As I researched volunteer opportunities, I found that many of them were either geared toward college-age students or required a long-term commitment (a year or more) in a specific professional field like medical or education or agriculture. I was looking for an opportunity that:
- was shorter term (a month or two ... I started out thinking I wanted to go for 6 months but decided I'd miss my dog Charlie);
- had adult volunteers over the age of 22 (not exclusively but on some level); and
- had programs helping children, with which I have a little experience. :-)
I looked at a lot of volunteer organizations and landed on Global Volunteer Network, an organization based in New Zealand. What I liked about them:
- GVN provides volunteers to local organizations around the world because they believe that those groups best understand their community's needs;
- they commonly have older adults (blah ... did I say that?!) participate in their programs;
- they had good references and affiliations;
- Bill Gates made reference to them in Newsweek;
- they're good communicators;
- they offered a program that interested me (that happens to be in Ethiopia).
No comments:
Post a Comment