Family Volunteering 1

     Since starting this blog and advertising to my friends and acquaintances about my upcoming volunteering adventures I have received several inquiries into the process I have used to locate and contact grass roots organizations with whom I could participate in an international volunteering experience with my child.  I completely understand the inquiries – until just last summer my explorations into this were being met with a distinct lack of success also.  Google searches on “international volunteering” typically resulted in pages of listings of larger coordinating organizations whose set programs were primarily oriented towards gap year students and younger adults. Those organizations which did offer family programs did not have the flexibility, length, or affordability I desired and/or required.  So what do to?  Well, fortunately, I learned a few things during my residency program at Royal Roads University in addition to the course work that were very helpful in this regard. 

     Most importantly I learned that many grass roots organizations are very appreciative of family involvement.  My first contact individual, Derek Koch (contact) of Imagine Thailand spent an entire year volunteering with his family in Thailand.  He is happy to discuss his experiences as well as family volunteering possibilities with those who are interested.

     Next I learned that one can contact grass roots organizations directly, and talk to them like people, to make arrangements suitable for you as an individual (or individual family).  The experience does not have to be as rigid as what might be implied through the websites of those larger coordinating organizations. 

     Armed with increased motivation from the new knowledge that many grass roots organizations are not just accepting, but actually enthusiastic, about receiving families as volunteers, and the knowledge that many are open to direct discussion of arrangements tailored to each volunteering group, I renewed my investigations.  This time, however, in an effort to reach directly to the small grass roots organizations, I altered my search strategy somewhat.  Instead of using search strings like “international volunteering”, I used strings like “volunteer teaching in Takua Pa Thailand”, and, eventually, since cost was a significant factor affecting my ability to participate, I started adding a “free” to the front of that search.  This strategy produced much better results for what I was wanting, but I was somewhat limited in that my ability to search was dependent upon my knowledge of where opportunities existed, as well as what types of opportunities existed, which is problematic when one is starting out!

     Fortunately, adding the “free” term resulted in the appearance of a new sort of coordinating organization in my search results – ones that serve as a listing site for grass roots organizations offering low-cost opportunities for international volunteers.  One of my favourites is http://omprakash.org/volunteer-abroad .  With access to these websites I now had the final tool required to engage in effective, systematic, investigation of grass roots international family volunteering investigations, which is the process I will describe now.     

     Before getting into this, however, I will issue a warning.  This process, of investigating and locating an organization with which to volunteer, can be quite lengthy and time consuming.  So be prepared.  But, it is also rewarding, and educational.  And, you’ll find something suitable to you and your family, both in terms of budget and type of involvement.  The old adage, you get what you give, applies here.

     So where to start?  First, ask yourself, what is it you are wanting to get out of this experience?  Why are you looking into this?  Is it for travel, experiencing a different culture, contributing to places of need, a desire to broaden your children’s minds?  And then, how do you think this can be accomplished, in a way that is enjoyable for you and your family, and safe?  You may not know the answer to the last question, likely you don’t, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be reading this.  You may not even know the answer to the first question, or if you do, it may be rather vague.  That’s okay.  Everything starts with an interest.  Now we are set to pursue it.  And to start with this, we need information.  We need to know what is available.  And then we can come back to those questions and look at matching what is available with what our goals are.  So…. how to get the information?   

     This is one of several areas where those free volunteering coordinating sites are extremely useful.  Looking through their listings gives a person a good idea of what types of opportunities are available and where.  Many of the organizations which list on these sites also maintain their own websites, if you find something that might interest you I would recommend searching for the organization’s independent website and reading through their information in addition to what has been posted on the coordinating site websites. The coordinating websites will typically provide information on the general orientation of the grass roots organization, type of volunteering experience that could be expected, living conditions, costs, and general expectations of the volunteer; the grass roots organization’s website will provide more details on the nature of the organization, their needs, volunteering opportunities, usually photos, and often times postings from previous volunteers.  This more detailed information will give you a better idea of opportunities that might exist with that organization.  This stage is a learning stage to find out about the variety in types and locations of experiences available so that you can better answer those questions posed right at first and thus have more success finding an opportunity suitable to yourself and your family, so try not to be too restrictive in which organizations you explore further. 

     If as you go through you are interested in discovering more about the conditions and issues in a particular location, (which I would recommend), one can always check out travel websites for that particular location.  I would especially recommend investigating weather and living conditions.  Accessibility might also be a factor, a general idea of the cost of airfare can be attained either through airfare search websites such as Kayak or Orbitz, or, to find local carriers, googling flights from your origin to your destination.  I would suggest using more than one of these methods to get a more accurate estimate.  It is also highly relevant to become somewhat familiar with social conditions in the areas, Human Rights Watch maintains a website http://www.hrw.org/with easily accessible current and past reports, searchable by country, as well as a current news feed http://www.hrw.org/news . Googling for local newspapers (you can restrict by language), or even a generic “current events in …” for reports by international newspapers, can also be informative.  This process can be especially enlightening not just for the adult but also for any somewhat older children who are going to be involved, even if you do not end up visiting that particular region of the world. 

     During this information gathering stage keep in mind that just because an organization does not say they welcome families doesn’t mean they don’t.  Many organizations are fairly flexible and when the time comes to send out preliminary contact e-mails one might find there are far more opportunities available than what was explicitly posted on their or the umbrella site’s websites.  Especially for teaching and orphanage help positions I found the organizations quite welcoming of myself and my son.  Of course, he is 13 and old enough to help out, so I do not know what the response would be to bringing, say, a 3 year old.  But I do recall reading some previous volunteer experiences which mentioned being there with their young children.   

     As you become more familiar with the types of opportunities around, and the terminology frequently employed, you can try doing your own independent google searches, which, as I mentioned, tend to provide results with more grass roots organizations (although do keep in mind that “more” is relative). 

     This is a long process, so be sure to bookmark the places you find.  There is nothing more frustrating than remembering, right!, there was that amazing sounding orphanage in Uganda that I wanted to look at further! and having to go through the whole search process again.  Remember as you go along that this is a long process, keep your patience, and eventually you’ll gain a pretty good idea of the variety of opportunities available, which are of most interest to you, and some ability at finding them. 

     As you proceed through this learning and familiarization stage take the time occasionally to sit back and ask yourself those questions I posed at the beginning, again.  What do you want to get out of this experience?  Has this changed now that you have further information?  And now, given what you have learned, how do you see your goals potentially being accomplished?  Eventually you will have garnered enough information to be able to pinpoint a little better a few volunteering areas, both experiential and physical location, in which you are most interested.  You will have enough knowledge of factors which differ from organization to organization, such as accommodations, costs, and time expectations, to have questions about these.  It is at this point that you are ready to move on to sending out some preliminary contact e-mails to the contact people of the grass roots organizations themselves, starting the next stage of this process.  Congratulations!  So sit back, take a bit of a rest, and wait for my next posting on the topic….