Showing posts with label Volunteer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Volunteer. Show all posts
Thursday, June 07, 2012
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Not Enough Cambodians Pitching In for Development: Volunteers
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| Diep Sovannaroth, left, a program assistant for UN Volunteers, and Chhuon Thavrith, right, a former volunteer at UN Volunteers who now works for UNDP, were our guests on 'Hello VOA' on Monday. (Photo: by Heng Reaksmey) |
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
Say Mony, VOA Khmer | Phnom Penh
“Only when we Cambodians ourselves contribute to the solutions to existing challenges or problems will the country develop.”
If more Cambodians do not start pitching in and volunteering, the country risks missing key development goals in coming years, a youth advocate said Monday.
Cambodia is trying to meet a series of UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015, but it is lagging behind in key sectors. And while there are a number of foreign volunteers working in the country, there is not enough local help, Diep Sovannaroth, a program assistant for UN Volunteers, told “Hello VOA.”
“Only when we Cambodians ourselves contribute to the solutions to existing challenges or problems will the country develop,” she said. “So volunteerism plays a very important role here.”
Cambodia marked the 10th anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers last week, as development officials called on more volunteer activities to push the country towards its 2015 goals.
Thursday, September 01, 2011
Sarah is praised by Cambodian government for work with orphans
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| Sarah, Alice, Hannah and Pola Chhin. |
Thursday 1 September 2011
Eastbourne Herald (UK)
A VOLUNTEER from Seaford has been praised for her efforts abroad.
Sarah Chhin, a member of Seaford Baptist Church, served as a volunteer Christian Development Worker with Cambodia Action.
She is the project manager for Project SKY, whose aim is to provide support and ensure the social inclusion of young adult orphans out of orphanages and into communities.
Between January and June this year, the project helped the lives of more than 900 people including young people living in orphanages, orphanage directors, village chiefs and community members.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
A ray of hope among the ruins: Japan disaster child volunteers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhDn2DP2gTk&feature=channel_video_title
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Cambodia no cruise for Tara
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| VOLUNTEERING ABROAD: Occupational therapist Tara Morrison is heading to Cambodia to do voluntary rehabilitation work with those with disabilities.Relevant offers (ANDY JACKSON/Taranaki Daily News) |
KATE SAUNDERS
Taranaki Daily News (New Zealand)
Tara Morrison is packing insect repellent and sunscreen this summer – but not for a trip to the beach.
Instead, Ms Morrison is travelling to Cambodia to volunteer her services as an occupational therapist.
The 22-year-old has just finished her honours thesis while working at Taranaki Base Hospital, and is ready for a new challenge.
The trip to Cambodia became a reality when she got in touch with Projects Abroad, a volunteering organisation.
She will work with Veterans International, a non-government organisation which assists in the rehabilitation of Cambodian war victims living with disabilities.
"The focus will be on getting individuals mobile again, completing daily activities and using compensatory strategies," Ms Morrison said.
The work will include sorting wheelchair settings, working with amputees and prosthetics. "Disability has a huge stigma over there, so it's about educating the families, and making sure individuals can engage back into society."
Occupational therapy is a vocation she feels passionately about. Her father suffered brain injury after a bitumen explosion at Port Taranaki eight years ago and is a paraplegic. "I've seen how [occupational therapy] has transformed his life and ours as a family."
She also hoped the experience would provide her with more skills and shape her occupational therapy career. "I haven't had lots of experience working with amputees and they don't have the resources that we do in New Zealand, so it should extend my knowledge."
She will spend four weeks working, before travelling through Vietnam and returning to a job at the hospital. "I've been really fortunate that the hospital has rehired me and given me two months off to do this."
She was also grateful for the support she had received from friends and family, as well as donations from New Plymouth businesses.
She returned to Taranaki this year after completing a bachelor of health at Otago Polytechnic.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Youth See Volunteerism As a Means to a Jobs
Pich Samnang, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh Thursday, 11 November 2010
Phnom Penh Thursday, 11 November 2010
“If they don't do volunteer work with an institution or community, they will probably be unable to find employment opportunities.”
With unemployment still high among Cambodian youth, some have begun to seek volunteer opportunities as a bridge to decent jobs in the future.
More and more graduates have shown an interest in volunteer work, which helps them gain experience and expand their networks, said Som Monorom, a project officer at Cambodian Volunteers for Society.
“If they don't do volunteer work with an institution or community, they will probably be unable to find employment opportunities,” he said, adding that most volunteers came from poor or middle-class families.
“There are hardly any youths from well-off families who want to volunteer, because most of them have a lot of money, so they do not care much about job opportunity,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
Cambodia has the highest per capita population of youth in the region: those between 10 to 24 years old make up 35 percent of the populace.
But with an estimated 250,000 youths entering the employment market each year, and the main industry, garments, only supplying a total 300,000 jobs, work opportunities are scant.
That means greater competition for the jobs that do exist.
“Today, getting a job requires work experience,” said Pen Sophal, youth media officer for UN Volunteers. “Even though you graduate from a university, you'll find it hard to get a job without work experience.”
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
[Aussie] Soldier rapt in mission
TASK FORCE: Sapper Jared Groves on assignment in Cambodia.21 Jul 10
By Staff writer
Northern Times (Australia)
SOLDIER Jared Groves is usually based with Second Combat Engineer Regiment at Enoggera, but for the next few weeks he is aboard a US Navy ship on a mission to provide humanitarian assistance to South-East Asia and Oceania.
The young sapper, or combat engineer, is helping with reconstruction at schools and health centres in Vietnam and Cambodia as part of the annual US-led Pacific Partnership 2010.
Sapper Groves, from Deception Bay, is part of a 900-strong team of Aussie and US military, other partner nations and non-government organisations.
``I think it is great that my job changes from week to week and sometimes even from day to day,’’ he said.
``Having signed up two years ago I never would have expected to be in a ship, let alone an American one.’‘
Sapper Groves is undertaking repair and construction tasks at schools and health centres.
After finishing a task at a school for disabled children in Vietnam he is now involved in various projects in Cambodia.
``We are working in four different locations around Sihanoukville, repairing playground equipment, undertaking minor roof repair works, installing animal pens and painting some classrooms.
``I am really enjoying the different tasks in each location and that we are making a difference in the children’s lives.’‘
Army training took Sapper Groves interstate, but he is delighted to be based back home, close to family and friends and his old football teams, the Redcliffe Tigers and the Sandgate Seahawks.
``I love that I get to live so close to my loved ones, but I also love travelling and this deployment is fantastic,’’ he said.
The young sapper, or combat engineer, is helping with reconstruction at schools and health centres in Vietnam and Cambodia as part of the annual US-led Pacific Partnership 2010.
Sapper Groves, from Deception Bay, is part of a 900-strong team of Aussie and US military, other partner nations and non-government organisations.
``I think it is great that my job changes from week to week and sometimes even from day to day,’’ he said.
``Having signed up two years ago I never would have expected to be in a ship, let alone an American one.’‘
Sapper Groves is undertaking repair and construction tasks at schools and health centres.
After finishing a task at a school for disabled children in Vietnam he is now involved in various projects in Cambodia.
``We are working in four different locations around Sihanoukville, repairing playground equipment, undertaking minor roof repair works, installing animal pens and painting some classrooms.
``I am really enjoying the different tasks in each location and that we are making a difference in the children’s lives.’‘
Army training took Sapper Groves interstate, but he is delighted to be based back home, close to family and friends and his old football teams, the Redcliffe Tigers and the Sandgate Seahawks.
``I love that I get to live so close to my loved ones, but I also love travelling and this deployment is fantastic,’’ he said.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Education Fair in Kg Cham organized by Peace Corps volunteers
Report and Video by Mom Sophon, Radio Free Asia
Ball state grad commits to service in Cambodia
Heather Blanch, 24, shares her experiences doing service work in Cambodia. She returned to the United States last week, but plans to return again in August. (Tribune Photo/JIM RIDER)24-year-old commits herself to service in Cambodia.
June 27, 2010
By MARY KATE MALONE
SouthBend Tribune Staff Writer (South Bend, Indiana, USA)
The young girl was just 12. Sullen, unkempt and small.
She arrived at the rescue shelter in Phnom Penh with little else but the clothes on her back, and a sad but common story in Cambodia.
It was late November 2009.
Years earlier, the girl had somehow slipped into the country's burgeoning sex trade, or been raped, or nearly raped in her community.
She had been rescued by another organization and sent to She Rescue Home, a shelter for girls, in Cambodia's largest city.
Twenty-four-year-old Heather Blanch, an American who had just begun a six-month volunteer position at the shelter, shuddered at the sight.
"She was so skittish," Blanch recalled. "At the sound of anything loud — a car horn, loud music, a door slamming — she would curl up in a ball and cry."
Such are the side effects of a childhood of sexual exploitation.
And such are the stories Blanch encountered as a volunteer at the shelter.
Blanch, an Argos native and Ball State University graduate, was the only American volunteer at She Rescue Home in Phnom Penh.
She worked beside Australian volunteers and dozens of natives. She counseled, did paperwork, taught English and did whatever else was needed.
The shelter had 24 girls living there, all victims or at-risk of sexual exploitation and violence.
The youngest was 5, the oldest 17.
But what brought Blanch to Asia, to chip away, for no pay, at a massive global problem?
It was something within, she said, something intuitive.
"There are plenty of people who can stay here (in the U.S.) but there’s a very small minority willing to go overseas (for service),” she said. “But it’s natural for me to go overseas.”
“There is so much work to be done. … So many problems that are being ignored,” she said.
Blanch plans to return to Cambodia in August and stay for at least 18 months.
She receives no money for her work, relying on her savings and support from friends and family.
At 7 p.m. Tuesday, she will speak about her experiences at Argos United Methodist Church, 570 N. Michigan St.
Cambodia is considered a destination for women and children trafficked from Vietnam and China for sexual exploitation, according to humantrafficking.org.
Blanch said she was struck by the resiliency of the girls in the shelter.
She avoids calling them “victims.”
“They are survivors,” she said. “They forgive and move on and are excited about the future.”
Among the survivors is the quiet 12-year-old, who no longer cringes at loud noises.
When the girl arrived at the She Rescue Home, she gave little thought to her appearance, hiding in ordinary clothes, and refusing a fashion staple in Cambodia: earrings.
When Blanch left six months later, the girl had her smile back, and plastic blue studs fastened on her ear lobes.
She arrived at the rescue shelter in Phnom Penh with little else but the clothes on her back, and a sad but common story in Cambodia.
It was late November 2009.
Years earlier, the girl had somehow slipped into the country's burgeoning sex trade, or been raped, or nearly raped in her community.
She had been rescued by another organization and sent to She Rescue Home, a shelter for girls, in Cambodia's largest city.
Twenty-four-year-old Heather Blanch, an American who had just begun a six-month volunteer position at the shelter, shuddered at the sight.
"She was so skittish," Blanch recalled. "At the sound of anything loud — a car horn, loud music, a door slamming — she would curl up in a ball and cry."
Such are the side effects of a childhood of sexual exploitation.
And such are the stories Blanch encountered as a volunteer at the shelter.
Blanch, an Argos native and Ball State University graduate, was the only American volunteer at She Rescue Home in Phnom Penh.
She worked beside Australian volunteers and dozens of natives. She counseled, did paperwork, taught English and did whatever else was needed.
The shelter had 24 girls living there, all victims or at-risk of sexual exploitation and violence.
The youngest was 5, the oldest 17.
But what brought Blanch to Asia, to chip away, for no pay, at a massive global problem?
It was something within, she said, something intuitive.
"There are plenty of people who can stay here (in the U.S.) but there’s a very small minority willing to go overseas (for service),” she said. “But it’s natural for me to go overseas.”
“There is so much work to be done. … So many problems that are being ignored,” she said.
Blanch plans to return to Cambodia in August and stay for at least 18 months.
She receives no money for her work, relying on her savings and support from friends and family.
At 7 p.m. Tuesday, she will speak about her experiences at Argos United Methodist Church, 570 N. Michigan St.
Cambodia is considered a destination for women and children trafficked from Vietnam and China for sexual exploitation, according to humantrafficking.org.
Blanch said she was struck by the resiliency of the girls in the shelter.
She avoids calling them “victims.”
“They are survivors,” she said. “They forgive and move on and are excited about the future.”
Among the survivors is the quiet 12-year-old, who no longer cringes at loud noises.
When the girl arrived at the She Rescue Home, she gave little thought to her appearance, hiding in ordinary clothes, and refusing a fashion staple in Cambodia: earrings.
When Blanch left six months later, the girl had her smile back, and plastic blue studs fastened on her ear lobes.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Volunteers to Build Home in Cambodia
12/03/2010
By Clare Devlin
VSO
By Clare Devlin
VSO
A group of volunteers are to travel to Cambodia in the hope of securing livelihoods there.
Organised by the Mines Advisory Group, the expedition will set off in November this year, where they will have to trek for a number of days along the ancient site of Angkor Wat and through the jungle on Kulen Mountain to reach their destination.
They are to attempt to build a house for a family in the Siem Reap province - one of the most heavily landmine-contaminated regions in the South-East Asian country.
Someone who took part in the scheme last year is Hannah Card, who found the experience "fantastic, challenging, thought-provoking and humbling".
She said: "It made you appreciate what you have and realise your potential to give back and share."
Last month, it was revealed that the country was still waiting to receive 300,000 swine flu vaccinations that had been promised by the World Health Organisation.
Organised by the Mines Advisory Group, the expedition will set off in November this year, where they will have to trek for a number of days along the ancient site of Angkor Wat and through the jungle on Kulen Mountain to reach their destination.
They are to attempt to build a house for a family in the Siem Reap province - one of the most heavily landmine-contaminated regions in the South-East Asian country.
Someone who took part in the scheme last year is Hannah Card, who found the experience "fantastic, challenging, thought-provoking and humbling".
She said: "It made you appreciate what you have and realise your potential to give back and share."
Last month, it was revealed that the country was still waiting to receive 300,000 swine flu vaccinations that had been promised by the World Health Organisation.
Thursday, March 04, 2010
Peace Corps Volunteers Tell Their Tales
By Im Sothearith, VOA Khmer
Original report from Washington
03 March 2010
Original report from Washington
03 March 2010
The advantage of being a Peace Corps volunteer is that, besides contributing to a community’s development, one understands a great deal about its society and culture.
Just ask Erica Herrmann, a Peace Corps returnee who worked in Cambodian rural areas for two years.
“You can’t fully understand the society and culture until you’ve actually been there and lived with them,” Herrmann told a dinner discussion organized recently in Washington by the Asia Society. “This is one of the big things that I took back.”
The dinner brought together former volunteers from Cambodia, China, Mongolia, and Thailand to share their experiences.
“I know a lot of people are interested in serving as Peace Corps volunteers in Asian countries,” Sui Gyotan, the Asia Society’s coordinator of the event, told VOA Khmer. “This gathering is to provide them information to make their decisions and to help them to get well prepared for their volunteer in Asian countries, especially young people who want to develop their careers.”
Nobu Iwata, a administrative assistant at the Japan-America Society of Washington DC, who attended the discussion, said she was interested in being a Peace Corps volunteer in various countries.
“Cambodia is one the places that I want to go,” she said. “I learned from here a lot, like lifestyle, why people do it, and what they learn over there, what it means to the volunteers themselves, as well as people in Cambodia, what effects have on volunteers when they come back.”
The Peace Corps was established by US President John F. Kennedy on March 1, 1961, to promote international friendship and peace through US volunteers working overseas. Since its inception, the Peace Corps has sent nearly 200,000 volunteers to work in 139 countries throughout the world.
The Peace Corps opened its Cambodia program in 2006 and sent the first group of 29 volunteers in April 2007. So far, 100 volunteers have participated.
Herrman was one of the original 29 members. She worked as an English teacher at a high school in Kang Meas district, Kampong Cham province. Volunteering in Cambodia today was similar to becoming an original Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, she said.
“Very rural, very, very basic,” she said. “You know some people have electricity, most do not, no running water. I mean it is very much like it was when people went over in the 1960s.”
“If you want to have an amazing experience, you have to go to Cambodia,” Herrmann said. “If you want to feel like a hardcore Peace Corps volunteer, you’ve got to go to Cambodia.”
Just ask Erica Herrmann, a Peace Corps returnee who worked in Cambodian rural areas for two years.
“You can’t fully understand the society and culture until you’ve actually been there and lived with them,” Herrmann told a dinner discussion organized recently in Washington by the Asia Society. “This is one of the big things that I took back.”
The dinner brought together former volunteers from Cambodia, China, Mongolia, and Thailand to share their experiences.
“I know a lot of people are interested in serving as Peace Corps volunteers in Asian countries,” Sui Gyotan, the Asia Society’s coordinator of the event, told VOA Khmer. “This gathering is to provide them information to make their decisions and to help them to get well prepared for their volunteer in Asian countries, especially young people who want to develop their careers.”
Nobu Iwata, a administrative assistant at the Japan-America Society of Washington DC, who attended the discussion, said she was interested in being a Peace Corps volunteer in various countries.
“Cambodia is one the places that I want to go,” she said. “I learned from here a lot, like lifestyle, why people do it, and what they learn over there, what it means to the volunteers themselves, as well as people in Cambodia, what effects have on volunteers when they come back.”
The Peace Corps was established by US President John F. Kennedy on March 1, 1961, to promote international friendship and peace through US volunteers working overseas. Since its inception, the Peace Corps has sent nearly 200,000 volunteers to work in 139 countries throughout the world.
The Peace Corps opened its Cambodia program in 2006 and sent the first group of 29 volunteers in April 2007. So far, 100 volunteers have participated.
Herrman was one of the original 29 members. She worked as an English teacher at a high school in Kang Meas district, Kampong Cham province. Volunteering in Cambodia today was similar to becoming an original Peace Corps volunteer in Africa, she said.
“Very rural, very, very basic,” she said. “You know some people have electricity, most do not, no running water. I mean it is very much like it was when people went over in the 1960s.”
“If you want to have an amazing experience, you have to go to Cambodia,” Herrmann said. “If you want to feel like a hardcore Peace Corps volunteer, you’ve got to go to Cambodia.”
Thursday, February 25, 2010
UVic couple leads volunteer group to Cambodia and beyond
DWC team leader Dan Couture holds up a child of Chamcar Bei, Cambodia, where the team volunteered in 2008. (Jennifer Farquharson)Feb 25, 2010
Carmen Kuntz
Martlet (U of Victoria, Canada)
Summer is coming and, for some students, that means filling a backpack and boarding a plane to participate in a much preferred form of post-secondary education: travelling.
For many, following the well-beaten path to typical tourist destinations or drinking out of buckets on a beach in Asia is where it’s at. But, for 20 UVic students, it means joining the Canadian non-profit volunteer organization Developing World Connections (DWC) and a team of like-minded people to work in under-developed villages across the globe with a community in need.
DWC is a volunteer-driven, registered, Canadian charity with no religious, political or professional affiliations. Founded in Kamloops B.C. in 2004, this relatively young organization offers students, families and adult groups a chance to travel while participating in sustainable community development projects like digging wells, building schools and helping communities become self-reliant.
In 2007, UVic students Jennifer Farquharson and Dan Couture finished their first year at UVic and joined DWC and a group of other students on a volunteer trip to Cambodia. Stationed in the small town of Chamcar Bei in southern Cambodia, the group participated in collaboration with the local community to complete a number of sustainable community development projects like repairing houses, harvesting rice, planting gardens and painting the local school.
Whether it was the feeling of positively contributing to the global community, the friends they made or the chance to use their traveling shoes again, these two were only back for one semester of school before they took off again in 2008 back to Chamcar Bei to continue their work.
Now studying in their fourth year at UVic, Farquharson and Couture are DWC team leaders, preparing to lead a group of UVic, Simon Fraser University and Thompson Rivers University students to Rwanda. The students will work with DWC and host organizations in the community of Gashora, a village in south-east Rwanda.
“We’ve taken on a leadership role to share this experience with students and friends” said Farquharson.
She praises DWC as a well-organized Canadian organization that, with no administration fees, gives a large sum of money directly to the community.
“On top of that, [DWC] allows you to travel as a group, and make friends [while] working for a common cause,” she said.
Buzz words like “development” and “sustainability” can mean so many things, but Farquharson specifies what DWC’s sustainable community development projects actually are.
“[The group’s projects] are sustainable in the sense that all projects are designed in the community, by the community members in partnership with host organizations,” Farquharson said.
Projects can include whatever is most needed — everything from livestock integration programs, agricultural aid, construction and repair of schools, development of women’s resources and water resource improvement projects.
Host organizations are local NGOs and groups acting as partners with DWC. In Rwanda, DWC is working with Building Bridges Over Rwanda to help the community design the exact project they want, then DWC brings in students.
Participation of the host organizations is extremely important as they ensure the projects are finished and continue to be productive, even when DWC volunteer teams leave.
“DWC makes a five-year commitment to the community to ensure their goals and expectations are met,” Farquharson explained.
Travelling is appealing and affordable for students and, with volunteer trips becoming more popular, why volunteer with DWC? Why volunteer at all?
“It allows students to travel in a culture rather than through a culture,” said Farquharson.
Couture has even more reasons.
“I enjoy trying to see a different way of life,” said Couture. “How these people live is quite admirable.”
Participants are responsible for funding their trip and are given resources to fundraise.
They are especially encouraged to raise money for the $500 that is an obligatory donation each student makes that goes directly toward supplies and tools for the project.
DWC trip leaders also offer a number of strategies and hold events to help the students raise money.
Farquharson and Couture recently held an event at Plan B nightclub, where cover and proceeds went directly towards these trips.
Fund-raising often covers plane tickets, but there is a fee of $1,500 which covers in-country costs, including transportation, accommodation, food and a cultural or tourist activity, like the genocide museum in Cambodia or gorilla watching in Rwanda.
Most trips last from about four to five weeks.
“DWC plans the route, and makes sure that in-country activities stay within the hands of locals, like, staying only in locally-owned hotels,” said Farquharson.
During the trip, group members stick together closely, travelling and living together. Accommodations and work are always done as a group.
If you’ve heard about the “volunteer holiday” but never had the opportunity to get involved, here is your chance. DWC offers volunteer projects in Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Cambodia, Peru, Guatamala, India, Kenya, Rwanda and Hati, where DWC will be assisting with the rebuilding efforts leaving in mid-March.
So get involved. See the world. Travel with purpose. If every travelling student dedicated just a couple weeks to a volunteer project, imagine what a difference we could make in the world.
For more information, contact Farquharson at jennfarq@uvic.ca. The group is still looking for a few more people for the July trip this year.
For many, following the well-beaten path to typical tourist destinations or drinking out of buckets on a beach in Asia is where it’s at. But, for 20 UVic students, it means joining the Canadian non-profit volunteer organization Developing World Connections (DWC) and a team of like-minded people to work in under-developed villages across the globe with a community in need.
DWC is a volunteer-driven, registered, Canadian charity with no religious, political or professional affiliations. Founded in Kamloops B.C. in 2004, this relatively young organization offers students, families and adult groups a chance to travel while participating in sustainable community development projects like digging wells, building schools and helping communities become self-reliant.
In 2007, UVic students Jennifer Farquharson and Dan Couture finished their first year at UVic and joined DWC and a group of other students on a volunteer trip to Cambodia. Stationed in the small town of Chamcar Bei in southern Cambodia, the group participated in collaboration with the local community to complete a number of sustainable community development projects like repairing houses, harvesting rice, planting gardens and painting the local school.
Whether it was the feeling of positively contributing to the global community, the friends they made or the chance to use their traveling shoes again, these two were only back for one semester of school before they took off again in 2008 back to Chamcar Bei to continue their work.
Now studying in their fourth year at UVic, Farquharson and Couture are DWC team leaders, preparing to lead a group of UVic, Simon Fraser University and Thompson Rivers University students to Rwanda. The students will work with DWC and host organizations in the community of Gashora, a village in south-east Rwanda.
“We’ve taken on a leadership role to share this experience with students and friends” said Farquharson.
She praises DWC as a well-organized Canadian organization that, with no administration fees, gives a large sum of money directly to the community.
“On top of that, [DWC] allows you to travel as a group, and make friends [while] working for a common cause,” she said.
Buzz words like “development” and “sustainability” can mean so many things, but Farquharson specifies what DWC’s sustainable community development projects actually are.
“[The group’s projects] are sustainable in the sense that all projects are designed in the community, by the community members in partnership with host organizations,” Farquharson said.
Projects can include whatever is most needed — everything from livestock integration programs, agricultural aid, construction and repair of schools, development of women’s resources and water resource improvement projects.
Host organizations are local NGOs and groups acting as partners with DWC. In Rwanda, DWC is working with Building Bridges Over Rwanda to help the community design the exact project they want, then DWC brings in students.
Participation of the host organizations is extremely important as they ensure the projects are finished and continue to be productive, even when DWC volunteer teams leave.
“DWC makes a five-year commitment to the community to ensure their goals and expectations are met,” Farquharson explained.
Travelling is appealing and affordable for students and, with volunteer trips becoming more popular, why volunteer with DWC? Why volunteer at all?
“It allows students to travel in a culture rather than through a culture,” said Farquharson.
Couture has even more reasons.
“I enjoy trying to see a different way of life,” said Couture. “How these people live is quite admirable.”
Participants are responsible for funding their trip and are given resources to fundraise.
They are especially encouraged to raise money for the $500 that is an obligatory donation each student makes that goes directly toward supplies and tools for the project.
DWC trip leaders also offer a number of strategies and hold events to help the students raise money.
Farquharson and Couture recently held an event at Plan B nightclub, where cover and proceeds went directly towards these trips.
Fund-raising often covers plane tickets, but there is a fee of $1,500 which covers in-country costs, including transportation, accommodation, food and a cultural or tourist activity, like the genocide museum in Cambodia or gorilla watching in Rwanda.
Most trips last from about four to five weeks.
“DWC plans the route, and makes sure that in-country activities stay within the hands of locals, like, staying only in locally-owned hotels,” said Farquharson.
During the trip, group members stick together closely, travelling and living together. Accommodations and work are always done as a group.
If you’ve heard about the “volunteer holiday” but never had the opportunity to get involved, here is your chance. DWC offers volunteer projects in Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Cambodia, Peru, Guatamala, India, Kenya, Rwanda and Hati, where DWC will be assisting with the rebuilding efforts leaving in mid-March.
So get involved. See the world. Travel with purpose. If every travelling student dedicated just a couple weeks to a volunteer project, imagine what a difference we could make in the world.
For more information, contact Farquharson at jennfarq@uvic.ca. The group is still looking for a few more people for the July trip this year.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Kate's mission to help kids of Cambodia
Kate Kenward23 October 2007
Eastbourne Herald (UK)
A teaching assistant is flying to the far east next summer to spend two months working as a volunteer in an orphanage.
Kate Kenward, 20, of Selmeston Road, will be spending her time in Siem Reap in Cambodia teaching English.
She said, "My work will include the general day to day care of the children as well as teaching English as a foreign language in their school.
"There will also be other opportunities for me to help in various other projects linked to the orphanage such as the Street Kids Day Centre and the Water Filters project."
The charity Globalteer which oversees the projects in which Kate will be involved supports three orphanages providing a home for more than 80 children.
They live in individual houses with a carer, while they attend school and receive agricultural and vocational training.
Volunteers assist the local staff, teach English, play games, sing songs, draw pictures and provide individual skills to the project.
The Street Kids Day Centre provides local street children with a safe environment for the children to play, learn, rest, wash and eat.
Kate said, "Cambodia is still suffering from the effects of decades of civil war.
"It relies on tourism for a lot of its income so the government has committed itself to making it safe again.
"I also volunteer with the Eastbourne Woodcraft Folk, an educational movement for children and young people and help run our primary aged group where we look at different topics such as poverty and equality.
"Researching these topics, such as the right to an education, has inspired me to want to go and help to do something about it."
After Kate's two-month stay she will return home for a few weeks before jetting off to Ghana in Africa to work in another orphanage.
To fund both ventures she needs to raise at least £4,000, of which she has almost half so far, and is asking for donations.
If anyone can help contact her on 01323 737648.
Kate Kenward, 20, of Selmeston Road, will be spending her time in Siem Reap in Cambodia teaching English.
She said, "My work will include the general day to day care of the children as well as teaching English as a foreign language in their school.
"There will also be other opportunities for me to help in various other projects linked to the orphanage such as the Street Kids Day Centre and the Water Filters project."
The charity Globalteer which oversees the projects in which Kate will be involved supports three orphanages providing a home for more than 80 children.
They live in individual houses with a carer, while they attend school and receive agricultural and vocational training.
Volunteers assist the local staff, teach English, play games, sing songs, draw pictures and provide individual skills to the project.
The Street Kids Day Centre provides local street children with a safe environment for the children to play, learn, rest, wash and eat.
Kate said, "Cambodia is still suffering from the effects of decades of civil war.
"It relies on tourism for a lot of its income so the government has committed itself to making it safe again.
"I also volunteer with the Eastbourne Woodcraft Folk, an educational movement for children and young people and help run our primary aged group where we look at different topics such as poverty and equality.
"Researching these topics, such as the right to an education, has inspired me to want to go and help to do something about it."
After Kate's two-month stay she will return home for a few weeks before jetting off to Ghana in Africa to work in another orphanage.
To fund both ventures she needs to raise at least £4,000, of which she has almost half so far, and is asking for donations.
If anyone can help contact her on 01323 737648.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Infested dogs and English teachers go out in the midday sun
A child learning English in Cambodia.Friday October 12, 2007
SocietyGuardian.co.uk
Former social services director David Townsend ventures out of his comfort zone to go volunteering in Cambodia
It wasn't when I discussed the risks of Japanese encephalitis with my GP. Or talked about malaria or dengue fever. Or even when the injections for typhoid, rabies and hepatitis B were stuck into me that I thought I was floating free of my comfort zone.
Nor when I arrived in Siem Reap with the day temperature at a humid 38c (and dust flying everywhere) at the lovely little guesthouse run by Mr Kunn, Mr Hug and Mrs Jasmine. Not even when I found that for my $3 a night I had the mod con of a giant ceiling fan that clanks and rumbles on like the propellor of Biggles' Sopwith Camel. Or realised that Baden Powell's dictum about taking frequent cold showers really is a necessity.
All that was no big deal. No, I burst free of my comfort zone, one grounded in infrastructures of all kinds in English local authorities and the New Zealand ministry of health, when I went as a volunteer to the orphanage school in the tiny village of Sray Srong near Angkor Wat.
There, I would be assisting, I thought, local teachers or monks to teach English to orphans and poor/homeless children aged from four to 16, most of whom had never been in a school before and had never held a pencil or written anything in Khmer let alone English (or Anglais as they say with a nod to a distant French connection).
The general purpose is to enable them to improve their English to the point that they can, in later life, get jobs in the tourist industry. Even a job serving drinks may be worth a small salary and free food, removing the need for begging. The shock was that there were no teachers or monks. I was the teacher.
The education of these children is up to me and the other volunteers who are also not generally teachers by profession. The classes contain up to 70 children, who are getting the one chance of some sort of education in a country poorer and more deprived (not least by its own corrupt government) than almost any other in south-east Asia.
The classroom is a simple arrangement: desks and benches in a bamboo hut with a woven coconut leaf roof without electricity or running drinkable water. English lessons start at 12.30pm with each group of children and last 50 minutes, interrupted occasionally by violent dust storms, tropical rain that pours through the roof or the arrival of bus loads of well-meaning tourists who come to photograph and "cuddle the darling children" with their tatty clothes but wonderful smiles.
The children (all 44 of them) eat and play in and around the very simple buildings surrounding the classroom and sleep at night in the room next to the classroom under mosquito nets. They are accompanied by tick- and scabies-infested dogs and balding chickens.
School day starts at 5.30am with Khmer dancing and singing lessons and lasts until 4pm. Despite the long hours, only the smallest children fall asleep and no one plays truant. The resources available to teaching are white marker boards, exercise books, a starter English book, pens and pencils. These resources are, in part, provided by the volunteers who pay for the privilege of working with children who are desperate to learn. Teachers in almost any part of the western world would die for the sort of enthusiasm and determination these children show.
For my three-month stay, I paid $1,500 to Globalteer, a charity that supports a number of educational and other projects, although none is exactly or sometimes even vaguely the same. My days are spent teaching in sweat-soaked clothes, enjoying the humour and the glimpses of success with some children who never give up.
Because so much is left to volunteers, the importance of health and hygiene is part of our school agenda: put simply, what's the point of learning body parts if your own are infested with lice or your ears are bunged up with impacted wax and you can't see properly anyway?
Few children in Cambodia wear spectacles because the tests and costs are too great. Lines of children and their families camp out overnight outside one of the children's hospitals for an appointment to see a doctor. Dengue fever is of epidemic proportions and blood donors are urgently required.
So, with other volunteers, I have taken part in all day de-licing operations on all 44 children and taken some children to hospital, a round journey of 30km (18.6miles) by tuk-tuk, the motorbike attached to two wheeled carriages that provide a living for thousands of men and their families in what is a tourist town along the lines of Blackpool.
Of course, it is not hard to feel that our efforts are like pushing stones up hills: this is a country with vast entrenched problems. Beveridge's five wicked giants rule this land. Children with any degree of English ask: "How can we go USA/Canada/Australia/New Zealand?" rather undermining what we would like to think we are about. But the bottom line is, you won't do any harm and you may very well do some good by volunteering, even in the midday sun.
· David Townsend is former speech writer and special adviser to the 1976-79 Labour government, former deputy social services director for Camden, former social services director in Haringey and Croydon, former member of the disability services directorate of the New Zealand health ministry and columnist for the Wellington Evening Post.
It wasn't when I discussed the risks of Japanese encephalitis with my GP. Or talked about malaria or dengue fever. Or even when the injections for typhoid, rabies and hepatitis B were stuck into me that I thought I was floating free of my comfort zone.
Nor when I arrived in Siem Reap with the day temperature at a humid 38c (and dust flying everywhere) at the lovely little guesthouse run by Mr Kunn, Mr Hug and Mrs Jasmine. Not even when I found that for my $3 a night I had the mod con of a giant ceiling fan that clanks and rumbles on like the propellor of Biggles' Sopwith Camel. Or realised that Baden Powell's dictum about taking frequent cold showers really is a necessity.
All that was no big deal. No, I burst free of my comfort zone, one grounded in infrastructures of all kinds in English local authorities and the New Zealand ministry of health, when I went as a volunteer to the orphanage school in the tiny village of Sray Srong near Angkor Wat.
There, I would be assisting, I thought, local teachers or monks to teach English to orphans and poor/homeless children aged from four to 16, most of whom had never been in a school before and had never held a pencil or written anything in Khmer let alone English (or Anglais as they say with a nod to a distant French connection).
The general purpose is to enable them to improve their English to the point that they can, in later life, get jobs in the tourist industry. Even a job serving drinks may be worth a small salary and free food, removing the need for begging. The shock was that there were no teachers or monks. I was the teacher.
The education of these children is up to me and the other volunteers who are also not generally teachers by profession. The classes contain up to 70 children, who are getting the one chance of some sort of education in a country poorer and more deprived (not least by its own corrupt government) than almost any other in south-east Asia.
The classroom is a simple arrangement: desks and benches in a bamboo hut with a woven coconut leaf roof without electricity or running drinkable water. English lessons start at 12.30pm with each group of children and last 50 minutes, interrupted occasionally by violent dust storms, tropical rain that pours through the roof or the arrival of bus loads of well-meaning tourists who come to photograph and "cuddle the darling children" with their tatty clothes but wonderful smiles.
The children (all 44 of them) eat and play in and around the very simple buildings surrounding the classroom and sleep at night in the room next to the classroom under mosquito nets. They are accompanied by tick- and scabies-infested dogs and balding chickens.
School day starts at 5.30am with Khmer dancing and singing lessons and lasts until 4pm. Despite the long hours, only the smallest children fall asleep and no one plays truant. The resources available to teaching are white marker boards, exercise books, a starter English book, pens and pencils. These resources are, in part, provided by the volunteers who pay for the privilege of working with children who are desperate to learn. Teachers in almost any part of the western world would die for the sort of enthusiasm and determination these children show.
For my three-month stay, I paid $1,500 to Globalteer, a charity that supports a number of educational and other projects, although none is exactly or sometimes even vaguely the same. My days are spent teaching in sweat-soaked clothes, enjoying the humour and the glimpses of success with some children who never give up.
Because so much is left to volunteers, the importance of health and hygiene is part of our school agenda: put simply, what's the point of learning body parts if your own are infested with lice or your ears are bunged up with impacted wax and you can't see properly anyway?
Few children in Cambodia wear spectacles because the tests and costs are too great. Lines of children and their families camp out overnight outside one of the children's hospitals for an appointment to see a doctor. Dengue fever is of epidemic proportions and blood donors are urgently required.
So, with other volunteers, I have taken part in all day de-licing operations on all 44 children and taken some children to hospital, a round journey of 30km (18.6miles) by tuk-tuk, the motorbike attached to two wheeled carriages that provide a living for thousands of men and their families in what is a tourist town along the lines of Blackpool.
Of course, it is not hard to feel that our efforts are like pushing stones up hills: this is a country with vast entrenched problems. Beveridge's five wicked giants rule this land. Children with any degree of English ask: "How can we go USA/Canada/Australia/New Zealand?" rather undermining what we would like to think we are about. But the bottom line is, you won't do any harm and you may very well do some good by volunteering, even in the midday sun.
· David Townsend is former speech writer and special adviser to the 1976-79 Labour government, former deputy social services director for Camden, former social services director in Haringey and Croydon, former member of the disability services directorate of the New Zealand health ministry and columnist for the Wellington Evening Post.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Former Untac Commander Returns on (Land) Mine Business
John Sanderson file photo during the UNTAC periodTakeo, Cambodia - Cambodia's U.N. Military Chief Lt. Gen. John Sanderson, left, and Director general of the Japanese Defense Agency Sohei Miyashita, shovel sand on national route 3 during a ceremony marking the beginning of the Japanese U.N. engineering battalion's repair of the road last fall. (Photo: AP)
Heng Reaksmey, VOA Khmer
Original report from Phnom Penh
10 August 2007
Former Untac commander Lt. Gen. John Sanderson arrived in Cambodia Thursday to work as a volunteer on land mine issues for an Australian aid agency.
Sanderson was the commander of the military component of the UN transition force in the early 1990s.
Sanderson will observe and update the operations of Austcare's Integrated Mine Action and Community Development Program and "witness personally Cambodia's continued path to development made possible as a result of the peace process in which he played such an important part," according to a statement.
Sanderson was the commander of the military component of the UN transition force in the early 1990s.
Sanderson will observe and update the operations of Austcare's Integrated Mine Action and Community Development Program and "witness personally Cambodia's continued path to development made possible as a result of the peace process in which he played such an important part," according to a statement.
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