Monday, September 14, 2009

“The will to volunteer must come from the heart”


For Navaneta Parmar volunteering truly comes from the heart and she claims to enjoy her work thoroughly. Navanita has been teaching one of the eight classical dances, Bharatnatyam, for almost eight years at Sanskar Dham Trust, and she has been involved in voluntary work earlier in life as well. She tells me that volunteering and helping is in her blood and it gives her a lot of happiness and joy.

Navaneta retired in 2001 and joined 3 schools to teach dancing on voluntary basis. Nowadays she comes to Sanskar Dham once a week, for 1-2 hours, and more often if there is a specific program coming up. Once she prepared a group of children for a dance performance in only four days and the show turned out to be a success. She also helps her students to take dance exams and by now they have finished 4th level.

At the moment Navaneta teaches a group of girls around 10 years of age, but the plan is to start another dance group at the same school for younger children. She says that the children pick up very fast and she would love to have more children to work with.

The dancing volunteer feels strongly about being there for the physically challenged children. “Do not neglect these children, give them an opportunity to dance and experience the joy of learning. Everyone can dance, and the smiles on the children’s faces give satisfaction to the teacher as well”, she says. I ask her if everyone can be a volunteer, and she answers that a volunteer needs to take the assignment seriously and be committed and that the will to volunteer must come from the heart. Apart from that a volunteer doesn’t need any skills and as long as the person is patient the outcome will be positive.

I sit down and watch her teaching four enthusiastic girls. Navaneta shows me what a Namaskar-step is, and after that the girls perform a prayer dance to prepare their mind and body for the following dances. The girls are smiling while dancing and I let Navaneta and her group carry on without any further disturbance from my part...

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