I Didn’t Expect My Volunteering Experience Would Be This Cool

The last article I wrote here talked about how lonely life can sometimes feel. It felt as if life had stopped and everything went blackout.

But no more. I feel reconnected again, and it feels nice to find your once-lost potential, again. I regained my motivation to attend classes again.

I applied for volunteering at one conference weeks ago and only found out that I had been accepted a couple of days ago. Though I wanted to quit, I had to live 3 days and deliver on my commitment.

And that’s where and how it all started.

The conference name is a long one: 2nd Victim Support Asia International Conference on Mapping Victim Support Strategies in the Asian Region. I was volunteering as a team member in the Travel and Accommodations team in this 2-day long conference.

I was assigned the work to escort Mr. Vineet Kapoor and accompany him for the next 2-days stay at our college, National Law University, Delhi. He was here to present his papers at this conference.

He is an IPS officer. Now how cool is that, I thought. Then I went online and looked him up. His LinkedIn and many YouTube videos were my first stop.

Then I found our college’s website with his introduction. He’s a visiting professor at our college.

Here’s the introduction as presented on our university’s website:

Vineet Kapoor is an Indian Police Service Officer belonging to Madhya Pradesh Cadre. He has expertise in Police Training, Police Research and Development and Police Reforms. He specializes in Human Rights Based Approach to Policing, Community Policing, Anti Prejudice based Multicultural Police Standard setting, Training Design and Training Needs Analysis, Behavioural and Attitudinal Orientation in Policing, Action Research on Police, Police Ethics and Accountability and Victim Centric Policing related to security of women, children and socially excluded sections of society. He has worked in several police jurisdiction in India and abroad including UN police and has been attached with universities and think tanks as a senior research fellow. He has done a PHD in Police Training Culture and Organizational Development from Tata Institute of Social Sciences Mumbai, an MA in Human Rights and Humanitarian Law from University of Essex UK and another MA in Development Geography from Delhi School of Economics Delhi University. He has been a British Chevening Human Rights Scholar in the UK, a Visiting Fellow at the Human Rights Center London School of Economics and a UGC –JRF scholar at the Delhi School of Economics. Vineet has been a senior research fellow at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville and is associated with its Democracy Initiative and CLEAR Lab for Ethics, Accountability and Rule of Law.

Vineet is currently serving as the Deputy Director of MP Police Academy in India and has worked as field level police commander at number of districts in being incharge of all aspects of operational policing. He has a long association with police training and research and has headed many training institutions in India and UN Civilian police jurisdictions. He has been the principle advisor of the Police Research and Policy Cell of the MP Police; promoting action based police research through collaborations with national and international research institutions. He is a national resource person in Police Training and Research and a member of the National Police Mission with the Bureau of Police Research & Development — Ministry of Home Affairs Govt of India. Vineet has served at the UN Peace Keeping Mission in Kosovo and has been master trainer and a member of the UN Doctrinal Development Group for the UN Department for Peace Keeping Operations, being responsible for developing doctrines and standard operating procedures for Depart of Peace Keeping Operations. Vineet has a number of research papers published in national and international journals on Criminal Justice, Policing and Law Enforcement Policy. He has been involved with many innovations at field policing in the areas of community policing, gender based police reforms and victim oriented policing practices.

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Reading this only added to my excitement.

At the beginning of the conference, though, I looked at it as if it was one more thing I was doing for my resume. I didn’t know anything about it, nor did I take an interest in learning about it.

But now I was all but not enthusiastic about the day. I researched well, and I could see this in my conversation with Mr. Vineet on our way back from the airport.

It is a 45-minute journey from IGI Airport to our college, and I witnessed time fly. I was so confused as to what I would talk about on the way back. But it was effortless.

We talked about all the different things, starting from him inquiring about how my college is going to me asking him about what it’s like to be an IPS officer.

The two days’ conference was no different. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I learnt a lot of new things, and more than that, I learnt about how things are managed in the backend.

I would like to end this article on a sweet note: everything bad is temporary. You feeling down, worthless, and anxious are all temporary and they come to a pass. Just keep swimming, as one of my then-favourite novels said.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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