Calling all volunteers!

Requests for volunteers

TANZANIA

Oreteti Cultural Discoveries, run by YSPerson Tanzania, Gemma Enolengila

Noonkodin Secondary School is desperate for volunteer English teachers who can help primary school leavers to make the transition to English-medium secondary school studies, so if you have a few weeks to spare, please consider helping out at this rural school in the heart of a Maasai village. Costs start from $995 USD for a one-month package, which includes all your food, accommodation, return transport from Arusha to the school, Swahili tuition, a donation to the school, a two-day orientation with a professional guide in a real Maasai homestead (where you can learn to make bead jewellery with the women, identify medicinal plants and milk the goats, in a breathtakingly beautiful mountain setting) and a Class C residence permit. We can offer packages of up to five months in duration and are particularly in need of teachers between March and May, when the rainy season may put off less intrepid travellers!


We are also looking for someone with early childhood education experience (preferably a qualified teacher although not essential) to spend 9 weeks in a small preschool on the outskirts of Arusha and 3 weeks in a Maasai village preschool. In Arusha they can choose to stay on site or in a hotel. The volunteer would ideally be able to get involved in curriculum development and production of teaching resources too. They should be fluent in English and have some basic word processing skills. The placement costs are as follows:

440 USD basic program fee
150 USD Swahili tuition
Minimum 400 USD donation to be split equally between the two schools

Optional extras:
Airport pickup 50 USD
Village guide (strongly recommended) 210 USD
Village orientation 100 USD
Food & accommodation on site in Arusha 50 USD per week


KENYA

With Haller Foundation and YSP Colleague Niduk

Haller is in need of a volunteer for 3 months to provide basic but vital I.T. training. This will include training on how to use Word, Excel and other applications, as well as explaining glossary terms, for example what a desktop is, how to save files, typing etc. The impact this can have on students is significant and will enable those taking part to improve their skills and employability.


Any volunteer would be able to stay at the volunteer cottages which costs just $10 USD a day.



If you can help please contact YourSafePlanet:

E| info[at]yoursafeplanet.co.uk

T| 0141 416 4622



NB: NO MONEY FOR PLACEMENTS IS PAID TO OR TAKEN BY YOURSAFEPLANET

Ashoka Geotourism Challenge

The annual Changemakers Geotourism Challenge is again underway, a wonderful source of inspiration and local insight into the world of sustainable tourism. Entrants are those organisations, initiatives and individials that promote and enhance Geotourism, defined by National Geographic as: “tourism that sustains or enhances the geographical character of a place — its environment, culture, aesthetics, heritage and the well-being of its residents.” So make sure you join or nominate others.

Ashoka is a wonderful organisation, brought to my attention by colleagues in Hong Kong when I visited the Social Enterprise hub there. Ashoka desribes itself as a global association of social entrepreneurs. This is especially pertinent as next week I present to the Annual Business and Enterprise conference for the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. I'm speaking alongside Kevin Brennan, Minister for the Third Sector, and the theme of the day is social enterprise.

Much of the discussion will revolve around building ethical and social business learning into our education system.

Any thoughts?

sally(at)yoursafeplanet.co.uk

Can volunteering truly be win:win?

It am often surprised by the level of negative press targetting gap years and volunteering. Increasingly people question the value of a Western traveller arriving in a country and hoping to 'save the world', and that's a positive thing. But opinion seems to have swung completely in the direction of the sceptical and the scathing. Most positive attitude towards volunteering overseas has been scewed. Why?

Companies offering volunteering holidays, often those associated with gap years, have been pitched against charities and not-for-profits in fierce battle. The former argue, often with support from local partners, that without their schemes vital work in conservation and development would not take place due to lacking resources. However check any travel forum and you would likely find a disgruntled volunteer who feels fleeced by the price of a project and asking if they should have simply donated the money directly to a local cause. But is that possible?

Your Safe Planet is in a fairly privileged position working with local stake holders worldwide. We connect travellers with trusted local experts in the places they want to visit. A common theme throughout our network is a passion for sustainable tourism and engagement of visitors with the community. This ranges from our ‘YSPerson’ in Trinidad being a long-standing advocate of responsible travel to the Caribbean to our YSPerson in Spain who runs her own ecotourism and community volunteering company. This gives YSP an insight into the situation at the very grass roots and, in general, this is what we find:

1. There is ground-breaking work taking place at the global grass roots without input from international bodies
2. International bodies can support local work by providing profile and sponsorship
3. Local stake holders are the best informed about how to work against a certain local problem but benefit from sharing best practice with similar projects
4. Volunteers are a useful resource when they can offer relevant skills.
5. Visitors are of benefit to local projects if they promote that work and donate money to the cause while they are there.

Finally, we find there is a need to provide a connection between the local project and the overseas visitor or volunteer. Any organisations with this aim as its core ethos will provide an important service to both customers: the volunteer and the project. Done transparently, projects have access to extra manpower and possibly specialist skills as well as financial support, while the volunteer feels they are getting the necessary support in finding a suitable placement and getting a fair deal.

Can such organisations be profit-making? Yes, we believe so, as long as they are not taking money away from the community or project in question. If a service is being provided to a traveller or volunteer then fair payment should be taken. However the key again is transparency. This is the wonderful opportunity offered by the internet – freedom to information to make informed decisions. We can now check internet forums to see if we should be using a certain company or visiting a particular place and find out from our peers what their views are. I hope this will be used wisely and to democratise travel.

As an industry of travel providers we need to make our local service providers a core customer, not supplier. They should be treated with the same respect and consideration as any traveller. Not only will this mean tourism becomes a more responsible business but that everyone involved will benefit. There is a win-win opportunity here for the taking, but rather perversely it requires a middleman. Which is something I never thought I’d hear myself say.
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So, as an example of a locally owned and run programme, here is a message I received from YSPerson Tanzaniza, Gemma Enolengila:

We are looking for someone with early childhood education experience (preferably a qualified teacher although not essential) to spend 9 weeks in a small preschool on the outskirts of Arusha and 3 weeks in a Maasai village preschool. In Arusha they can choose to stay on site or in a hotel. The volunteer would ideally be able to get involved in curriculum development and production of teaching resources too. They should be fluent in English and have some basic word processing skills.

The placement costs are as follows:

440 USD basic program fee
150 USD Swahili tuition
Minimum 400 USD donation to be split equally between the two schools

Optional extras:
Airport pickup 50 USD
Village guide (strongly recommended) 210 USD
Village orientation 100 USD
Food & accommodation on site in Arusha 50 USD per week

(NB: YSP takes no commission from these fees or money from local projects)

Hello, and welcome to YourSafePlanet

You wouldn't believe it...

We've been blogging all over the place for the last two years: for The Guardian, Make Travel Fair and several other websites, but not yet collated all our blogs in one place!

So this is our blog, just for YSPers, providing news from our global network of local contacts and exciting developments for YSP in general.

We hope you enjoy it, we hope you interact with us and we hope you might find some inspiration for your travels to see the world a different way... through local eyes.

Thanks and happy travelling

YourSafePlanet
Connecting you to the grass routes of travel