---
title: Learning Before Teaching
description: Preschool mornings, afternoons with teenage girls, and a lot of heat. Tommaso and Gloria's first month on a community education project in India.
image: https://humanavolunteers.org/hubfs/Blog-5_Gloria_Tommaso.jpg
---

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# Learning Before Teaching

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Oct 29, 2026, 4:22:29 PM

Nobody's volunteering story starts with paperwork. Tommaso and Gloria's did anyway.

**Their first two weeks in India were spent at the National Headquarters**: immigration formalities, registrations, orientation. Not the stuff of Instagram captions. But it gave them something more useful than a dramatic arrival: **time to adjust, and time to understand how the organization works before setting foot in the community.**

Then came Gurugram (still Gurgaon to a lot of people), and the real work.

 

---

 

### **Mornings and afternoons**

They didn't walk in and start teaching. **They joined the project's daily life little by little, working alongside the local teachers and staff** and learning the community's routines and priorities first.

The project focuses on **education, women's empowerment and community awareness**, and their days split neatly in two. **In the mornings, they support the preschool teachers in their classrooms.** In the afternoons, they work with teenage girls, supporting their studies in science, biology, physics, maths and English.

On top of that, they've joined **awareness sessions with women from the community**, on topics like domestic microfinance and community participation. These sessions are built around dialogue, and being part of them showed Tommaso and Gloria something they now describe as central to the work: **education as a long-term tool for development, well beyond the classroom.**

 

### **The heat, the language, the welcome**

Adjusting has been gradual. **The heat came first**, and it shapes everything, from how much water you drink to how you plan your day.

**Language came second.** Communication hasn't always been easy, but speaking Hindi has made a real difference. **Few things build trust faster than meeting people in their own language**, even imperfectly.

What made the transition easier wasn't anything they did. **It was how welcoming the teachers, colleagues and community members were.** That support gave them the confidence to take on more, and to get more involved in the project's activities.

 

### **The girls**

Ask them about the best part of the month and the answer is immediate: **the teenage girls they work with every afternoon.**

Their curiosity, determination and appetite for learning are what Tommaso and Gloria keep coming back to. **"They've inspired us,"** they wrote, **"and reminded us of the value of the work being done here."**

It's worth noticing how they put that. Not the value of *their* work. **The work being done here**, which was being done before they arrived.

 

### **Listening first**

Looking ahead to month two, they want to understand more about the local culture and the social realities that shape daily life: **gender equality, women's roles, environmental awareness, hygiene and climate.**

They believe education and awareness have a real part to play in all of that. But they're clear about the order of things. **Before anything else, they want to listen**: to teachers, students, women's groups and community members, so they understand both the challenges and the strengths that are already there.

Projects like this one, run by local teams and built around education and community, are at the heart of what we do. 

[Here's who we are](https://humanavolunteers.org/who-we-are)

##### [![What Volunteers Actually Mean When They Say It](https://humanavolunteers.org/hs-fs/hubfs/Blogs-4-1.jpg?width=520&height=294&name=Blogs-4-1.jpg) Humana Volunteers • Oct 29, 2026, 4:12:55 PM What Volunteers Actually Mean When They Say It 4 min read](https://humanavolunteers.org/blog/finding-purpose-through-volunteering-abroad)

##### [![Before You Do Anything, Arrive](https://humanavolunteers.org/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog-3_Cormac.jpg?width=520&height=294&name=Blog-3_Cormac.jpg) Humana Volunteers • Oct 29, 2026, 4:01:18 PM Before You Do Anything, Arrive 2 min read](https://humanavolunteers.org/blog/blog-humana-web-2026/first-month-volunteering-in-zambia)

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