Antoine Cassar, Volunteer in India

Antoine Cassar, 32 years old, India in 2010

Describe your volunteer work experience.

I spent the mornings teaching English, Hindi (!), and Maths to a group of 7 mentally challenged children, and the afternoons in the tiny rural village of Padhiarkhar, teaching teenage girls who until recently had never had the chance to attend school.

This was a highly uplifting and human experience. I have never seen children so happy and excited to go to school!

After two intense weeks teaching and playing with the children, it was very difficult to leave them.

I hope that I have made a difference, and helped the children to continue opening their windows to the world - not merely through the learning of English as an international language, but also through the learning of geography, familiarization with the globe and world map, and awareness of the variety of cultures that exists both in India and beyond.

Tell us how you feel overall about your experience.

The information provided by United Planet before my departure for India was extremely useful, thorough and up-to-date. One of the most joyful highlights of my five-week journey in India was the voluntary teaching in Himachal Pradesh.

In the mornings, I was teaching a group of seven mentally challenged children, each of them very affectionate and cheerful. I don't remember ever seeing kids so happy to go to school. We would learn the alphabet and numbers in English and Hindi, sing songs, do physical exercises, play sports and go for walks in the forest.

One of them, Raja the King, a 7-year-old boy with Downs Syndrome but with a tough and boisterous character, was a little naughty and sometimes liked to pick a fight with the others, but whenever I would take him outside to sit in the garden and calm him down, we would quickly become friends again, and he would look at me with the face of a bashful angel. It was extremely hard for me to leave him.

I was there for two weeks, but could have stayed for several months.

In the afternoons, I was taken to a tiny village under a mountain, full of rice paddies, to spend an hour teaching teenage girls who never before had the chance to go to school. They were extremely bright, and full of laughter every single day.

I cannot compare the joy of teaching, of being with children, to any other type of happiness I may have experienced in the past. It is a joy that surpasses any other activity, even beyond that of writing and reciting. It is a joy I would like to live and share every day of my life.