Volunteer

Everybody has different skills and disposition, but everybody can help with our project. If you would like to get involved, please contact us and tell us what you can do.

There are two basic ways to volunteer your time: in the U.S./Europe, or in the field. In the U.S./Europe we need people to sell the project and help with our fundraising campaigns. Fundraising is the least liked aspect of working on any NGO, and the most important. Nothing moves unless a volunteer picks up the phone and calls a potential donor, or fires up his computer and writes an email. We don’t do cold-calling, and we have a long list of potential sources of funds that remains unexplored until more of us can volunteer.

If you are definitely not into fundraising, we need a lot of help with our operations. For example, we always have a list of things to do, like finding an economical way to ship books, to figuring out more efficient systems of tracking individual donations with their ultimate use to report to small donors, to other small but important tasks.

To the field we bring 3 kinds of volunteers:

1. People who want to get involved with the project, but want to have hands-on experience with the field operations to get a feel of what we do, how we do it, and the pressing needs of the people we serve. These volunteers come back with a deep knowledge of our projects and help us with the operations and fundraising. Many of them do repeated trips.
2. People who want to raise funds, but also want to see how they are used. These volunteers come and leave a “profit” to the project, that is, they leave $500 to $1,000 after their expenses are covered. These volunteers help raise awareness of the issues, serve as witness to Human Rights violations, and help the community directly with their donation.
3. Skilled volunteers, or those whose skills are directly related to the needs of the community. Examples include advanced nursing/medical students, nutritionists, videographers, agronomists, business professionals with expertise in developing world enterprises or social entrepreneurship, public health professionals or advanced students, and people with specific skills and experience in school administration and teacher development.

Please contact us about our volunteering opportunities.