"A Christmas Circus" New Light On Ong, Calcutta

I spent my three weeks of vacation in August in Calcutta, India, in a volunteer project of the NGO World Cooperating. The project was to fill the free time and leisure than 200 children who welcomed the NGO New Light. Through the program, called "Once Upon a circus?, We tried to approach the smaller alternatives to the use of free time and transmit values ​​associated with the circus, such as confidence, responsibility towards others, the concentration, solidarity ... The children are mostly children of prostitutes in Calcutta's red light district. New Light offers safe shelter, educational opportunities and health and legal assistance for children and women of his community. The 16 volunteers have taken a program full of activities we have developed during the afternoon and we've gone to a theater on the last day a success and a very special day for children and families who attended to him. Personally, I am convinced that this experience gives me much more to me than boys. These almost three weeks I have shared time with some children loving, with a high level of receptivity, joyful and open to everything we wanted to teach ever with a beautiful smile.

I have joined New Light, which does an admirable job, and Urmi Basu and her team. Urmi is the director of the organization and is certainly the most inspiring person, generous and sensitive that I have known in my life. This experience also underscores my social awareness and sensitivity to my childhood too. These three weeks I have also come to the reality of India, knowing so many different life forms, customs, smells and scenes very impressive. Furthermore, this experience so intense, it has transformed my fellow volunteer friends. Three weeks in Calcutta make you discover an unknown part of you and puts you on tessituras not lived so far. One is known better when you experience this kind of adventure. Everything good and bad of this experience has taught me something valuable. And indeed, I consider myself richer after having lived. On the other hand, I believe in long-term cooperation, ie in sustainable projects in time. I think developing countries need to receive assistance in infrastructure, training, but who should lead the future projects are themselves. So I do not believe in these volunteer projects as sustainable means of improving society. Volunteers go and come back.

They are.

However, despite these ideas of mine, these volunteer projects are an injection of hope, fresh approach and different worlds. These projects are fully compatible with long-term cooperation of the speaker. You need financial support to these organizations that do work so quiet and indispensable. Support is needed in the dissemination of their activities. Support is needed face time. And, yes, it takes projects like a circus There once to put a grain of sand in the sample of new and different aspects of leisure, so important in the growth of all, and are required to publicize the work of organizations both here and there, are helping to change society. Now I feel that all financial and personal effort I made in India was worth it just for the first hour I spent in New Light with children. Children in India have a penetrating gaze, with eyes so dark, and the New Light, you know you conquer anything because you hug and kiss like you're his best friend, caress you, you smile ...

And you and you feel hooked melt them in a way that you hardly happens here. India is a wonderful country full of contrasts, but tough. Calcutta is a shock to all the senses that is difficult to explain and perhaps only be understood by living it in person. Calcutta, in its poorest neighborhoods, is a source of misery, with images that you stick in the memory and you can not ever erase, for example the image of a baby sleeping naked on a sidewalk. Live there. Born here, is being fed, washed his family there. Calcutta in August is hot and humid monsoon rains surprises you with its sudden, and never stop sweating. Dirt and smells like incense. The streets collect garbage in the corners and sounds of horns and crows become deafening. Hygiene is poor and is easy to spend a few days when health is weakened. They miss the comforts to which we are accustomed. But despite this, Calcutta India, and India's spirituality is melting pot of cultures, religions. India is a mixture of past and future.

India is a society of peace, with a huge number of people with needs that never make you feel insecure. The feeling of peace and security has not left us a single moment during the three weeks is impressive considering the misery that is and what a Westerner calls attention in its streets. In this context, in a caste society already abolished but still very much alive, New Light is carrying out what I consider a social revolution slowly and safely. If your mother was a prostitute, you have little chance to be anything in life. Have no chance of education or health, and be part of the social status they came from. Breaking the chain is nearly impossible. New Light offers education and a future for these children. New Light breaks, with hard work, effort and enthusiasm in the chain. From my experience I encourage you to read about the work you do Mundo from Spain Cooperating with projects in Colombia, Ecuador, India, Kenya and Ethiopia, to inform the work of New Light. I encourage you to cooperate economically with the causes they believe. I encourage you to be part of a project like the one I've been lucky enough to live.

To learn more about how it was was once a circus, this was the blog where we have been counting the project from the beginning and every day from India: www.barhaparty.com Here you can see some pictures: http://www .youtube.com / watch? v = N_gF4843Bqw Please take a few minutes of your time to read me and let me tell you how you can enjoy the holiday of a different form than usual.