By Mike Clemens '15
Siena College biology major Roshan Nair ’16 has always felt the call to help others. Nair has been volunteering in impoverished communities in India for years, but last summer she took the next step by completing an internship through Embracing the World, a non-governmental organization and global collective of charitable projects.
During the three-week internship in Kerala, India, Nair visited schools and hospitals where she conducted educational seminars for children and adults on the dangers of alcohol and tobacco abuse. Nair said that many people in rural India are heavily dependent on addictive substances and teaching them about the consequences of addiction helped her to better understand some of the difficulties of living in the developing world.
“For so many people in India, alcohol and tobacco are their main forms of recreation,” Nair said. “I went into this experience thinking that substance abuse is a problem to be fixed, but for them it’s just a part of their lives. It always has been.”
Although Nair has been actively involved in service work from a young age, it was the experience she had on Siena’s service trip to the Dominican Republic in January that inspired her to expand her volunteerism with this summer internship.
“The trip reminded me of how important service is and how easy it is to lose sight of that during college when you are so focused on academics and personal goals,” Nair said. “It was a kind of awakening and when I came back in January, I decided that I wanted to do something on a larger scale.”
Although Nair’s internship took place over the course of just a few weeks, she had the opportunity to help educate a sizeable group of people. She conducted alcohol awareness classes at ten primary and secondary schools, administered a tobacco use survey to nearly fifty tribal individuals, and participated in the operation of three free medical clinics in the southern region of the country.
On the whole, Nair said that the internship was an impactful and rewarding experience.
“Working with the children was really amazing,” Nair said. “They came from such delicate households and have been affected so profoundly by substance abuse that it felt good to be given the opportunity to earn their trust, understand their suffering, and help with such deeply rooted issues.”
After Siena, Nair hopes to attend medical school and return to India to continue to serve the community she has come to know so well.
