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Competition Comments
Entry:Service learning trips that promote social justice for India's Dalits.
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The Geotourism Challenge: Celebrating Places - Changing Lives
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Hi there, great to see Dalit Solidarity's work on Changemakers again, you do some wonderful stuff with soccer and I like how you incorporate traveling volunteers as coaches. Often with voluntourism, the volunteer get much more of a lasting impact than those that they visit, how do you ensure that the capacity that the volunteers bring enhance the capacity of the locals? Do traveler coaches train locals to be coaches? Etc.
Thanks for your response and keep up the good work!
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Tyler Ahn
Changemakers
Hi Tyler,
We have found that Changemakers competitions are a wonderful vehicle for bringing together like-minded organizations.
We work hard to ensure that the work of our volunteers enhances the capacity of the Dalit communities where we work on a daily basis. Our soccer program is a good example.
In January, over 360 children attended two 4-day soccer camps run by our volunteer coaches. Initially, many participating schools responded negatively to our inclusion of girls in the program. They believed it was a waste of time and money to teach the girls; after all, they would never play soccer again. We insisted that all participating co-educational schools had to send an equal number of boys and girls to the camp.
When school administrators and teachers witnessed both the girls' enthusiasm for the sport, and their quickly developing skills (often surpassing the boys) their attitudes changed. They were anxious to have the girls continue playing at school and were willing to allow them to wear their new shorts and t-shirts when they played soccer. Best of all, the athletic director of the school hosting the soccer camp volunteered to start a soccer league for the girls. It will be the first community-based soccer program in the area, for either boys or girls. We hope to have our long-term interns help with the program.
Similar capacity building can be found in our other programs. Each year, health care volunteers teach in our First Responder Program. Over 150 Responders have been trained in dozens of villages. Their training has been invaluable in making available on-site first aid available until patients can be transported to a medical facility. When volunteers work in our educational programs, students and teachers are always taught together so that lessons, or specialized projects in art or music can be repeated in the future.
As a result, the villagers look forward to working together with our volunteers.
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Elizabeth K. McCoy, Esq.
Director
Dalit Solidarity, Inc.
emccoy@dalitsolidarity.org
1-800-941-8011
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Elizabeth K. McCoy, Esq.
Director
Dalit Solidarity, Inc.
emccoy@dalitsolidarity.org
1-800-941-8011