Volunteer FAQ

All volunteers fund their own stay, including flights, insurance, and health costs, . Friends of Roshni UK fund their accommodation and provide a small weekly allowance towards living costs during their stay in Gwalior.

We recommend our volunteers take £150-200 a month to cover luxuries, day trips and weekends away in India. They book flights and arrange travel insurance etc themselves, so the cost depends on how good they are at finding a bargain!

Unfortunately, we are only able to fund the volunteers’ accommodation and daily living costs at present. However, we can help you out with lots of ideas on how to raise money to fund your trip, and promote your fundraising page through social media.

ROSHNI have a small bedsit within the school building, where up to 2 volunteers can stay at a time. There is other accommodation within the Ashram we can use if we have more volunteers. The site has 24 hour security guards and many permanent residents so the volunteers wouldn’t be alone on the site, but the accommodation is self-contained to ensure privacy and security.

The local language in Gwalior is Hindi. The Director and Therapy Coordinator both speak English, and many of the staff have a little English. We recommend volunteers learn basic Hindi to help them communicate with the children. We can recommend apps to help learn Hindi.

Our minimum stay is 4 months. We only send volunteers between September and April: this is because May-June is extremely hot and the Special School part of the centre is closed; July-August is the monsoon and there is higher risk of illness at this time.

We prefer to send volunteers in pairs, but this is not always possible. It depends on the applications we receive at that time.