Volunteerism

Benefits of volunteering
I am Nallankillie Pari, my life would have been static if I haven’t come across Ananya, an organization for youth empowerment, an organization which helped me decide my life and helped me lay paths for my success. I had diversified mindset filled with enigmatic thoughts. Ananya helped me to plan my life. I would count myself some of the few blessed souls on earth to be a part of Ananya. My success story started in June 2006, when I was given an opportunity to volunteer and organize a six-day International conference in Chennai jointly organized by Ananya and Commonwealth Youth Programme, Asia Centre. I was in my early twenties. It was an interesting and equally challenging job. Delegates from 5 countries including India have to be co-ordinated. To add a fact, I have never even organized a small programme neither during my schooling nor in my college. It was like a bolt-out-of-the-blue when Mr.Gauthaman, Founder, Ananaya asked to be the Master of Ceremony of the conference, I was taken aback, me, a Master of Ceremony for an International conference, to say the truth I had the biggest fear in the world, stage fear. I abruptly refused that I have never been on a podium and it is not my cup of tea, but he instilled confidence and held to the point that I have to do it.
No prizes for guessing, I was shy and made a few mistakes here and there during the compeering, the confidence he instilled in me during the programme helped me to overcome the worst of all fears. I understood that confidence and energetic words when you used appropriately can be a driving force for huge success. I got an opportunity to interact with the delegates from different states and countries, those six days were memorable because it laid the foundation stone to my successful life. After the programme I was a new man. The thought to live a purposeful life started to creep in my mind. I got immense pleasure and self-satisfaction by this programme which made me to join Ananya and render my service to community at large.
With a new vision set for myself I started the journey, after that there was no turning back. I have put my thoughts on the skills which got accumulated by volunteering.

Responsibility
I would earlier shy away from taking responsibility, now I am a different man, I enjoy the pleasure of taking up the responsibility on my shoulders, I like to face challenges and compete with myself to explore. I was amazed to see the pleasure of facing a challenge and conjuring with full will. It must be experienced by all; the success after your strenuous effort will flee away the pain suffered in doing it. I would like to narrate an incident in my life, I was nominated as the president of MCA department in my college, I was in eleventh heaven when I was asked to head a department and be a president for 80 plus students. I understood from the wealth of experience by volunteering that it is God sent opportunity to showcase my talents and skills; we planned to conduct the first National Level Technical Symposium in our college. I was able to handle my friends easily because of the interpersonal relationship skills I learnt during the interaction with all the members in Ananya. I was able to get the best out of my friends and was successful in making them aware of their own strengths and weaknesses by asking them to project their views on the problems we faced.
I was able to monitor all the departments which have been set up as part of the symposium. I was excited each day even it was full of challenges and we were running tight. We had a budget which we shouldn’t overrun, and also not compromise on quality. Finally the symposium was organized well and the college management was pleased with our performance. To conduct a symposium is quite a huge task and that to for the first time was a great challenge. The raging fire in me made me to take up the responsibility of conducting the maiden National level symposium and teamwork reaped good results. Now, my college is conducting symposiums every year, my juniors in the college are conducting it in the way we followed to organize the function. That means we haven’t only conducted the symposium once, we have set up a protocol which has been followed by juniors after two years also. That shows the way our symposium was organized.
I was firm in my belief that I was responsible for the outcome of my work; I learnt how to take careful steps and also to have a plan B. I learnt these nuances when I used to organize training programs for youth clubs members. This highly helped me in organizing programs anywhere anytime. I also learned to share the success and blame only me for the failure. The toughest thing would be to spread confidence to others when you are in deep trouble, like a candle which is going to go off in few seconds spreads light till the very end.

Volunteerism and Employment
I was in my final year in college; it was time for the campus placement drive to happen, I was thrilled and was expecting for this occasion, a job offer before you finish your studies is a great gift in this competitive world. I wasn’t never afraid of facing an interview because of the nature of job I had in Ananya and CYVF. I was given opportunities to interact with higher officials and delegates of some countries that gave me courage to interact with anyone freely. I was brimming with confidence that I would get a job in the first company which is visiting my college. Infosys Technologies was the company which came first, a big company to start with, I was confident that I would get placed in the company. The interview process consists of two rounds, written test and personnel interview. Thanks to the time management sessions I attended as part of Ananya, they came in handy for me when I took the written test; by volunteering I was able to cross level 1 of my job. The results for the written test were out; I was the only student out of 40 students to clear the written from my class. I was in two minds, whether to shout in joy and celebrate or console the fellow who didn’t make it, I chose the latter I spoke to them that there would be more companies visiting our college and asked them not to lose hope, I felt like I was a human being for those in moments in my life. Being part of others sorrow when you have reason to celebrate, that mindset came to because of volunteerism. One of the life skills sympathy which I learnt during a training session came to my mind, I was able to step into their shoes and feel for them, these moments in my life I felt really proud of own behavior.
Level 2 of my interview process, personnel interview I was to be interviewed by a stranger, I was calm, composed and was expecting for my turn, finally the time came for me to be interviewed. The interviewer asked me how you feel now; you have cleared the written test. I narrated the above said situation; she was pleased with my attitude and wished me good luck, I was pretty much sure that I made it through the toughest interview process easily. Anyways I was waiting for the results to be announced, thus came the time for the announcement of the results, my name was announced first out of 152 selected candidates. I was on top of the world; a job offer before completion of graduation was like icing on the cake. Totally 714 students appeared for the written test 255 made it to personnel interview 152 finally got the job offer. I was first among them. The feeling topping everyone made me happy and proud. Thanks to all the skills I learnt from being a volunteer, it was purely because of those I got a job.

Volunteerism and education
Spending your time for good purposes never gets wasted. That’s true in my case. We have a unwritten rule in our organization that a volunteer who is a student must not be disturbed in any case when he/she have their exams approaching nearby, when I was a student I was given full freedom in my organization, I was given less or no responsibilities during my exams. That helped me to score well in all my semester exams. The members in our organization shared the happiness when I used to score well. They were with me throughout my successes. I topped my department in college and was given many accolades for that achievement. I was given the opportunity to hoist my Nation’s flag on Independence Day (15-08-2007) in college premises; I was bestowed with a gold medal for topping the department during the graduation day.
How did I get to the top? This is the success formula. I was part of our organization which would have conducted 5 programs when I was in college, my role would be being involved in mostly all areas of organizing a program from the invocation to vote of thanks, scheduling the program agenda, etc. Because of this I learnt to plan things and do that helped me to prioritize my activities while preparing for exams.