Global XChange From VSO: Six Month Volunteer Exchange Program

By Kate | Permalink | 1 comment | September 10th, 2007 | Trackback

VSO, whose motto is “promoting volunteering to fight global poverty and disadvantage”, has built a reputation organizing two-year placements for international volunteers, including those with qualifications or experience in the field they will work in (read the story written by one VSO volunteer in Sri Lanka at the TEFL Logue). Now, VSO is offering placements for young people for a shorter period in the Global Xchange program, in cooperation with the British Council (“Our purpose is to build mutually beneficial relationships between people in the UK and other countries and to increase appreciation of the UK’s creative ideas and achievements”).

Young people aged 18-25 can spend three months in the UK and three months in another country volunteering as part of a group. Half the group will be from the UK and half from the exchange country (the country where the other three months are spent). Volunteers will live with a host family - and a counterpart from the other country - and “do real jobs that make a difference to people living in challenging conditions.”

VSO volunteers do not pay for anything, but rather fundraise £600. They receive a stipend while volunteering and accommodation is part of the program.

The work is with a local organization four days a week and may involve peer education, assistance to elderly or people with physical or mental disabilities, serving as educational assistants, or working with refugee organizations or educational health projects. However, no experience or particular skills are required.

From the Global Xchange site:
“We will try to match your volunteer placement with your own interests and skills, but this is not always possible. What we will ensure is that you are well supported in your volunteer placement by a workplace supervisor, and that your placement is doing some work that respond to the needs of the local community, enabling you to make a tangible contribution.

Our Volunteer Placements don’t expect you to have any particular skills or previous experience. These placements work best when volunteers are enthusiastic, motivated and willing to learn quickly. That’s why many of the most successful placements involve peer-to-peer education and advocacy activities.”

VSO has made headlines recently by criticizing voluntourism generally for charging for poorly planned projects which they say sometimes hinder real aid – without going into much detail about how. From the standpoint of an outside observer, the emphasis on volunteers from both countries volunteering in both countries does seem like a good one to me; this way it is not just western volunteers going to help in other countries, but a more balanced exchange. Obviously this offers the opportunity for volunteers from both countries to get to know each other as individuals, and not just as community members on the receiving end of aid. In my mind, this is quite a positive component and likely makes the program worthwhile, even if the tangible results or volunteer output is small.

I do wonder about the overall effect if the program will be limited to countries where taking six months out of your life to volunteer is a practical reality, or countries where fundraising £600 for such an experience is feasible.

On another serious note, I think many of the same problems VSO presumably identifies with other organizations will still be present. I say presumably as most of the criticism I have heard sounds to me like customer service issues for participants rather than an explanation of how voluntourism specifically affects the local community negatively, or how their programs actually produce results that other programs do not. In my experience of living, working and volunteering abroad, the reality is just that many very real problems in the world have very little to do with the support of short-term volunteers. In my mind, the real benefit of volunteering is not in producing some tangible result that is immediately useful to the local community, but rather participating in an experience that will impact the volunteer’s own outlook and knowledge of the situation. And more people in the world knowing about life – the good and the bad – in other places will directly or indirectly help when and if the roots of those issues are to be addressed at a level that can bring about change. In this sense, and in my opinion, a wide variety of experiences abroad – including but not limited to VSO’s – can be useful.

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