Tell us a little about Volunteer Global and your role at the company.
Sarah: I created Volunteer Global in 2005 during an internship with Peace Corps headquarters—I’d fielded questions from people who wanted to volunteer abroad, but not necessarily with Peace Corps, for a variety of reasons. The question really interested me, so I started looking into short-term projects abroad for college students. I had trouble figuring out how to find a reputable group, knowing what the program fee was for, and why it varied so much across different organizations.
So that summer, I created what’s now Volunteer Global—it started as a table comparing different aspects of some of the larger volunteer abroad groups you’ll find, and grew to include lots of smaller, locally based ones as well. I started a blog to research the volunteer abroad industry and to help guide my site visitors through choosing a program, preparing to travel, knowing what to expect overseas, and how to use that experience after returning home.
In late 2011, I quit my full-time job at Peace Corps to transition Volunteer Global from a personal website to a company dedicated to encouraging people to volunteer abroad. We now have a blog with hundreds of articles, a directory listing hundreds of profiles from volunteer groups around the world, and in July 2012, we launched our own brand of direct volunteer and intern placements in Central America.
How did you get involved in the volunteer industry?
Sarah: As far as international volunteering goes, I got started during my freshman year of college. I was hired as an intern at Peace Corps headquarters in Washington, DC, and partway through the year, built the Volunteer Global website as a hobby.
Over the next few years, I began volunteering abroad, researching and reporting on the industry, and even transitioning to a full-time job with Peace Corps after I graduated from university. Today I split my time between managing operations at Volunteer Global and consulting with other volunteer abroad organizations.
What makes Volunteer Global unique?
Sarah: I would say we’re one of the only groups out there that not only provides our own, direct placements abroad, but that also equally promotes other volunteer travel organizations worldwide.
Volunteer Global’s goal since its founding has always been to help people find amazing volunteer programs in any country they’d like to visit, and covering any project they’d like to assist with. People visit our website because they want to volunteer—whether it’s with us or with another group on the other side of the world, we’re here to help them find the best program for their interests and background.
How do you ensure your programs are sustainable and mutually beneficial for you, the community, and the volunteers?
Sarah: My co-director and I visit and volunteer with each of our prospective partner organizations before developing a partnership agreement with them—this helps us get a firsthand perspective of what our volunteers might expect on their projects. We specifically look for groups that:
- Provide local solutions to local issues, rather than “parachuting” into a host community with predetermined solutions.
- Actively engage the community—such as employing local staff in management positions, and developing partnerships with other community-based groups in the area so that both organizations can benefit from one another’s services and expertise.
- Need volunteers only because they do not have the resources or funding necessary to complete ongoing projects or begin new ones that are necessary for community development.
- We also conduct regular site visits, stay in constant touch with our partners, and support our volunteers before, during, and after their trips, which helps generate actionable feedback for our programs and projects. As well, we keep our alumni updated about their projects through newsletters and social networking so they can see the long-term development of any program they worked on.
All of our partner groups were founded to address a need within their own communities—however, they’ve been unable to fully complete their projects due to lack of funding available to hire local staff. So, our volunteers and interns fill in to provide extra funding and manpower to help get those projects off the ground, and enable our partners to later hire local staff to carry on their work full-time. We hope that for every partner we work with, we can make it to the point where they no longer need volunteers!
What does the future hold for Volunteer Global?
Sarah: We’ve just started adding alternative break programs in Nicaragua, and are expanding later this year into other parts of Central America and the Caribbean. We hope to become a valuable resource for anyone interested in volunteering abroad, either through our direct programs or through another one we can be proud to recommend.