40 years of service: Global Volunteers’ Guiding Principle – We work under the direction of local leaders

In this series, we delve into each of Global Volunteers’ guiding principles. With ten fundamental principles at the core of our approach, Global Volunteers has seen remarkable success in our partnerships with communities worldwide. These principles are shared with all our volunteers as they prepare for their service programs, enabling them to serve communities effectively and help them maximize their personal benefit from the experience. In this second blog post of the series, we will explore another principle; we work under the direction of local leaders.

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The reason is simple; for people to become self-reliant, they must be in charge. Local people embody their cultural, social, and economic issues. They know their needs and their priorities. They are the ones who realize the barriers to, as well as the possibilities for, their development. They must articulate their needs and identify the barriers that prevent those needs from being met. They must develop the plans to release those barriers and be mobilized to implement those plans. In every community where Global Volunteers works, local leaders identify one or more major development projects to be addressed during the time each team of volunteers is scheduled to be in the community. Often a major project will continue over many months or even years while many teams visit. While in the community, one or more local leaders take charge of the volunteers to help ensure that they are meeting the community’s needs.

“For people to become self-reliant, they must be in charge. Local people embody their cultural, social, and economic issues.”

Global Volunteers

To ensure the best use of the volunteers, the community partners and local leaders must be aware of their skills and capabilities. The significant objective, from Global Volunteers’ perspective, is to make certain the volunteers’ skills are made known to the community. Because each team of volunteers is different from another, the team leader identifies for the host community the resources the team can share. Each team member also has the opportunity to identify the skills they are willing to’ offer in service to the community.

Our volunteer coordinators are available by email, phone, and chat to describe our volunteer programs abroad and in the USA. We’ll help you decide on projects that best suit your interests and skills.

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