28 March 2008
This year, VSO celebrates its 50th anniversary - half a century of fighting poverty through the work of its volunteers. During March a series of events marked the occasion, culminating in a day of celebration at London's Royal Festival Hall on Saturday 15th.
The day featured live entertainment, panel discussions, and a variety of workshops. VSO President Jonathan Dimbleby hosted an evening event, at which International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander delivered a keynote speech.
Since 1958, VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) has sent more than 30,000 volunteers to developing countries to make a positive difference to people's lives. These are skilled professionals, from a range of nationalities, backgrounds and ages, sharing their experience to help build a fairer world.
Currently, there are almost 1,500 VSO volunteers, working in 34 countries. Placements are designed to address major development challenges, such as tackling HIV/AIDS, increasing access to education, securing livelihoods and improving governance.
DFID: Supporting VSO
DFID has enjoyed a long and close association with VSO, and joins in celebrating its 50th anniversary. As well as providing funding to support VSO's efforts to reduce world poverty, a number of former VSO volunteers have gone on to work for DFID, including Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Gillian Merron, who served in Guyana in 2005.
Many of DFID's ex-VSO volunteers attended the Royal Festival Hall event, chatting with hundreds of people about their own personal experiences volunteering overseas. DFID also hosted an exhibition area to explain ‘How we fight poverty’ using an audio-visual display of case studies from around the developing world. The DFID stand proved very popular – not least because of the donated samples from Divine chocolate!
Richard Taylor is one of many ex-volunteers now working for DFID. Currently a policy officer with DFID Sudan, Richard was posted to Ethiopia as part of VSO's Youth for Development scheme, where his job involved researching the financial sustainability of a new water programme in Dalocha, an area in the south of the country.
"I travelled around villages and did in-depth questionnaires with a cross-section of women on how much they’d be willing to pay for piped water, and how much time they thought it would save them," he says. Richard’s very practical research resulted in a change to pricing policy, giving more people in Dalocha vital access to water.
"The insights VSO gave me into how the poor actually live were invaluable," Richard adds. "Now, when I'm in government ministries, I still try to ask myself, 'Well, would it work in Dalocha?'"
Nigel Kirby, a project manager in DFID's Overseas Territories Department, joined VSO in 1987, and, in his first posting, worked as a roads engineer in the Solomon Islands.
"I spent my weekends at a local primary school, building pit latrines and sinking a tube-well with the children, learning to dive, and enjoying being in a different culture for the first time in my life," recalls Nigel. Subsequently, he worked on a project that helped bring water supplies to rural villages.
Nigel regards his time as a VSO volunteer as one of the most rewarding in his life. "I like to think that my time there had some lasting impact," he says. "I will never forget it, though with three sons who are half Solomon Islanders, that is hardly likely!"
For Ashufta Alam, whose work for DFID deals with climate and the environment, a year as a VSO volunteer in South Africa heavily influenced a commitment to a career in international development. Volunteering just after the end of apartheid rule, Ashufta trained and worked as an election observer in the nation's first democratic elections. Her year as a volunteer made such an impression that she later returned to work in the country.
As many other former volunteers, and VSO supporters, come together this year to celebrate 50 years of VSO, they have the opportunity to reflect on the difference that volunteering has made to many people's lives around the globe - both to the lives of those in poor countries who have benefited from volunteers' experience and enthusiasm, and, no less significantly, to the volunteers themselves.
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