Monday 17 / March / 2025
MUSCAT: “You learn so much from the people you help when you volunteer, and it is a really humbling experience.”
This was the New Year message from 16-year-old Aditi Selvaraj, who recently returned from a trip to Nepal where she spent two weeks volunteering with children and the elderly in the rural region of Chitwan.
The American British Academy student in Muscat also shadowed doctors who worked at the local hospital, which had been affected by the earthquakes that rocked Nepal in April and May 2015. “I’ve been wanting to go on a volunteer project for a while, and my friend found this online,” she said, speaking to Times of Oman. “We were debating between Nepal and Ghana, and what made us choose Nepal was that we would be working in a hospital that was actually affected by the earthquake.
“We all saw this happen on TV, so we wanted to help out in any way we could,” she said. Aditi also made an impassioned request to residents in Oman, asking them to donate their time towards a worthy cause.
“It is really, really important to volunteer,” she said. “When we were talking to the patients, most of their medical conditions have returned over the years, and they can’t get more help because they have to use their money to rebuild their homes for their families. It really makes you think about how privileged you are.
“In this hospital that we visited, they had only two X-ray machines for the entire hospital, and one of them broke down while we were there,” recalled Aditi. “They said they were not going to fix it because that was not a top priority for the hospital, since they just don’t have the funds for that.
“They don’t have a lot of facilities because of the earthquake,” she added. “The hospital had six floors, and when you went onto the third floor, it was shocking because you could see the collapsed roof and the rubble on one side, and 30 beds for patients on the other.
“Let’s say you are on a transplant list, but that’s become about five times longer because they don’t have the machines to deal with those whose organs are failing.”
She is looking to pursue her higher education in medicine, and hopes her volunteering in Nepal will form the foundation of her career. “We helped out in the paediatrics department, and then on other days we had outreaches to schools and old-age homes,” she added. “On one of the days, we had a dental outreach programme where we taught kids how to brush their teeth.
“Every child at that school also received medical checkups, so we were first taught by the doctors how to check for jaundice, colds and infections, and then we’d take the medical boxes to the schools and help the doctors there, so that way every student at this rural school in Nepal received a free check-up.
“We went to the old-age homes and helped the residents there with their activities, and we helped them clean and helped set up their bedding for them,” Aditi said. “These may have been basic things, but it would have put a strain on them, otherwise.”
Aditi’s mother Asha is a lecturer at Oman Dental College, and says it is important that people in Oman volunteer to gain very valuable life experiences.
“I think that sometimes, because we live in Oman where everything is quite safe and secure, you get to see and learn so much when you volunteer in a hospital or a charity organisation, because it puts your life into perspective,” she said. “I would recommend people give as much time as they can spare, even if it is only a half an hour to people who need it, because we all need to give back to those who are less fortunate than us.”
