Tips for Responsible Volunteering

As our volunteer teams grow larger and more frequent, we offer these tips for maximizing your positive impact in the host community:

First, confine your service to work projects based on local leaders' vision, commitment and contributions. Such volunteer projects don't cost local people more effort than the volunteer contribution merits.

Second, be aware that usually a minimum commitment of at least a week is required for you to become fully integrated into the work project, and therefore to make a genuine contribution.

Third, note that only full-day service efforts are tax-deductible for U.S. taxpayers. When you work through Global Volunteers, you're mobilized in full-time work projects, five days per week. (The IRS requires "no significant element of personal pleasure, recreation or vacation.")

Fourth, ethical service is self-supporting in the host community, and doesn't draw financial resources away from local people. Rather contributions support the local economy, and invest in local initiatives without creating dependencies upon outside sources.

Most important, invest your time in a sustainable program which contributes your skills and energy to the community as you work alongside local people on local development projects.

You CAN make a significant difference...in as little as one week...through our long-term, sustainable development partnerships. Call us today to find YOUR service program!

Partners in Development: A Message from Global Volunteers' CEO Bud Philbrook

Global Volunteers facilitates human and economic development at the community level and engages volunteers to do much of the work. But as is stated in Global Volunteers "Philosophy of Service -- Strategy for Development," only local people actually do development. An organization like Global Volunteers can help facilitate development and volunteers can help catalyze development, but only local people do it. With that said, facilitating and catalyzing are vital activities in the development process.

Development professionals have known for decades that merely providing financial resources, even in the form of education and medical supplies, is insufficient. USAID, the World Bank, and other government development agencies have spent literally billions of dollars over the past 50 years with varying degrees of success. More often than not, where only financial or other material resources have been offered, little or no development improvements can be measured. The most successful efforts have been at the local community level where local leaders are in charge and outsiders provide appropriate catalytic assistance. That is what Global Volunteers strives to do. We offer volunteers to work under the direction of local leaders on community-based projects that the community determines are important to its long-term human and economic development.


How can anyone, therefore, individually make a significant difference in three weeks? Most people can't. However, Global Volunteers sends multiple teams of volunteers to each community every year, year after year. Every volunteer becomes a vital link in a long chain of volunteers. For the local children, each volunteer makes a world of difference because without all the volunteers who came before and after, their lives would be very different. We know this is the case because we've been working in some communities for more than 25 years and adults with whom we taught 10 or 15 years ago tell us that this case.

Some say "Passing along knowledge and training would make a better mission for Global Volunteers than just stepping into the places of community members." I could not agree more, and that is always our objective. However, human development is a generational process -- it takes a very long time. That is why we focus on children. It is our experience that children we teach will learn things they otherwise would not and be motivated to do constructive things with their life that they otherwise might not have even imagined. That in fact, is the principal way in which we facilitate development.

Others suggest it might be better to provide financial resources rather than volunteers so the local people could be paid to do local construction work. We would agree provided the only objectives are to construct or repair a building and increase local income. But Global Volunteers is about waging peace and promoting justice. We attempt to achieve this goal by working hand-in-hand with local people on community development projects that community leaders deem important. Our objective is to create an environment where local people and volunteers work together on a common project such that in the process of working together they become friends. Friendship is very important to what we do because friendship is foundational to peace and justice in our world. When there is a dispute among friends, friends will generally resolve their dispute nonviolently.

When people have a friend against whom an injustice is being perpetrated, they generally want to do something to right the injustice. Consequently, the more friends there are in the world, the more nonviolent dispute resolution there will be. The more friends there are the world, the more people there will be working for justice. For Global Volunteers, the work project is the vehicle to establish friendships. In addition, we do provide financial resources so that local laborers are paid.

Sean Penn recently said about his work in Haiti, "The first person served by service is the server." We agree fully.

Just Do It! A Dentist in Tanzania

I've served on 13 Global Volunteer teams in 10 countries since 1997. I recommend if you're considering joining a team....just do it. Global Volunteers will take it from there. Their country managers do an excellent job of setting up the food and housing, and consulting with the village leaders to find out what the needs are for that particular work site. I've always felt "needed" wherever I serve. Global Volunteers fits my needs because of the way they operate. There principles are, they only go where they are invited, and only do what the local people ask them to do. It is always with a team, the accommodations are comfortable for each project site, and the people are wonderful.

Once on site, a workshop, led by the country manager, is done to discover the unique characteristics of each team, and the unique skills of each team member to match the village needs. There always are options for work projects. In Pommern, where Global Volunteers has worked for over 20 years, and I have been 3 times, the team members have a choice of teaching English, doing light building and maintenance work, or working in health care.

Since there's no dentist for over 20 miles from the village, I've been using my skills to set up a dental facility. Some patients I see have had toothaches for as long as 6 years, and they walk or bike over 4 hours to be seen. The dental facility is currently able to extract, clean, and teach preventive oral hygiene. I am returning two more times this year so that basic fillings can also be done. There are over 1,300 students in the primary and secondary schools who are being taught proper preventive oral hygiene. Each one is given a toothbrush and toothpaste. They're also taught to use salt water once the toothpaste is gone. I'll return in August with restorative materials and will be then be able to do basic fillings along with the oral surgery, oral hygiene, and preventive care. And, a very nice dentist in Iringa has agreed to do root canals and restorations so people don't have to walk around with teeth missing.

According to the UN Human Development Index http://enwikipedia.org/Human_Development_Index, there are four worlds, and all of Africa is in the fourth world. So what a better place to began, where the greatest need is. Or one can begin in any one of the "Four worlds". The key is, to begin. And that can be with any skills you have. My late wife Virginia and I took our two oldest grandchildren to Poland and Italy to teach English with Global Volunteers. With her passing away in February, I am carrying on the vision we both had and loved. In June, I am taking my third oldest grandson to Poland to teach English. When I return in August, a freshman dental student will be on the team. He'll make a great assistant and experience life and living in the "fourth world."

So the bottom line is, to name the three most important issues in the world. These can be either local or global. And use that as a starting point, and do something about it. This I know: Any skill a team member brings is always appreciated and used around the world. Volunteering with Global Volunteers is a wonderful experience one never forgets (and doesn't stop doing!).

Lewis Pierce, happy Global Volunteer

Advice to volunteers: Stay open-minded

Volunteers are often asked what their goals are. That is a better question in our Western world than when we go overseas, because having high expectations may get in the way of the actuality. On a short-term project we may be tempted to think "Oh yes, if we work hard, we'll be able to finish that project in our two weeks." But that's a Western attitude that rarely applies when we're in an African or Asian or South American setting. Rather, I think a personal goal should be to become sensitive enough and adaptable enough to settle into the pace of the people with whom we're working. If you're disappointed in the lack of progress, you'll be disappointed in your entire experience. But if you can tune in to the people you're working with, you may have a different and richer experience than as if you finished your project in the allotted time.

WorldTeach says: "Expectations are not right or wrong. They just are. But unless we are aware of them, they more often hinder than help us. They can keep us from seeing possibilities that are challenging and different. They can even prevent us from enjoying the surprises of life."

Let's stay open and flexible and ready to enjoy surprises wherever we happen to be volunteering.

- China and Tanzania volunteer Dorothy Conlon
http://www.dorothyconlon.com/, Author of "At Home in the World: Memoirs of a Traveling Woman"

Appropriate Volunteering is a Choice

The protagonists in "The Ugly American" were early examples of "generalized Global Volunteer types". I just re-read the book and this is only partly true.

The book, as you probably know, was written 50 years ago in the early anti-communist era when West threw money at the corrupt third world governments to build vast projects (of little value to the poor folks) to keep the governments on our side. In opposition to this policy, the protagonists in the book went out to work with village people to help them build things themselves that were wanted and needed. I remember the huge effect this contrarian view had.

But in critical details, they were not working as Global Volunteers. They did work marvelously with the local people in most ways; but they arrived, decided themselves on what was needed (and possible), and then manipulated the people into doing what they suggested. They were "Have Gun, Will Travel" types. They also had an agenda of promoting entrepreneurialism. Whether or not to do this is, of course, a hot topic still today - I'm content to just give help.

I agree that Global Volunteers’ "Servant-Learner" philosophy addresses this, and that "The Servant is not a Problem-Solver" position is the best approach. I agree that volunteers certainly should not interfere in local management, nor offer suggestion on what should or needs to be done. But once the locals make these decisions, I feel we should use whatever skills we have to help them - and that certainly involves "Problem Solving" as I understand it.

Tom Head, 17-time volunteer to Ecuador and retired CEO