I'm interested in knowing what resources you find most valuable in learning about the culture in a country you're going to volunteer in

In my interviews with Peace Corps volunteers I have heard over and over stories of young people who went to a developing country with what they thought was the right trianing and found they had to learn on the job - and did. The experience was good for them an for the people they worked with. I have yet to har a story of a young person who did harm by learning on the job. In many ways this may be the important lesson for both the volunteers and the locals - locals discover they have much to teach the rest of the world, and young Americans learn to listen.

A good source of information is the Peace Corps on the Edge podcast series here on social edge. The stories of former PC volunteers tell us much about learning cultures and about specific cultures.

Great conversation, Nathaniel and Jon! Hi to you both.

From my experience, I believe that it's extremely important to distinguish between different models of international youth volunteerism. I've often seen it done very poorly, and I've also seen it done very well. In my experience, there are two fundamental differentiators:

1) PRIORITIES. What is the priority of the organization that hosts the volunteers? If the organization's priority is to give youth an international volunteer experience, I'm always skeptical. If the organization's priority is to fulfill some other mission - education, micro-finance, engineering, etc - then I'm listening.

2) TRAINING. What kind of training do the volunteers receive? Without strong training, youth volunteers will flounder and they are prone to make mistakes that can indeed be damaging to the cause With strong and comprehensive training, youth volunteers can be incredible allies and resources for global social change.

In FORGE, we've experienced first-hand the critical importance of emphasizing to our university volunteers (our Project Facilitators) the fact that - to be blunt - it's not about them. We are not shy about telling people that if they are looking for an enriching international experience, FORGE is not for them. If they are looking to work like crazy and make big sacrifices to enact often-thankless on-the-ground change, then we might be a good fit.

We've also watched the way in which comprehensive training for youth volunteers (BEFORE they travel) transforms the effectiveness of the work they are able to do, and also exponentially decreases the mistakes that they make. FORGE's impact has directly correlated with the extensiveness and quality of our training process (which always emphasizes the fact that they will never have all the answers and they must depend on the local community for solutions).

Overall, well-trained college students and young adults can be invaluable to international development organizations because they offer a huge base of untapped resources and skills. But, preparing them to be so is a very time consuming and sensitive process. In FORGE, we've figured out how to do this at almost no financial no cost (we have committed Alumni who act as Team Coordinators, spending 7 months intensely training teams of 8-10 Project Facilitators before they depart to Africa where they partner with refugees on community development projects), and our Project Facilitators produce extremely high quality work that other organizations we work with on the ground would be paying hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for from their traditional staff. Still, working with non-professionals is something that requires a lot of oversight, planning, guidance, and care. But if these things can be accomplished, what carefully-screened and trained university student volunteers can bring to the mission is incalculable.

Kjerstin,

It's been a while since I last had the pleasure of speaking with you (I met you at Nathaniel's during IYVS two years back). It was so nice reading your post, as I feel that you have, more aptly than I have abstractly done below, highlighted the importance of the importance of the transformative process of comprehensive training.

Very best, Alex

Hello Mum,you have spoken very well about the issue of volunteer program,but i also want to inform you that when you are addressing this program you left out disability volunteer project. i must say that most of the volunteers that are sent to africa end up in orphange homes,street children organization.

i want to know from you if people with disabilities and disability organizations are not part of the volunteer project. when you come to africa disability ngos are realy fighting to get some small group of volunteer groups from the rich countries. i hmbly write to address some this problems

thank you mum.

FORGE sounds like it does great work.

I have been involved in volunteerism for more than 30 years, in the same program, with the same goal of helping inner city kids reach jobs and careers, by expanding the adult support and learning network available to them. What I know now from this many years of experience, and from many other life and work experiences, is far greater, and more sophisticated than what I knew when I first became involved. Thus, my impact can be greater (I hope!).

I'm now serving on the Illinois Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service, while leading the Tutor/Mentor Connection (http://www.tutormentorconnection.org ) and Cabrini Connections (http://www.cabriniconnections.net).

The state commissions manage the National Service programs in most states (AmeriCorps, Vista, etc.) thus, this discussion is very relevant to the work they do and the concept of national service.

I feel there are two types of volunteerism.

a) the manpower type, where you spend time doing a task, such as feeding the hungry, building a park, painting a room, helping people recover from a disaster, etc. There are many examples of this and millions of people are engaged in this form of volunteerism at one or more times in their lives. They don't need much preparation for many of these roles, although some, such as disaster relief, probably require a good deal of training. However, volunteers in these roles are not necessarily building something that requires constant growth in their experience, or in the results from the time they spend as a volunteer.

b) this leads to the second type of volunteerism. This is service that is intended to resolve a problem. It could be working as a task force to build a new school. Or it could be working to help a 5th grade youth be starting a job when he is 25. Both take a long time.

In this type of volunteerism I feel we need to be thinking of the applied time/talent of many people who are working to solve problems that will take many years to solve. If we apply short term volunteers to solving these problems we'll mostly get random acts of kindness and not the type of progress toward results that we should get from the billions of dollars of manpower that is put into service all over the world.

I focus on long-term volunteerism and feel that one of the most important things we should be doing is collecting the experiences of volunteers, professionals, researchers, and people served, so that each wave of future volunteers could learn from the collective experience of all previous volunteers.

I'd love to see the organizations who supply volunteers (AmeriCorps, colleges, etc.) adopt specific causes, and even specific organizations, so that new volunteers could pick up from where previous volunteers left off, so that the projects they, or someone else starts, could be continued by the next person out of a long line of potential volunteers. In such partnerships, the people supplying the volunteers would have as much responsibility for preparing them for service as the organization who receives them and puts them to work.

In this concept of volunteerism, some groups need to take the role of facilitator, or intermediary, collecting information about specific social issues (poverty, hunger, famine, health, etc.) and about the work being done around the world, in specific locations, to solve those problems. With this knowledge serving as an intermediary role, new people coming into service could learn and prepare for their role, and veteran's leaving direct service could stay involved in a variety of ways for the rest of their lives. Without this knowledge, there is a lot of redundancy, and a lot of reinvention.

I think universities are ideally suited for this role and have been searching for university partners to work with the Tutor/Mentor Connection in our efforts to create an infrastructure that would support thousands of site based tutor/mentor programs operating in every big city in the country.

I'm glad to see that this discussion is hosted by students at Northwestern. I'm in Chicago and would be delighted to find a way to connect with some of you to talk more about these concepts.

Well, I’d say the discussion is off and running. Thank you to Patrick, Kjerstin, and Daniel for setting the tone for what should be a high-quality conversation. I want to highlight a few themes I saw in your posts and pose a few questions based on these themes.

First was this idea of young people as assets that came up in Patrick and Kjerstin’s comments. We are fortunate at Northwestern to host the Asset Based Community Development Institute (ABCD) and its directors, Professors Jody Kretzmann and John McNight. Kretzmann and McKnight have spent the last 30 years developing a new framework for community development that identifies and mobilizes the assets that already exist within marginalized communities, rather than always focusing on problems and deficiencies in these communities and then applying remedies to solve those deficiencies. For more information on the ABCD approach, go to www.northwestern.edu/ipr/abcd. A major strand in ABCD thinking is that young people should be viewed as assets for communities rather than “challenges”. Young people are full of gifts, skills, curiosities, and resources that, when supported by real opportunities for action, can bring about positive change in communities. I think organizations that utilize young volunteers often see young people from a glass half-empty perspective without knowing it. Do any of the organizations you work with ever seem to be asking themselves, “What can I have this person do that they won’t screw up and that won’t cause me more stress?” Conversely, organizations should be asking themselves, “What unique assets, gifts, skills, or resources do young people bring to this work that another type of person might not? And, correspondingly, how can we develop opportunities that fully utilize these unique assets?

And so I ask, what unique assets do young people bring to different types of shared global problems that we might overlook?

A second theme I read into your comments is the importance of having young volunteers learn from the local community in which they’re serving. This places local community members in the role of teacher—thereby reversing entrenched power hierarchies all too common in the international development world where the outside “expert” comes to solve problems for the local “victim”. Overcoming this notion and creating more equitable relationships across borders is a major goal of our work at the CGE. One strategy we’re interested in is transforming university accreditation policies so that community organizations are empowered to give our students credit for the vital knowledge they provide—oftentimes more than any lecture-based course could afford.

And so I ask, what other strategies can we use to ensure that more youth volunteer opportunities abroad provide opportunities for local community members to teach lessons that allow them to share their unique knowledge and experience?

Third, I saw an interesting tension in Kjerstin’s post. On the one-hand, we need to tell young, often quite privileged students that, when it comes to international volunteerism, its not all about them—contrary to what our “me first” culture often tells them. On the other-hand, in order to maximize the benefit for those they seek to help, we need to focus intently on training and supporting young people before they engage in volunteerism projects. So, it comes down to figuring out a way to build in them a focus on others by developing a sort of focus on the self….a seemingly difficult proposition that FORGE has navigated very successfully.

And so I ask, how can we convey to young people the idea that its not always about them while at the same time focusing intently on their training and development?

Finally, Daniel highlighted the need for developing long-term volunteer relationships with specific causes, and even specific organizations so that new volunteers can build on work that was done by their predecessors rather than doing work that is redundant, thereby making it possible for volunteerism to solve problems. I couldn’t agree more! At the CGE were trying to develop a concept of “relational” or “connectional” change in which we prioritize the creation of a long-standing relationship with a particular community or organization so that the volunteer projects students can do build over time and contribute to an ever-deepening relationship. It seems we’ve gotten to a point in the world of global problem solving where people see the limits of disjointed, charity-based humanitarianism that responds only to basic needs and then moves on to the next disaster. We know that in order to actually solve problems we need to make long term commitments and prioritize relationships with people that can evolve as realities change.

And so I ask, what are the best ways to structure opportunities for young people to be involved in this way? What opportunities exist that you can share?

In addition to these 4 new questions, I want to reiterate those posed at the outset:

Who is the primary beneficiary of global youth volunteerism – the volunteer or the host community or organization? Who should it be?

What are situations in which it’s inappropriate for young people to volunteer abroad?

What are some strategies for increasing the short and long-term impact of global youth volunteer experiences while minimizing unintended harmful consequences?

Related, what is the role of educational institutions in preparing people for this type of global engagement experience?

What are some real-world examples of “effective,” or on the other hand “harmful,” global volunteer projects?

What are your experiences?

I'm currently enrolled in the Master's International program in Environmental Engineering at Michigan Technological University. It's one of many programs across the country where grad students can earn credit toward a masters degree through Peace Corps service, but the only such program in engineering.

I've been constantly impressed

I apologize for the cut-off post above, this is my first post and I misinterpreted the meaning of the save button.

Like I was saying, I've been constantly impressed by the curriculum the program has developed in only 10 years of experience. In addition to the normal engineering coursework, there are two courses designed specifically to prepare the students for their service abroad. One of these, taught by a professor who is a returned Peace Corps volunteer, focuses on community development and deals with many of the issues being discussed here.

Better still, students who complete their service return to campus to write and defend their theses. Not only does this provide a friendly atmosphere of eager ears for the returned volunteers to share their experiences while they readjust to American culture, but it's also sustainable education for the new students on campus.

All of this is in place to ensure that the students leave with the proper mindset. As one professor put it, it's his goal to beat the idealism out of us, or at least down to an acceptable level.

But what may shock you most is that many of my classmates are already in this mindset before they even set foot on campus. Many of us sought this program out because we've had experience with some of the flimsier volunteer organizations and aren't eager to repeat mistakes. I had the pleasure of being part of a group of students that got to sit down with the deputy director of the Peace Corps while she was on campus to give the graduation keynote. Many of the things she heard at that meeting are echoed in the discussion above.

My point is we're not as oblivious to our roles as you might think.

I am a youth from South Africa and in my experience with youth volunteers is that they are always from developed countries, and do not have the right or correct approach when dealing with issues when they come here. I think that empowerment should be the end goal, so that when the volunteers are gone people can continue to implement what they learnt in a sustainable manner. As an African I understand the psychology behind being an African, our self-esteem and self perception is very low and it is exacerbated by mostly white people coming to be our savoiur. Further engraining the idea that black people have capacity and capability. And this is something that can't be helped, for instance when I was at university and students from the USA would come as exchnage students for a semester, what they had to say and what thet thought of Africa was mindblowing and discouraging, especially coming from educated young adults. If we want to ensure that volunteerism spreads you need to target the youth in developing countries so they are capacitated to run projects. This will assist on many levels, importantly it will give credence to the idea that Africans can do and help themselves.

The spirit to empower our brothers and sisters,the spirit to secure the right of our people to belong in the same class as theirs The spirit of ensuring equal treatment even in so potential issues such as Volunteerism

Greetings from Jinja, eastern Uganda!

It looks like we’re off to a great discussion!

I wanted to comment quickly on one of the tensions we’re already observing on the board which is the question of who benefits from youth volunteerism. FORGE has made a clear organizational decision about this: it’s the refugees the students work with. They’ve designed their program to reinforce that.

I think that in many situations, however, this gets murky. Young people (of whom Jon and I count ourselves – having just graduated from NU in 2006 and stuck around to run the Center for Global Engagement) and students are by definition, learners. Our ‘job’ is to make it through whatever school we’re in with as much knowledge as possible, and hopefully prepared to begin applying that knowledge in some meaningful way.

One of the things that we noticed, as students researching our peers engagement with both local and global issues, is that the depth of growth that happened when people volunteered made them feel that they were the people gaining the most – and perhaps, in purely developmental terms they were. One of the biggest problems we noticed was that they felt guilty for this, rather than trying to harness that learning as an intended outcome of their engagement.

Echoing Ntombenhle’s discussion, we also noticed that exacerbating the feeling that ‘learning’ was an illegitimate outcome of volunteerism was a problematic power structure – namely that 19 year olds were telling people with generations of experience what to do to solve their problems. They were the “servers” or “donors” and so when they were served with knowledge, it seemed to reverse the intended role – however problematic that role was to begin with.

Luckily, as Brendan so rightly noted, young people passionate about global change are taking on rather than shirking from the responsibility to deepen our understanding and aptitude of global problem solving.

With our ENGAGE Uganda program – through which 17 students in teams of 5-6 will partner with community organizations to design and implement a shared project, and which will feature a community blog right here on Socialedge.org starting in a few weeks – we tried to change a few of these problems by addressing them in the structure of our program:

1. Because this is a Northwestern University program, it must be as much about learning as “service.” To that end, we found host organization partners who were willing to add ‘teachers’ to the role of functions their community organization was already playing. Many simply didn’t have the time to think explicitly about educating students about their culture, customs, attitudes towards problems, etc, but for those that did, situating the host organization as teacher in addition to simply ‘volunteer host’ fundamentally changed their sense of our relationship. We have further build in learning by having students prepare with two lead-in courses, as well as two courses which happen throughout their project exchange. 2. We tried to redefine the nature of the relationship between students and host organization, but having them collaborative via distance communication to design a project which advanced the mission of the organization, and which utilized the assets, talents, and interests of all parties – students and organizations alike. 3. I think we agree on a fundamental level with Daniel about the idea of maintaining long term connections with specific organizations or projects. As a university, we have an endless supply of students, so we’ve endeavored to create a program that each year, new students can return to the same hosts in Uganda and continue to grow and foster a mutually beneficial long-term relationship.

We’ll see how this works very soon!

As we move forward, I have a couple questions for you.

1. For the FORGEs and other organizations out there, what are some of the materials you use to prepare students for their volunteer experiences? 2. For international youth or members of global NGOs, how have you found young volunteers when they come to your countries? What are your perspectives on their engagement? What are the best things they can contribute and what are some general pitfalls to avoid?

To respond to Nathaniel's question about training materials, FORGE uses a 7-month training process with a 15-week curriculum (email me if you'd like to see it - kjerstin at FORGEnow dot org). We have weekly reading assignments, project development assignments, and fundraising assignments. These assignments are all discussed at weekly team meetings facilitated by a veteran Team Coordinator.

As for resources, we mostly use articles and book chapters, but we've found a few books to be particularly relevant. The Selfish Altruist is wonderful for reminding young idealists that they must always carefully monitor their own intentions, motivations, and culturally-constructed belief systems because these can easily and insidiously infect their "altruistic" work. A perfect complement to the Selfish Altruist is "How to Change the World" - a book that does an incredible job at inspiring people to take action and affect social change, but that I think should be balanced with some more cautionary advice about the ways in which "good intentions" can go wrong (especially as social entrepreneurship gets glamorized, there is more of a potential for people to go down the wrong path ala the Selfish Altruist).

For those of you out there who haven’t read this, check out Ivan Illich’s “To Hell with Good Intentions”

It’s the granddaddy of global volunteer criticism and while there is much to argue with, much of what he says is too salient to ignore. This is one of the early articles we have our students read, and work with them to wrestle through it and come up with their own meaningful answers to the criticisms he hurdles.

http://www.swaraj.org/illich_hell.htm

It also provides a foundation for our work (as well as one of our clearest short explanations): The Center for Global Engagement helps students move beyond their good intentions to produce responsible, effective, and sustainable change.

Hi, my name is Nikolai Smith, and I am a student participating in Engage Uganda this summer, a program started by the Northwestern University Center for Global Engagement. I will be in Gulu in the North, and I will have a weekly blog on Social Edge that will be starting soon. For now, I would like to look at the posts that were made so far in this discussion.

Aspasia, in terms of your inquiry, the resources we sought out for learning about Ugandan culture came from many places, the most important was the organization that we are volunteering with. We have been in e-mail contact with Chaford-Uganda, the organization that we are working with in Gulu, for over two months now asking them different cultural questions that relate both to the projects we plan on working on and life in general in Gulu. We have also sought out different sources on Ugandan culture from outside sources like those of NGOs who have worked in Gulu and sources that deal directly with volunteers interacting within the Ugandan culture, such as Stan Burkey’s book on Self-Reliant Participatory Rural Development that uses Uganda as a case study.

Patrick, I am very surprised that you have never heard of a Peace Corps volunteer who did harm by learning on the job. At the International Youth Volunteerism Summit (now called the Global Engagement Summit), I heard from several different facilitators stories of Peace Corps volunteers who did more harm than good during their time because they did not have sufficient training before their work or guidance during it. Maybe this is not the norm or maybe the Peace Corps volunteers that you interviewed did not want to share that aspect of their work, but I think myself and others, as Kjerstin mentions as well, have heard of enough similar volunteer experiences that have done harm to realize that it is a problem that needs to be recognized for these trips. I am also surprised that the volunteers you talked to went into it “and found they had to learn on the job”. To me, it seems that that would be an expectation of Peace Corps volunteers: to adapt to the situation and to learn directly from the people they are working “for” and with.

Kjerstin, I have not heard of FORGE but I am interested if they take University undergraduates of all levels. I also don’t know if I agree with the approach to emphasize that it is “not about” the volunteers. I understand that the work is not for the volunteers, but even if they are working like crazy and making big sacrifices, they do gain a lot from the chance to help people. I assume they are still getting their means provided by the people (even if they are paying for these, the people are still welcoming them as a part of their group) and that they are still learning about the language and sharing experiences with the people even if it is through doing hard work and that this exchange goes both ways in terms of benefits.

Daniel, I like how you divided the types of service, but I think they can blend together in time, at least that has been the case in the volunteer projects I have participated in both within the United States and abroad. These experiences were mostly short-term “manpower” trips, but they are important, not for the manpower that we provided or the work that we accomplished (because often it was short), but important because of what we learned and the potential we have to discuss how to solve the larger problems that the organization deals with and to get others and actually to do something about it. That is why these organizations, ranging from the Sioux YMCA in South Dakota to Catholic Charties in Baltimore to the Catholic Mission in San Lucas-Toliman, Guatemala, all spend just as much time speaking with us about the problems they face as they do putting us to work. The idea, especially directed towards college students like myself, is that we are the future and we will be the ones changing national and international policy, as members “of the elite class and the smartest kids in the world”. I can’t tell you how many different places I have heard that at from the former site of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago to the rural desolate land of the Cheyenne River Reservation. Organizations believe that we have a great potential to be influenced by not only the work we do, but the things we hear and see at the sites and will take this knowledge and experience and come back to our schools, hometowns and families and raise money or work to influence policy or bring more people to the site to increase the potential for greater change. I do agree with Daniel that this type of work, having short-term trip volunteers become inspired and work towards solving the larger problems of the organization, does not make that much of an impact, though it can and should not be minimized though that is exactly what I am doing, and also is often a scattered approach to solving a problem. Yet, once again, the push that these volunteers create can lead to the type of huge change in funding or policy that is needed to address the problem. I especially agree with Daniel when he discusses the importance of long-term volunteers connecting to the experiences of other previous volunteers and continuing where they left off. In the global projects I have been involved with, this has often been the case as we continue where other volunteers have left off, but since it is often ”manpower” type and short-term service, there is not much to be taught. In terms of local projects like tutoring/mentoring kids in the inner-city, I have done this at 12 different schools and programs in Milwaukee and Chicago, and I feel that I could contribute to an infrastructure that supports site based tutor/mentor programs throughout the nation and I could at least use my experiences to help new volunteers. I think that this can and should be applied globally, though most likely more regionally than cross continent or on such a large scale. I will be in Uganda this summer, but I wish to continue this discussion with Daniel because I believe it does relate to my work in Uganda because some of the skills I bring to Uganda are my background with working with youth in the U.S..

In terms of Jon’s questions, Jon and I have both been on a service trip to the Catholic Mission in San Lucas-Toliman, Guatemala so we both have had the amazing pleasure to work with an organization that recognizes the potential of young people (evident in the large number of colleges and high schools that visit the mission every year) and provides local community members with opportunities to teach the volunteers. They do this by taking all volunteers on a tour of the projects of the mission that is led by a member of the community who works with planning the projects. Volunteers then hear talks throughout their time there from different community leaders and members about their backgrounds and views of the projects where volunteers always are able to ask questions. Volunteers then do manual labor (more specific labor is available if they have a certain background, such as being a dentist or doctor) at the different sites where they are directed by workers of the sites, thus further reversing the entrenched power hierarchy that Jon mentions. I think Jon’s questions really challenge me to reflect on my experiences and to also look to many different channels for the answer. In terms of what unique assets do young people bring, I think it is very, very important not to overlook the organization that these youth are affiliated with whether it be their hometown, school, church, etc. Youth, especially those in high school, still have the ability and often the charm to get all different types of people to donate their money and time. These youth are usually connected to a huge social network that not only includes their friends and peers, but also their parents and family and the family of the friends of the youth. Also, young people are often attached to a specific organization of their own that has resources set aside for young people with initiatives. Universities are a great example and the work that Jon and Nathaniel did setting up the Center for Global Engagement at Northwestern is a great example of such an initiative (contact them for ways to get resources from your University!). I think I looked at his second question before and I am not sure how one promotes the knowledge of community members better than the Mission in San Lucas-Toliman. The only other suggestion I have is to send volunteers home with literature from these members about their projects and their work and how much is needed to complete it or start a new project and how volunteers can stay involved even as they leave and through e-mail, this can only incur organizations with the cost of the time to send out this information. Or I think it may be important to provide or heavily recommend that volunteers bring a notebook and pen so that it does promote a lecture-style setting in that these community members are teaching volunteers as much, if not more in my opinion, about different issues. I have learned more (and thought about and reflected over more) from volunteer trips and talks from community members than I have ever done from reading books or attending lectures. In terms of the question that it is not always about volunteers, I think that volunteers have adopted a fair deal of this mindset simply from committing to train for a long-term service project. They understand that they will be sacrificing and doing much work so even if they are doing this to also feel good about themselves or learn about a new culture or some other “self-serving” end, they still are engaging in something that forces them to look at the problems and issues of another group of people. I think if you really want to hammer in the idea, way deep down into the volunteer’s sub-conscience (I’m sorry I just feel that no matter how much training you do and no matter what you tell volunteers about it not being about them, a part of them still looks to how they are benefiting from this experience even if sub-consciously), you do that by making the training and development of volunteers a process that really pushes them to think beyond themselves and to focus exclusively from the perspectives of those you are working with (which I think is problematic, one should take advantage of all perspectives from which they can see a problem) or to really hammer in how hard and sacrificing the work will be (still, when one sacrifices and work hard, I believe they gain something, even if the end does not personally benefit them). I guess I am still naïve and inexperienced when it comes to this type of training, but I believe that it is very hard to get out of volunteers the idea that they also benefit from the training, and I am interested in learning how FORGE and others deemphasize this aspect of long-term volunteer projects.

I would like to look at the original questions that Jon and Nathaniel posed, but I have to finish up packing as I leave in an hour (I'm a smart world traveler). If I get to them now great, if not I hope this conversation is still up and running the next time I can use the internet.

Best, Nikolai ps-I don't know if you've seen the not funny ads, but American Express is allowing members aka not me (but my dad so I may steal his identity) to create a social change project and if you get the most votes, you get 5 million bucks. see below, paz

http://www.membersproject.com/home.action

Hi Nikolai,

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to clarify my statement that FORGE's approach of reinforcing the message that "its not about the volunteers"

What "its not about the volunteers" DOES NOT mean is that FORGE is not committed to the experience of its volunteers and that we don't care what our volunteers get out of their experience. We do care very much about both of these things. However, we are convinced that our approach actually enables our volunteers to have a much richer, more meaningful, more honest experience than if they went into a development environment focusing more on themselves. The fact that they are willing to go through 400 hours of training and preparation, spend their whole summers living in a rural African refugee camp, and have to fundraise to cover it all speaks to the fact that they get a huge amount out of it personally. We at FORGE always look for ways to reinforce and enhance positive experiences by our staff. Satisfaction on behalf of our volunteer Project Facilitators is absolutely critical to our growth and the impact of our projects, and we find that it grows naturally out of giving people a channel to effectively partner with and serve a community.

BUT - what "its not about the volunteers" DOES mean is that, when it comes to making decisions, we always start from the premise of "how do we best serve our mission - ie the refugees with whom we work?" Coming from this orientation is exactly what enables us to have such comprehensive training structures and to focus so strongly on partnership rather than service. If our end goal were about the volunteers, we wouldn't need to invest so much into making sure they were prepared. If our end goal were about the volunteers, we wouldnt need to partner with refugees to make sure our projects are sustainable. And if our end goal were about the volunteers, we wouldn't need to set such high fundraising standards (to go toward their projects) and we wouldn't require our volunteers to make so many comfort sacrifices for the sake of giving more funds to projects. There are many more examples.

Ironically, I do think that this approach pays off for the young volunteers that are willing to put in the work. At the most recent FORGE Training Phase evaluation that I attended (before the team left for Africa), many of our Project Facilitators commented on how proud they were of all of their efforts in the preparation stage. After 7 months of intense training, they had a wealth of knowledge about the community they were entering, they had learned about how to enter a community sensitively, the ways in which international development initiatives tend to fail, what types of projects tend to succeed, the history of the people they are going to work with, basic knowledge of the local language, etc. They commented that they have friends who are headed off to Africa who say that they are "not really sure where they are going or what they are going to be doing." These FORGE volunteers expressed a sense of pride and responsibility in knowing that they were so far ahead of the game and thus poised to make so much greater change. By making their work "not about them", the experience actually grows that much richer and more worthwhile.

I hope this helps to clarify that the model I'm discussing does not sacrifice learning or volunteer experience. It does, however, narrow the field of people that are willing and ready to take on the challenge and the higher expectations.

I appreciate the comprehensive responses that Jonathan, Nathaniel and Brendan have given to the first responses. I am familiar with ABCD, and in fact am part of the list serve.

I agree that youth can be assets. I also agree that adults can be assets. However, without some form of infrastructure to help youth or adults connect with a cause, and learn ways they can unleash their assets, it's a bit wishful to hope that this will happen.

When we think of infrastructure, what do we mean? What are the technologies that would support complex problem solving? What are the resources needed to create a distribution of a single kind of service in all of the places of the world where this service is needed? Who is developing leaders for all of these places? Who is creating a flexible funding stream to support the work of these leaders, so they stay in place for more than a few years and accumulate wisdom and experience?

I believe the Internet gives us powerful new tools for collaboration, learning and group problem solving. However, I don't yet see too many places where these tools are fully implemented. Two of the most important tools are Geographic Information Systems (GIS) which enable you to map data spatially so you can create a visual understanding of all the places where there is a problem, and a need for the same type of solution. You can read about uses of GIS and see demonstrations at :http://tinyurl.com/2j5kkw

A second important tool fits in the category of visualization. Tools such as concept mapping enable us to use pictures and charts the way archetects and engineers use blueprints to get many different people to do the right type of work at the right time in order to build buildings, dams, highways, etc.

When people say a "picture is worth a 1000 words" I'm fully in agreement. I wonder how many people will read the long response written by Brendan? Or by me? To really understand a complex problem we need to read many, many books. How many volunteers or even professionals and/or policy makers are really doing the in-depth learning, along with practical application of that learning, that is needed to understand a complex problem?

I've been trying to map the strategy and resources of the Tutor/Mentor Connection. Here's an map of the resources in our Links Library: http://tinyurl.com/23aa9w

My goal in pointing to these web sites is not to draw more attention to the Tutor/Mentor Connection, but to demonstrate what my words are talking about. I would love to see groups of students/faculty at universities here and abroad begin to use maps and blueprints to describe the problems they are addressing and the actions they feel will lead to solutions.

If we do this on the internet, we can create better operating systems, just as the creators of open source technology created a system that now competes with the powerful Windows operating system of Microsoft. This cannot happen until a few pioneers begin to put their ideas on the Interent, using maps and charts.

One of the resources needed by every social benefit organization is money. Yet very few of us are blessed with a Bill Gates type donor, or with the marketing skills it takes to attract consistent funding for many years. Thus, there is a poor distribution of really effective service providers in most cities, or most parts of the world. With a map and database of organizations, we can change this, if we can unleash the power of students in business and marketing schools all over the world. At http://tinyurl.com/2nhbzb you can learn more about what I mean by this idea.

Most of what I've pointed to are web sites hosted by other people, and ideas I've created that encourage use of those resources to solve problems. My information focuses on ways business and university volunteers can be involved in helping kids born in poverty be starting jobs and careers by age 25, 25 years after they are born!!! That's a long time.

However, this is only one of many problems facing our world. Anyone can create a similar database and library of resources, to serve as a resource for everyone else who is interested in solving the problem. Imagine a "world water problem web site" or, "world AIDS web site" where one could look at maps to see where the problem is located, or read articles and visit web sites to learn what the problem is, and who the organizations are in different places working to solve the problem. With this information, intermediaries can connect youth with service opportunities and these youth can still be connected when they are senior citizens.

If you're doing this, please provide a link so others can visit the information you are hosting.