A Volunteer's First Verification Visit
I signed up as an Adalwin volunteer mostly because my Saturday mornings were empty and I liked the idea of doing something useful with them. The onboarding was quick — a 30-minute video training on how to use the verification checklist, what to look for, how to take proper photos. I figured it would be like quality control at a warehouse. Clinical. Efficient.
My first assignment was a washing machine in Kothrud. A semi-automatic LG, about four years old. The donor was a retired school teacher named Kamala aunty.
The Visit
I showed up at 10 AM with my phone and the verification checklist open in the Adalwin app. Kamala aunty had tea ready. I tried to explain that I was just there to check the machine, that it would only take fifteen minutes. She nodded and poured the tea anyway.
The washing machine was in excellent condition. She'd cleaned it thoroughly — I could smell the phenyl. All the hoses were coiled neatly. The timer knob worked. She ran a quick cycle to show me it drained properly.
As I was filling out the checklist — condition: excellent, functionality: fully operational, cosmetic damage: minor scratch on side panel — she told me why she was donating it. Her daughter had sent a fully automatic machine from Bangalore for Diwali. "I don't need two," she said simply.
The Part They Don't Train You For
Here's what the training video doesn't cover: the stories. Kamala aunty didn't just want me to verify a machine. She wanted to know it would go to someone who needed it. She asked if I knew who would get it. I explained the matching process — that someone who'd added a washing machine to their wishlist would be matched based on proximity and need.
"Good," she said. "Washing clothes by hand is hard work. I did it for thirty years before this machine."
I submitted the verification — three photos, condition notes, a short video of the spin cycle. The whole thing took twenty minutes, plus the tea. I walked out feeling something I hadn't expected: connected. Not to a platform or a process, but to a chain of giving that was suddenly very real.
What Happened Next
Three days later, I got a notification. The machine had been matched with a family in Warje — a woman who worked as domestic help in four homes and had been washing her family's clothes by hand every evening. The delivery volunteer sent a photo of the machine installed in her bathroom. It fit perfectly.
I've done eleven verifications since that first Saturday. A study table, a mixer grinder, a set of steel utensils, children's bicycles. Each one has a Kamala aunty on one end and a family on the other. Each one takes twenty minutes and changes something small but real.
If you have a free Saturday morning and you want to feel useful — not in an abstract way, but in a "someone-is-going-to-use-this-tonight" way — sign up as a volunteer. The tea is usually included.