Many of you will have worked with Kate – some of you will have heard of her and some will wonder who on earth she is! Kate and I ( Sallie ) met in a garden in The Gambia 20 years ago and that’s when we decided to create people and places together. Kate is very much a people person….not great at systems – some of you no doubt have stories that will perfectly exemplify this! Kate’s greatest skill? –…
Early in April our South African partners, Good Work Foundation picked up our latest award for us. Thanks Gemma and Fumani for representing us and all our other African partners! We’ve just won GOLD at the WTM Africa Responsible Tourism Awards These awards “ champion the very best work in Responsible Tourism on the African continent. …. – sustainability champions, changemakers, movers and shakers – who continue to make a positive impact and lead by example.“ We won the award for…
I have just returned from three weeks in The Gambia…to catch up on the adult education and business projects we support and to learn more about the new women’s empowerment programme we are working with – No Woman Left Behind. I’m not going to write about how tough it’s been in the past couple of years in The Gambia – that’s true for most of us and certainly everywhere we work. Nor am I going to write much about the…
“I really enjoyed listening to the other volunteers and their experiences and it was managed most skilfully by Paul who drew in plenty of people as well as managing the time very well. What struck me was that most were, like me, people who had not worked abroad before but welcomed the opportunity to share skills, visit new places (eventually!) and meet people from other countries. ” “Thankyou for arranging such an informative session – I am now even more excited…
We are blessed to work with some amazing women – role models and leaders – in Morocco, South Africa ,Cambodia and The Gambia. International Women’s Day was last week – but we don’t apologise for being late! – because every day is women’s day here at people and places In this post we have chosen to focus on a programme we work with in The Gambia – but wherever you choose to volunteer with us – be assured the projects…
In the last year our e-volunteer programme has been recognised as a game changer, not once but three times! “The World Responsible Tourism Awards 2020 are dedicated to acknowledging those in travel and tourism who have taken remarkable steps to address the multiple challenges brought to our industry by the COVID-19 crisis.” “We were sincerely impressed by your initiatives” (judging panel goabroad.com) “When the pandemic struck, peopleandplaces were no longer able to send volunteers to support the projects they have…
The pandemic has hit our project partners pretty hard – but despite all the challenges there is much to celebrate. Here are just a few examples Morocco Student becomes teacher. Khadija has just started working as a teacher!”It is an amazing experience and am glad that I have this chance, because being educated was always a dream for me that came true but teaching it was just impossible even in the dream. I grew up seeing the teachers as the…
Once upon a time we all had to travel for hours to meet up with each other and many of you couldn’t join us due to distance and oceans and our local partners could rarely attend – again oceans but most of all prohibitive travel costs…… then we discovered ZOOM – now we can all be together in the same room. We think the success of our Zoom volunteer meetings may be the biggest plus of all in the last…
We can start to plan to travel again – our volunteer programmes in The Gambia, Morocco, Cambodia, South Africa, Peru and Madagascar will begin to welcome volunteers in situ from late January. (We will be ale to provide dates for specific countries when you contact us) Many organisations recruiting volunteers for overseas have already been accepting “bookings” for some time. We believe we have a responsibility to be cautious. So we haven’t simply waited for international borders to open but…
Written by Paul Reynolds and published by Sallie Grayson I had the great pleasure of hosting the volunteers’ room at the recent social for past, present and future volunteers, both for e volunteering and actual future placements when we are able to do so. I had undertaken an e volunteering placement at Treak in Cambodia for 12 weeks from January to March this year. (To learn about the project where Paul volunteered take a look at the links at the…