For many years, SECMOL worked on reforming the government school system. At the same time, SECMOL Campus grew into a eco-village where students, staff and volunteers live, work and learn together. It’s not a conventional school, but a place to pursue practical, environmental, social and traditional knowledge, values and skills. The Campus is solar powered and solar heated; students learn ancient Ladakhi songs, dance and history alongside modern academic knowledge; and the students mainly manage, run and maintain the campus.
Ladakh is a high desert region in the Indian Himalayas, with a culture and history drawing from Tibet, India, Kashmir and Central Asia. No road connected it to the outside world until the 1960s, but recent decades have brought a flood of development and tourism. SECMOL strives to equip young Ladakhis and others growing up in Ladakh, especially those from rural or disadvantaged backgrounds, with the knowledge, skills, perspective, and confidence to choose and build a sustainable future.
Volunteering
SECMOL welcomes volunteers, their work, and the inter-cultural exchange and understanding they bring.
Please make sure the following points suit you before applying to volunteer:
1) The minimum time for volunteering at SECMOL is 4 weeks.
2) The minimum is 6 weeks if you want a letter or certificate; or if you are going to show it to your college as an internship, practicum, etc.; or if you are making a student film or researching for your thesis or any other study project.
3) Volunteers stay at SECMOL Campus, and pay Rs 600 per day for their room and board (vegetarian food and shared rooms).
4) The minimum age for volunteering is 23. Relaxation of this can be considered for volunteering between October and March, but not at all for summer months.
5) There are application deadlines for applying to volunteer. (Please see below).
6) Sonam Wangchuk is not involved with SECMOL full-time anymore, so if you volunteer at SECMOL it is possible that you wouldn’t meet him. He is starting HIAL, the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives — Ladakh.
Application
For most of the year, no special skills are needed from volunteers.
In January we hope to get ice-skating volunteers who can teach ice-skating, figure skating, or hockey.
In July, August and September we hope to get two or three volunteers who have experience / certification in teaching beginners how to swim.
If you are interested in volunteering at SECMOL, fill out the volunteer form, and we will reply to you by email. The internet is unreliable in Ladakh so it can take 1 to 2 weeks to get a reply from us. Phones are even less reliable. If you email us, please be patient. However, if you do not receive an auto-reply within a few minutes after filling the form, then you may have entered your email ID incorrectly, or your email settings may have blocked it.
Volunteer numbers have been increasing in the past few years, which is wonderful, but sometimes cancellations and no-shows have caused problems. For this reason, we have to ask volunteers to send their room and board to our bank account before we consider them confirmed. It is difficult to send money internationally so we can not ask foreign volunteers to do this. So please email us, discuss all your questions, and then if you are selected, confirm by transferring the 4 weeks’ room and board.
