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…
If a volunteer had said this to us two years ago we would not have had the slightest idea what they were talking about. Even a year ago e-volunteering was not a fully formed concept. At that stage we had just started working with a few dedicated previous volunteers on placements to support our partners in The Gambia and Morocco – although in both those countries schools and businesses were still closed so we could only work with staff. We…
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…
Listen to a podcast by travel editor and volunteer Zara – talking with a house mother,the volunteer co-ordinator and an 18 year old student from Education for All the girls education programme we work with in Morocco. Learn about girls education in Morocco – life in an Education for All boarding house and what you can expect as a volunteer. (eds note there are six girls houses not 3) .
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…
Myth 1: To be a good volunteer you need to be a teacher It depends what you mean by teaching! All skills-sharing involves an element of teaching – for example in the last few weeks I have taught a friend how to do a new knitting stitch, been taught by another friend how to fertilize my courgette plants so I get fruit rather than just flowers, and been taught by my brother how to top up the pressure on my…
We have an urgent need for skills that will support this programme that aims to give vulnerable women practical and business skills. But when we say business skills we are not talking about the ability to run a multinational – we are not just talking professional qualifications – we are looking for volunteers who can help prepare young vulnerable women for work – either in employment or running their own micro enterprise. Young women who will be so much less…
The people and places volunteer programme grew out of a series of chats. At the start of the pandemic a handful of previous volunteers to the programme we work with in Morocco approached Dianne to ask if we could help them contact the house mothers they had worked with – just to say hello…just to have a chat….. A year later we have a structured programme working with House Mothers and the young female students they support….this programme is not…
Two volunteers with very different backgrounds – one a young engineer, the other a retired GP. One had already travelled to Cambodia to volunteer at Treak Community Centre (TCC), the other had a placement planned there which had to be cancelled because of the pandemic. Both determined to use their skills to work as e-volunteers to help teachers from TCC develop their skills and knowledge and help them with their own online teaching. Andy’s e-volunteer placement involved activities based around…