Embargoed until 00:01 Monday 17 March
VSO celebrates 50 years of Birmingham Residents volunteering overseas
Today (17 March 2008), VSO marks 50 years of Birmingham residents volunteering in developing countries by celebrating Birmingham’s volunteering footprint on the world. Birmingham is home to VSO’s volunteer training centre Harborne Hall, where all the latest recruits head for training before beginning their volunteering placements. VSO is the world's leading international development organisation working through skilled volunteers.
From Belize to Bangladesh, Cambodia to China, and Mongolia to Malaysia, 264 Brummies have volunteered in 48 countries in the 50 years since VSO was set up. During that time, the type of person volunteering has changed greatly to meet differing needs. From the original ‘gap year’ students of the 1950s, to the highly experienced volunteers of today with an average age of 41, the skills of VSO volunteers have progressed from a keenness to do something worthwhile, to a much more strategic emphasis on tangible, transferable professional skills. Indeed, Birmingham’s volunteers have shared their skills and experience right across the globe, originating from a range of diverse occupations, with past volunteers including a business skills development adviser, a chemistry teacher, a community forester, a special education teacher, a parks supervisor, a broadcasting officer, and an electronics engineer.
Brummies, along with volunteers from an increasing number of countries, have done much to help VSO meet changing global needs across the last five decades:
- 1960s: VSO works with victims of leprosy and supports countries preparing for decolonisation.
- 1970s: VSO focuses more on professional skills as it places its last school leaver overseas.
- 1980s: The average age of a VSO volunteer rises to 28 and 1,125 volunteers are placed overseas.
- 1990s: Post-genocide, VSO is invited to help rebuild the destroyed education system in Rwanda, and at the end of the decade launches VSO Business Partnerships, enabling companies to release staff for placements of between three months and two years.
- 2000s: VSO begins recruiting volunteers from Kenya, Uganda, India and the Philippines in recognition that people living in developing countries also have skills and experience to share, and a right to participate in volunteering.
Jonathan Dimbleby, President of VSO said:
"I've been involved with VSO for many years. What is essential, and what I've seen time and time again, is the on the ground partnership and genuine sharing of skills. The impact on the individuals and organisations with whom we work is far greater and far more sustained than you might imagine of a charity of VSO's size. Relationships are forged that endure. Relationships that are extremely useful in both countries.
“There is no question that people who do VSO find it a life changing experience, as anyone who has done VSO will testify. Whether they belong to an earlier generation when volunteering was done in a much more simple way, or whether they are high fliers from business or public sector doing a short term placement today, they are hugely affected by it and it changes their world perspective. They may have been sympathetic before, but after volunteering they see the country they volunteered in as part of a set of greater challenges globally. They become ambassadors for internationalism and this could not be more important than now, amongst the backdrop of global challenges we face."
John Crittenden, one of the VSO volunteers from Birmingham, who accompanied his wife Linda to Nigeria said:
“Looking back, my time as a volunteer in Nigeria was one of the most formative experiences in my life. The preparation and support from VSO helped us make a real contribution and it was gratifying to be part of a community where education was so valued, and where there was a chance to make a difference. Exposure to a different culture was exciting and a good preparation for the future. Would I do it again? Yes, I just might.”
To find out more about volunteering with VSO go to: www.vso.org.uk or call 020 8780 7500.
ENDS.
For more information, footage and stills or to arrange to film a training session, please contact George Ames on: 020 7403 2230, george@forster.co.uk
Notes to Editors
- VSO is the world's leading independent international development organisation working through skilled volunteers around the world.
- www.vso.org.uk
- For Birmingham’s volunteering footprint over the last 50 years and case studies see separate sheet.
- Archive broadcast quality footage and stills are available of VSO through the ages.
