Leave UR Mark

This organization basically gets you to India and hooks you up with an NGO to volunteer for and that’s it. My review is based on the people who runs this...Read more

This organization basically gets you to India and hooks you up with an NGO to volunteer for and that’s it. My review is based on the people who runs this organization. They are very unprofessional and the directors are liars and they will do whatever they can to cover themselves. The director in the U.S. believes whatever the co-director in India says. The co-director in India treats the man who works at the apartment in Bangalore HORRIBLE. He would walk into the apartment and start yelling at him out of nowhere to the point where you feel uncomfortable. And yes he did this in front of the volunteers. Girls who volunteered with the org would complain about the co-director sending them weird text messages trying to hook up with them. One night we all went out to a bar and he got drunk and made some of the girls feel really uncomfortable. There was a guy there who was not a volunteer, but he stayed at the apartment because he was visiting India. He was friends with the directors and he would bring in people from his country to volunteer for them. The things he would say and the stories he would tell the volunteers..made the girls feel extremely uncomfortable. This was brought up to the directors.. and again.. nothing was done. Because they are friends and he is helping them to make money. They just swept the issue under the rug. This is a good program to get people to travel to India to volunteer, but the people who runs the company where you would lodge will not protect or promote your safety.

Leave Ur Mark is an extemely unprofessional organisation that's trying to get as much money as possible. The service I received before I left for India was meek. No help...Read more

Leave Ur Mark is an extemely unprofessional organisation that's trying to get as much money as possible. The service I received before I left for India was meek. No help with the Visa whatsoever, basic information you can google in a second and no further advice on what flights to book, what medication to bring etc. As soon as I transferred the first payment to them I had to wait days for them to answer. Basically they lose interest in you after they've won you for one of their programs. After I arrived in India I found out that my internship is not at the place they promised it would be but rather a one hour bus journey from my location away. Moreover they promised that there would be a lovely community of interns but when I arrived was literally not a single other intern. Due to this dishonesty I decided to quit the internship. Their reaction to that was highly unprofessional and confirmed the bad impression I had gotten over the past weeks. They'll lie to you about the circumstances and think it's okay to do so. I wasted 700$ on a bad (non-existent) service. Keep your money and volunteer for an organisation that doesn't ask you to pay them money so YOU can do FREE work for them.

Leave UR Mark response

Thank you for your valuable feedback as we always strive to improve our services in order to make sure our...Read more

Thank you for your valuable feedback as we always strive to improve our services in order to make sure our customers feel supported during their internship experience in India. We are sorry that you did not find our program to be a good fit and regret any miscommunication from our side. We would love to provide a more lengthy response but are limited in how long we can type on this website. We don't offer visa and flight processing services anywhere on our website or part of the contract and are a bit surprised that this was one of your expectations (as it was not requested before this review). We are additionally not medical professionals and ask each intern to set up an appointment with their doctors to go over innoculations and medicines. We do a pre-departure training that lasts 2 hours, provide a pre-departure guide that has 25 pages of health, safety, and cultural information, and provide over 35 email exchanges from application to sign up to arrival. We pick interns up at the airport (which you had requested you didn't want) and provide a 2 day orientation (you had showed up for only one day) as well as internship placement (which you didn't show up for). When you mentioned the internship site was too far for you, we changed it within 6 hours to the site that you wanted. You arrived right before New Years and we mentioned that we wont be able to start any programs due to the holidays until beginning of January. 6 other interns arrived shortly after you did. We completely understand feeling frustrated arriving in a new country and your experience doesn't live up to your expectations in the first few days. It's very important to properly communicate with local staff via phone and in-person meetings so that issues can be resolved ASAP. We pride ourselves on fixing things that our part of our actual services. However, we cannot fix things that we do not provide such as visa, flights, & medicines. We will help communicate this better in the future!

It's a nice place to go yet this organization is extremely unorganized and I felt neglected while I was there by the employers and I was misinformed about my internship...Read more

It's a nice place to go yet this organization is extremely unorganized and I felt neglected while I was there by the employers and I was misinformed about my internship as I can clearly see there is much miscommunication between leave ur mark and the internship companies they are associated with.

My son, Matthew, and I try to volunteer overseas 3 months out of the year. We have been fortunate to be involved with a number of excellent international volunteer organizations....Read more

My son, Matthew, and I try to volunteer overseas 3 months out of the year. We have been fortunate to be involved with a number of excellent international volunteer organizations. That being said, Leave Ur Mark is first on that list of great agencies/organizations! We were able to genuinely volunteer at places that matched our skills and desires--a school for the deaf and an orphanage. That was a gift. (Trust me, not every agency is able to do that.)
The accommodations and board were above expectations too. Our room was clean, well furnished, and had a separate bathroom. The food prepared by Gautam, was excellent!
Leave Ur Mark also supported our quest for cultural activities outside the work hours. Parchi helped with organizing social events and weekend get-aways to intriguing and inspiring places! Again, a service that was above and beyond my expectations!
This will definitely be a volunteer agency we utilize again. Leave Ur Mark is the measuring stick by which we will "judge" other agencies...I wonder if that is even fair! SMILES!
HIGHLY recommended!
Third, we were in Bangalore from Dec. 25, 2015 to Jan. 23, 2016