you have never done before, connecting with people in ways you have not felt before. There will be moments when the immensity of the challenges faced by the people you’re serving will seem to overwhelm you, but there will also be moments when you are stunned to learn how big an impact your small acts of service can have in other’s lives.
India is not for the weak at heart, or the weak of body. Because the areas where we work in India are challenging physical environments, we seek volunteers who are prepared to work in stifling heat, filthy colonies, and very underdeveloped areas while maintaining a broad, positive perspective about their decision to serve.
The volunteer projects in 2008 will focus on English training in the school and colonies, colony improvement projects, child development, mobile medical assistance and other projects aimed at helping the leprosy colonies become self-sufficient villages by the year 2020.
4. Post India Projects
When you return, we encourage you to invite the 25 people who have supported you in this adventure to your home, where you can share with them pictures of the children you’ve worked with, the work you’ve done in with the leprosy-affected in the colonies, and the stories of your experiences. We call these gatherings the “Post-India Projects” or the PIPs.
What you will be experiencing in India truly is life-altering. The PIPs give you a chance to truly involve others vicariously in this experience and to thank them for their part in serving these people. Perhaps you’ll even find some sponsors for some of our children this way, and help to create bonds between families in America and needy children in India that last for generations.
When it’s all over and done, you will have participated in a pretty amazing array of experiences. 1) Through your letters, you will find out how easy it is for one individual to mobilize and inspire many others to become involved in bettering the world. 2) Through your India Prep Project, you will learn that you have the power within you to fund something that makes a difference in the world. 3) Through your service in India you will participate directly with some of the most disadvantaged people in India. You will see their lives changing for the better. You will see how one individual can, indeed, make meaningful change in the world. 4) Through sharing your experiences after you return in your Post-India Project, you can again be the agent to create collective activism. Your efforts will have resulted in a part of the Rising Star Campus that will continue to bless the lives of children long after you are gone. In essence, you will have gained the skills and confidence to go forth in whatever way you choose in the future to continue to be a moving force in the world—lifelong humanitarians!
I look forward to hearing what you have done to change the world for many years to come. Thank you again for your interest in serving the people of India. We look forward to your application!
With Love,
Becky Douglas
