FSL-India organized LTV Get-Together (GTG) at two different locations for long-term volunteer placed in Kundapur and Bangalore regions on 13^th to 14^th September 2012. While the Bangalore region organized the GTG at Hotel Greenland Youth Hostel & International Tourist Home; Kundapur region organized the same at the Turtle Bay Beach Resort. Seven volunteers (Jacqueline Marie, Anita, Lisa-Marie, Katharina, Gesa, Joanna and Natalie) from Bangalore region and eight volunteers (Guillaume, Eva, Carlo, Jesus Lopez, Kira, Aljoscha, Jana Lena and Jana) from Kundapur Region participated in the GTG. The primary objective of the GTG is to share their experience, project work, progress result among the volunteers, find solution to problems they encounter, share best practices and to have a one-to-one talk with the coordinator.

 

Assessment of the progress in inter-cultural learning and project activities were broadly dealt with during the two-day sessions. Project portrait, one-to-one talk with coordinators and skit presentation were also the input during the GTG. Volunteers could share their experience, project work, progress made and results achieved. It was also time to collectively find solutions to the challenges that they encountered in the projects. They shared the best practices among themselves and got motivated in their future work.

 

Mr. Marc a native of US who has been living at Kodaikanal for the past 25 years was invited as guest speaker to facilitate a session on Indian culture and philosophy. The guest speaker is profoundly imbued with Indian Philosophy of life. He conducted an interactive session for the volunteers and dealt with topics like India culture, language, family life, marriage etc. He also made a comparative analysis between Eastern and Western philosophies and highlighted the major difference between materialism which has dominated over spiritualism in western countries. People in western country think from rationalistic points of views. Whereas oriental lifestyle emphasizes thinking from the heart which, is based on emotional characteristics. Mr. Marc continued his session and discussed on the importance Yoga, Meditation and life style from Buddhism and Jainism point of view.

 

The same day volunteer also visited Human Trust – an NGO which works with the people who are engaged in loading and unloading of fire-wood (head-weight women) as their primary source of living. The people work in this field for a very low wage with lots of risk to their health. Therefore, the organization works to link up the people with government programs and schemes. Project visit was undertaken with an objective to provide an exposure to volunteers so as to enable them to have an exposure in different social development.