FSL India Blog

Every year during  holidays, FSL organizes two „Winter Camps“. They are called this way, because right now is the coldest time of the year in India. Children of nomadic families, that normally stay in and around Kundapur for as long as they can find work, can visit these camps to play games, learn about the environment and paint the playground – to name a few examples.

These children normally get no regular education – they’re not elligible for government schools and they can not afford private schools. This is why FSL-India organizes not only the Winter Camps during the holidays, but also regular year-long „Tent School Projects“, that provide free education to the children.

It’s been the annual “JC” (Junior Chamber International India) Event on September 10th. Since four years, FSL-India’s international volunteers have been one of the groups challenged to perform.
This time, our volunteers showed the audience a wild mix of Indian and European culture: They sang a German song “Die Gedanken sind frei” (thoughts are free) followed by the Indian pop-song “Jinke Marina”. The volunteers also performed a traditional Indian dance and finished the show with a 15-minute play – an adapted version of the Snow White fairytale with a strong emphasis on environmental topics.
You can watch some highlights of the event on Youtube
Traditional Dance | Jinke-Marina (follow the links)
In the week preceding the JC-Event, we also shot a short documentary about FSL-India and the volunteers to show interested members of the audience. This video can also be watched online:
Part 1 | Part 2 (follow these links)

Turtle bay beach resort and FSL India jointly organised World Beach Cleaning day at Maravanthe beach on 19th September. The program was partially sponsored by the Bangalore organisation called Scuba Dive. The event was planned to clean 1 kilometer area with FSL volunteers and local people. It was very sucessful with more number of participants than the expected. School children joined hands with foreign volunteers in picking the trash over the beach. At the end of the event Mr Chako (President of Turtle bay beach resort) honoured children by giving certificates. Even two participants got a beautiful T-shirt as special recognition for active participation.

We are happy to say that our most experienced team leader/co-ordinator Mr Joy Carvalho participated in a work camp held in France. It is a special camp for restoration of old chapel at Marcy near Lyon. The camp organised by FSL India’s French parter organisation JR for international volunteers. The organisation invited Mr Joy to participate in this camp as a special honour for his extreme work in voluntary service field. He had very good experience with the local community and other international volunteers in his 1 month work camp stay.

Mr Joy is welknown as a “Joogle” for his great knwoldge about travel and tourism. So here this experience is additional to his brilliant knwoldge.

Bilateral work camp was organised in Delhi for street children and disabled children school between 28^th July To 10^th August. Lead by FSL India coordinator Daya, 17 volunteers (10 girls and 7 boys) participated in this 2 weeks work camp and they had great time with children of Aanchal school for disabled children and street children of NGO Tejas Asia at RK Puram-South Delhi.