TWO EYE-OPENING trips to India in the space of 12 months have Western Bulldogs ruckman Will Minson interested in taking his involvement with Red Dust Role Models to a new level when his playing days are done.

The 26-year-old didn't let a reduced holiday period owing to his involvement in the September 25 VFL Grand Final stop him from travelling with the non-profit health promotion charity last month, spending just under two weeks in India and central Australia.

Minson packed his bags and left the morning after the Dogs' best and fairest count, bound for Delhi for the first time and Mumbai the second, instantly welcoming the sights and smells of the intensely populated country as Red Dust set about holding sporting clinics at local schools.

It is work Minson loves. Such is his enthusiasm for it ­ and working with disadvantaged children that he is contemplating putting his civil engineering aspirations on hold, and moving to Mumbai following retirement.

"The long-term motivation is I'd love to work for Red Dust in a full-time capacity. I'd love to go to Mumbai and set up shop there and help to run the program and facilitate getting role models from within," Minson told AFL.com.au this week.

"I'd love to in four or five years time when footy's over, go into Mumbai, try and learn Hindi and work in that environment.

"It's a unique part of the world, it's the fastest growing nation in the world and one of the largest, it's got an emerging economy and I think there's a lot of interesting stuff going on.

"There's the obvious social challenges and it's just such an interesting place.

"I'm drawn to that, definitely. It's like nowhere else in the world."

The latest trip to India featured a travelling party that included young Essendon midfielder Dyson Heppell, 2011 Australian of the Year Simon McKeon, former Australian cricketer Bryce McGain and managing director of Red Dust Role Models John Van Groningen.


Bryce McGain standing as keeper to an impromptu cricket game in the streets of Mumbai

Heppell, who had only just returned from his first overseas trip to the USA, had to hit the ground running when it came to adjusting to Delhi's unique atmosphere, with the group arriving at 4am and electing to depart for Agra ­ the home of the Taj Mahal, 120km away ­ two hours later.

"We decided that because it was our only day off for the trip that we'd go to the Taj, even though it was five hours away," Minson said.

"We wouldn't have travelled any faster than 40km per hour; there were elephants and camels and people crossing the road with hand carts of food and sellable items, which they just walk in front of the traffic.


Fish stall within the slum at Colaba

"Dyson was fabulous. He really took to the program well. He's gone from winning the NAB AFL Rising Star, the AFLPA best first year player, takes off to Vegas on a footy trip, comes back and the next minute he's in India.

"Having been there myself already, it's not as confronting but to take Dyson and [Essendon's community manager] Nick Hannett as the tour guide into the slums was pretty cool, to see their reactions, and they loved it."

Sporting clinics in 38-degree heat were held for up to 200 children in Delhi, with the two football players passing on ball skills and the cricket representatives sharing their love of the hugely popular game.

Minson used the time to brush up on some Hindi words to use across the rest of the trip, before the party pitted their rickshaws against each other in a race back to their hotel.


Will Minson, Dyson Heppell, Nick Hannett and Steph Newton with Amin Khair and his family in Colaba 

A meeting at the high commission - one of the main reasons for the trip - was held, which was based around the need for Indians to take on responsibility for maintaining the objectives of Red Dust within their own borders.

From Delhi, it was off to Mumbai, flying over the Dharavi slums from the Academy Award winning movie Slumdog Millionaire on the way, for two days where Minson was particularly touched by a clinic held with a group of hearing impaired children from a shelter home in Navi Mumbai.

"It doesn't get much tougher than that. You're deaf, you're an orphan and you live in a slum, yet the smiles on these kids' faces when we started playing catch with them, you just can't beat it," he said.

"It's not a place where you want to be anxious about space or be claustrophobic because it's just a country with too many people."

After spending the following day helping volunteer sports coaches hone their crafts, Minson flew to Australia and spent a night in Sydney visiting his brother, Hugh.

From there, it was onto Alice Springs, into a car and out 293km to the remote community of Yuendumu ­ the home of Melbourne forward Liam Jurrah.

"The difference between the two is quite extraordinary. In many respects, the time out in India was less challenging than the time in Yuendumu," Minson said.

"The isolation, the languages … there weren't as many kids in town at the time as they were in Alice with their families collecting their mining royalties; a stark contrast after coming from India where there's millions of kids."

Minson helped paint a local school a vibrant blue ­ - "they chose the colour" - ­ and held clinics with the children. There are about 200 children in the community, however, at times school attendance can be very poor.

It wasn't Minson's first Red Dust experience in central Australia. One of his first was to the small indigenous community of Papunya, 240km northwest of Alice Springs. The small community was dealing with a significant petrol-sniffing problem at the time.

"I was smacked right between the eyes. I had no understanding of what it meant to be a petrol sniffer and no understanding of the damage and the chaos it can cause," Minson said.

"To see a seven-year-old boy with an SPC fruit tin tied around his head with petrol in it so he could keep his hands free was extremely confronting.

"I've been working with the program now for nine years and I've been fortunate to be able to go to Fiji, India and around Australia, and it's been terrific."

This time, Minson had to cut his visit short after receiving a reminder email from Andrew McTrusty, the Bulldogs' former player welfare manager, about a charity bike ride he'd agreed to do for Save The Children.

A car had to be driven to Yuendumu to collect him before he returned to Melbourne on the one daily flight out of Alice Springs and rode 120km from Federation Square to Harcourt, to raise $25,000 for the charity.

"I hadn't done any preparation or anything like that," Minson said.

"I just had an old bike I ride back and forth to uni and these guys had $5000 bikes weighing four kg and I had a 20kg steel-framed bike."

All up, Minson said it was a "crazy two and a bit weeks", which essentially started after he travelled to Indonesia with teammate Liam Picken to attend a Grand Final breakfast hosted by the Jakarta Bintangs at the Ritz Carlton in early October.

But if anything, his enthusiasm for Red Dust, which began in 2003 when he spent his entire first season at the Bulldogs playing reserves for then-VFL affiliate Werribee, has only been encouraged by the latest instalment in his travels.

"The obvious role that sport can play in engaging and crossing borders is pretty cool," Minson said.

"I love India's mayhem, the chaos, the people, the challenges, the food, the sights, the smells. Everything's extreme.

"I'm a six foot five white guy in the middle of India; I'm going to stand out but to see the challenges the kids face every day is incredible.

"I'll be back next year, I can't wait."

You can learn more about Red Dust Role Models through their website reddust.org.au/