Following is another testimonial written by long-term volunteers (LTV) Diana and Lisa who are volunteering at St. Albans, a day care center for special children, located in Parangipettai, Tamil Nadu. They have been volunteering there since August 2013 and will continue to do so until June 2014.

    “Today is the 1^st January, so we both wish you a Happy New Year. “We both” means Diana and Lisa. We are volunteers from Germany and work in a Christian project called St. Albans which was founded by the religious order “Daughters of the Heart of Saint Mary”, in 2004. It is a health center which is divided into a hospital and a school for disabled children with whom we are working with.

  Our Project St Albans is located in the rural town Parangipettai and has recently shifted into a new building which was built to enlarge the facilities of the center and so to be able to admit more children for treatment.

    We have been here for 11 months on the coast side of Tamil Nadu. Of course the first days were quite exciting for us. We struggled with the typical things which are part of the kind of culture shock you go through when you come from a contrasting country like Germany. Suddenly we saw goats on motorbikes, streets full of traffic and cows, music everywhere you go and much more. So many new impressions but now after four months we can say, we got used to it.

     Actually we are involved in the project and are now able to work more independently. We help to pick up the children in the morning, learned how to practice the physiotherapy exercises with the children, give them their food in the afternoon and teach them in writing, numbers, painting and more.  In our project we are contributing to the treatment of 14 disabled children. Of course it is challenging to deal with children who are disabled on different levels but we learned a lot of patience and a lot about disabilities in general so that we got more self-confidence related to the work with the children.

    Unlike many other volunteers who live in a host family or in their project, we live together with the nuns of our project in a separate house. For us it means to live very close to the Christian religion, every Tuesday and Sunday is mass, every Thursday the priest is invited for dinner in our house.

    So it is obvious that during Christmas time our whole project was quite busy. We planned a Christmas program, so there was a lot of work to do. We both prepared with the staff a Christmas dance and a drama with the children and the sisters organized the program for several days with the intention to make this day a special one.

    Now we are here for 5 months and are quite excited what challenges and experiences we are able to gain in the next few months. But already now we can say that the time we spent here in India taught us more than anything else.

Yours,

Lisa and Diana”