I wanted my twin 17 year old daughters to do some voluntary work during their summer holidays. Teaching English at Reymontowka in Poland was something that I thought would be challenging yet achievable given their ages.
From the minute of arriving we were made to feel appreciated, like honoured guests. During our time there we were treated to performances, by the children, showcasing Polish culture through song and dance. I would say we learnt as much about the Polish culture as they did English.
We were part of a group of five non-native speaking volunteers (we are British and our two co-volunteers were American). None of us had any previous teaching experience. However, there was a resource room full of learning material, games, books etc which made the lesson planning easy. We were left to ourselves to decide what to teach our groups relevant to their ages and abilities. The afternoons we were free to explore, lesson plan or watch the activities laid on for the youngsters.
The children gravitated towards my daughters (being closer in age to them) and, of course, my girls knew all the words and dance moves to current pop songs which helps. It made my daughters feel very special. The age range of the children was 8-11 years. The majority of them really wanted to improve their speaking ability though I was surprised how much English they already knew. They were definitely not beginners.
We were genuinely sad to leave at the end of our two weeks. Not only did we learn about a country I had never thought to visit before but we were shown huge respect and friendship from all whom we encountered. We had the opportunity to visit Warsaw during our weekend off and flew to Krakow at the end of our volunteering for an extra few days of sightseeing.
On a personal note I was delighted to accompany my daughters (in fact I needed to as they were under 18 years old). I could see by the end of the two weeks how they had grown in confidence and belief in themselves. We left with many happy memories.
What would you improve about this program?
Before arrival I thought the children would come from disadvantaged backgrounds. A lot of the children came from, what appeared to be, quite affluent families. If they had come from a lower social/economic background this would have made the voluntary experience more rewarding for me.
Response from
We greatly value all our compassionate volunteers, and respect criticism in every form that it’s offered. In fact, many of the improvements we’ve made over the past 35 years have come from volunteers’ suggestions. Further, and although rare, we always fully investigate whenever community partners do not effectively engage volunteers in work projects that meet our standards for ongoing partnerships. This is what we did in the circumstance raised by this volunteer. Top management immediately responded by phone when contacted by our local staff early in the program, and we listened to the volunteer’s concerns. After isolating the primary issue to a work assignment, and confirming no matters of safety were involved, we consulted with our community partners and agreed to the adjustments the volunteer requested. The work assignment was completely restructured the following day. Most team members agreed that the program changes significantly improved their ability to be of service, met their expectations, and provided the type of volunteer experience they had hoped for.
However, this never should have happened in the first place. Because our commitment to fully engage volunteers in meaningful community work is so important, we subsequently stopped working with this community partner who failed to fully engage the volunteers. After reviewing the volunteer’s service program evaluation, we responded at length to her additional questions, and offered her family another service program at almost no cost. We’re that confident that the difficulties the volunteer encountered with this one community partner on one week in one host community is so isolated that she wouldn’t experience it again in Lima, Peru or any of the other 60+ partner communities we serve. We stand behind our 35-year reputation and track record of genuine development assistance abroad and in the U.S. While the volunteer declined our offer, we continued to respond to her written correspondence until our pro bono legal counsel advised us to clarify her agreement with us. This is only the second time since 1984 we needed to communicate in that manner.
Each Global Volunteer has a unique opportunity to participate in the long-term vision of the partner community’s development. Each is one link in a long chain of volunteers extending over decades. Working always at the invitation and under the direction of local leaders, our in-country staff make adjustments in volunteers’ assignments wherever and whenever they can to maximize the team’s contribution in the short time they’re in the community. It can be a challenge to balance volunteers’ capabilities and volunteer goals with local people’s current needs. In this, our staff excels. We strive to confirm project expectations before the volunteers arrive in the community. But, at times, there’s a mismatch. We’ve concluded that in this volunteer’s case, our pre-program arrangements were inadequate. While we strongly disagree with the volunteer’s conclusions, we’re grateful she identified a community partner weakness, which we corrected within weeks of her service program. We continue to solicit honest and candid evaluations from all our volunteers in Peru and around the world in order to deliver exceptional service to our community partners while fully engaging volunteers in service to those community partners.