Voluntary Service Overseas - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) is an international development

International development

International development or global development is a concept that lacks a universally accepted definition, but it is most used in a holistic and multi-disciplinary context of human development — the development of greater quality of life for humans...

charity

Charitable organization

A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization . It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization (NPO). It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A...

that works through experienced volunteers living and working as equals alongside local partners. It is the largest independent (non-governmental) volunteer-sending organization in the world. VSO has offices in the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, Ireland

Republic of Ireland

Ireland , described as the Republic of Ireland , is a sovereign state in Europe occupying approximately five-sixths of the island of the same name. Its capital is Dublin. Ireland, which had a population of 4.58 million in 2011, is a constitutional republic governed as a parliamentary democracy,...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

, Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

and the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...

and a recruiting partner in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

; as of December 2004, it has volunteers of 14 different nationalities on placement. Since its founding in 1958 VSO has placed over 42,000 volunteers in over 140 developing countries in Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

, Asia

Asia

Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...

, the Pacific

Pacific Islands

The Pacific Islands comprise 20,000 to 30,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean. The islands are also sometimes collectively called Oceania, although Oceania is sometimes defined as also including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago....

, the Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

, Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

and Latin America.

It currently develops programmes in six "goal areas":

HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

& AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
Education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
Health
Health
Health is the level of functional or metabolic efficiency of a living being. In humans, it is the general condition of a person's mind, body and spirit, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain...

and Social Well-being
Disability
Disability
A disability may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental or some combination of these.Many people would rather be referred to as a person with a disability instead of handicapped...
Participation and Governance
Governance
Governance is the act of governing. It relates to decisions that define expectations, grant power, or verify performance. It consists of either a separate process or part of management or leadership processes...
Secure livelihoods

History

VSO was founded in 1958 by Alec Dickson

Alec Dickson

Alexander Dickson conceived the idea of sending volunteers to developing countries and founded Voluntary Service Overseas in 1958. The first volunteers went to Sarawak, Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia....

through a bishop's letter to the London paper, The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times (UK)
The Sunday Times is a Sunday broadsheet newspaper, distributed in the United Kingdom. The Sunday Times is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News International, which is in turn owned by News Corporation. Times Newspapers also owns The Times, but the two papers were founded...

, as an educational experience overseas for school-leavers, initially only boys, before starting university. Volunteers offered unskilled help in exchange for basic accommodation and pocket money. In 1962, the more recognized scheme of using 'qualified' volunteers came about. By 1968, VSO had 1420 volunteers overseas.

By 1980, the unqualified volunteers had been phased out and the period overseas had been extended to two years, with a more professional approach. Active volunteer numbers initially fell to around 750, but by 2003, the number had returned to around 1,400. As of December 2004, applications to volunteer are accepted from people aged between 20 and 75, with at least two years' experience in their field, and the average age of current volunteers is 38. Unlike almost every other organization of its type, VSO places no restriction on nationality.

In the early 1990s, in order to meet growing demand for highly specialized and skilled volunteers from its partners in developing countries, VSO established partner agencies in Canada

Canada

, the Netherlands

Netherlands

, Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

/Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

(VSO Jitolee), and the Philippines

Philippines

(VSO Bahaginan). In 2004, VSO launched a partnership called iVolunteer Overseas (iVO) in India with iVolunteer, an existing volunteering program of MITRA

Mitra

*Mitra was an important Indo-Iranian divinity. Following the prehistoric cultural split of Indo-Aryan and Iranian cultures, names descended from *mitra were used for the following religious entities:...

, an Indian NGO. At the same time, the charity's operations in Ireland

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

are also becoming increasingly independent of the UK. VSO's structure is evolving into an international federation of these recruitment bases. International volunteers are recruited through all of these bases, and they can be placed in any one of VSO's programmes (e.g. a Canadian volunteer working in Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

, or a Ugandan volunteer working in Mongolia

Mongolia

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East and Central Asia. It is bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, east and west. Although Mongolia does not share a border with Kazakhstan, its western-most point is only from Kazakhstan's eastern tip. Ulan Bator, the capital and largest...

).

In addition, VSO:

offers youth volunteering programmes for young people to volunteer abroad to fight poverty and injustice overseas
- Global Xchange in partnership with the British Council
  British Council
  The British Council is a United Kingdom-based organisation specialising in international educational and cultural opportunities. It is registered as a charity both in England and Wales, and in Scotland...
  
  - Global Xchange is part of the UK government International Citizen Service
  International Citizen Service
  International Citizen Service is a global volunteering experience funded by the Department for International Development which gives young people across the UK the chance to join in the fight against global poverty...
  
  . Youth Action (3 months) and Youth Xchange (6 months) offer placements for 18-22 year olds who wish to volunteer overseas
- Youth For Development
- VSO Canada's NetCorps
  NetCorps
  NetCorps was a volunteer-organizing coalition consisting of nine Canadian non-governmental organizations , funded by the Canadian International Development Agency and managed by the NetCorps coordination unit...
  
  and International Youth Internship Programs
offers short-term consultancy-style volunteer placements, to complement their traditional long-term (two year) placements, following the merger with British Executive Service Overseas (beso) in March 2005, a smaller charity with similar aims, but which dealt with short-term volunteering.
supports a number of national volunteering programmes (including schemes in India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...

, Kenya
Kenya
Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

and others);
acts as a 'knowledge broker', bringing local grassroots organisations together to share learning and best practice, for example through the Regional AIDS Initiative of Southern Africa, with a network of partners in seven southern African countries;

Also, several large companies, including Accenture

Accenture

Accenture plc is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company headquartered in Dublin, Republic of Ireland. It is the largest consulting firm in the world and is a Fortune Global 500 company. As of September 2011, the company had more than 236,000 employees across...

, PricewaterhouseCoopers

PricewaterhouseCoopers

PricewaterhouseCoopers is a global professional services firm headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest professional services firm measured by revenues and one of the "Big Four" accountancy firms....

, SAP

SAP AG

SAP AG is a German software corporation that makes enterprise software to manage business operations and customer relations. Headquartered in Walldorf, Baden-Württemberg, with regional offices around the world, SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software...

and others, send some of their staff through VSO to work directly on international development projects.

At the UK Charity Awards in June 2004, VSO, which is primarily funded by the British government's Department for International Development

Department for International Development

The Department For International Development is a United Kingdom government department with a Cabinet Minister in charge. It was separated from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1997. The goal of the department is "to promote sustainable development and eliminate world poverty". The current...

, was named "International Development Charity of the Year," with judges citing VSO's innovative approach to international development and volunteering.

In November 2008, VSO Canada merged with CUSO

CUSO

CUSO was founded June 6, 1961 as Canadian University Service Overseas . It was a Canadian non-profit organization that provided volunteers to aid in the development of Third World countries. In 2008, CUSO merged with VSO Canada to become CUSO-VSO...

, creating the largest volunteer sending organisation in Canada, and extending the VSO federation's programmes into Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

n countries.

VSO is a member of the European Volunteer Centre

European Volunteer Centre

The European Volunteer Centre ) is a European network of currently 88 mainly national and regional volunteer centres and volunteer development agencies across Europe and beyond that together work to support and promote voluntary activity. CEV channels the collective priorities and concerns of its...

. (CEV)

External links

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History

See also

Further reading

External links