The Don Bosco Centre in Cochin/Kerala, South India cares for marginalized children and youth living on the street or coming from broken families, trying to provide them with everything they need to be able to succeed in life. Amongst Don Bosco’s aims are to reintegrate those children into their families, to provide the most vulnerable children with shelter, to support the psycho-social development of the children, to provide education to street children, working children, slum children, neglected children, children of sex workers, and school dropouts, in order to integrate them into society with knowledge, skills to generate income, rehabilitation and self-confidence.

In fact, only few of the supported children come from the state of Kerala where the conservative family structures typically are still working well. They are to a greater degree children of immigrants coming from other parts of India where income levels are 4-5 times lower than in Kerala. These children can often be found engaged in child labour – young girls are for instance often working as housemaids.

Today, Don Bosco is running 5 centres for different age groups in Cochin. One is for girls only and one is an open shelter. In total, 230 children and youth between 6 and 18 years are being supported. Don Bosco is also operating the 1-0-9-8 children telephone help line for the whole district.

 Don Bosco has enough staff to guarantee appropriate support, but volunteers can still improve the centre’s work in the following areas:

It is expected from volunteers that they act as role models for the children and youths. For that reason they are not allowed to smoke, drink alcohol or consume drugs on the organisation’s premises, and to be dress adequately. They have to propagate an active and positive attitude towards life. Further it is expected that they inform themselves about the local culture, the situation of marginalized children in India and the educational approach of Don Bosco, and to adapt their behavior accordingly.

The volunteer work will be of 8 hours per day on 6 days per week. Volunteers have to show a letter of a former employer/volunteer or internship placement, or present their police clearance certificate to proof their ability to work with children.