Beyond the Classroom: Lessons from My HVCO Internship with TRY NGO
Introduction
Textbooks can describe poverty, but they cannot replicate the feeling of sitting in a narrow lane in a Delhi slum cluster, listening to a mother explain why her child missed school for the third week in a row. That gap — between theory and lived reality — is exactly what the Human Values and Community Outreach (HVCO) Programme at Amity University is designed to close.
Objectives
Understand the living conditions — housing, sanitation, income — shaping children's daily lives.Map how these conditions affect physical health, emotional development, and access to education.Identify the specific obstacles keeping children from consistent schooling and healthcare.Document TRY NGO's outreach model and assess how effective it actually is on the ground.Reflect on what sustainable community intervention looks like in practice, not just on paper.
Methodology
I relied on a mix of field observation, informal conversations with residents, and structured interaction through TRY NGO's ongoing programmes. Two Weekly Progress Reports tracked the work as it unfolded, which forced a kind of discipline — you can't write a vague update every week, so the fieldwork itself had to stay focused and honest.The activities were straightforward but purposeful: building initial rapport with the community, talking to families about their circumstances, joining children's learning sessions, and observing how outreach on health and hygiene actually landed with the people it was meant for.
What the Fieldwork Looked Like
The first visits were about earning trust, not collecting data. Communities that have been studied, surveyed, and photographed by outsiders before are understandably guarded. It took a few visits of just showing up, listening, and not treating anyone like a case study before conversations opened up. Once that trust was there, a consistent picture emerged: parents were not indifferent to education. Almost every family I spoke with wanted their children in school. The barriers were structural — cost of supplies, distance, and the simple economics of a child's time being worth more at home or at work than in a classroom. Sanitation sessions with the children were, unexpectedly, some of the most energetic parts of the project — kids are far more receptive to hygiene habits than adults, especially when the sessions feel like activities rather than lectures.
Conclusion
This HVCO project with TRY NGO gave me something no seminar could: a direct, unfiltered look at how socio-economic conditions shape a child's future, and how much of that trajectory can shift with consistent, community-rooted support. Under the guidance of Ms. Malsawmtluangi, the project pushed me to think less abstractly and more concretely about development — not as a policy term, but as a set of very specific, solvable problems.If there's one thing I'm taking away from this, it's that meaningful change at the community level doesn't require grand interventions. It requires showing up, listening, and following through.
