Perspectives

Interview Wth A Former Volunteer ESL Teacher of Kosovar Refugees

Date: August 28th, 2007 |

Imagine returning home to Nova Scotia from Japan and almost immediately volunteering to organize an ESL program for Kosovar refugees. This was exactly the situation facing EFL teacher John Hall about nine years ago. Fortunately for the Kosovar students, John had received his CTEFLA (now known as the CELTA), and had over three [read more]

Volunteers You Should Know About

Date: July 29th, 2007 |

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Some volunteers search for the right opportunity – others see a need and respond to it. Conor Grennan is a stellar example of the latter; he started out as a round-the-world traveler and short term volunteer and ended up founding children’s home and NGO Next Generation Nepal.
Wayne Parks is another stellar volunteer of sorts; [read more]

Interview With True Travellers’ Society Founder, Andrew Wahba

Date: July 12th, 2007 |

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The Volunteer Logue recently featured a review of True Travellers Society, an organization and website which puts current and potential international travellers and volunteers in touch directly with local organizations. This enables volunteers to have more authentic experiences with local organizations and, though they do shoulder more responsibility for making their own arrangements than [read more]

Ways In Which Volunteering Is Like “Lost”

Date: July 2nd, 2007 |

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First of all, you may well find yourself in a strange and mysterious but beautiful place, needing to figure out how to work with strangers from all different walks of life and eating mainly fruit. Hopefully you will not find that a surprisingly large number of those strangers have killed someone or been involved [read more]

The Downside Of Voluntourism: How I Agree

Date: June 19th, 2007 |

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The Volunteer Logue recently featured a guest piece by Our Man In Granada – Steve Jackson – on the topic of voluntourism, specifically a look at the downsides of voluntourism. As I mentioned in the introduction to that post, I don’t agree with all of his points, but I think he raises a [read more]

“Smiling And Suffering”: A Critical Take On Views On Africa From World Hum

Date: July 31st, 2007 |

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“For those who look at Africa and see only poverty, I say that your view of the world is narrow and sad.. [I recommend] visiting the place; talking to the people… The real point is that Africa is so much more than the sum of its ills. It is a rich place, humanity-wise.”
These are the [read more]

Some Observations On Fundraising

Date: July 14th, 2007 |

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I’ve had an opportunity over the last few months to gain some insight into fundraising, mostly from the side of non-profit organizations approaching donors. This is not really a glamorous or high profile area of the work, but as the main activities of non-profit organizations by their nature tend not to be, well, profitable, [read more]

Interview With Conservation Co. Founders

Date: July 7th, 2007 |

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Conservation Co founders Dayne Davey and Mark Slatter took some time out to do an interview with the Volunteer Logue about their new organization, which offers volunteer trips linking international volunteers with conservation research projects in South Africa. Find out how they got started, what they think about paying to volunteer, and why connecting [read more]

A Volunteer Celebration With The Kerala Builders

Date: June 24th, 2007 |

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One of the extra-curricular highlights of my volunteer stint in India was attending the farewell party for a team of builders; they had come all the way from Kerala to central India to build some new structures for the organization I was volunteering with. The party was a bit mis-timed because they weren’t actually [read more]

“Voluntourism”: Not So Black And White

Date: June 19th, 2007 |

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The Volunteer Logue recently featured a guest piece on the downside of voluntourism; on the whole, I think author Steve Jackson makes a number of valuable points – many of which I agree with. It is a topic, however, that I have a lot of thoughts on and in short, I don’t believe that [read more]

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