Volunteer Positions

Vacancy:

How you can get involved:

Volunteers can get involved in a variety of ways - one of the most common is through volunteering in the project of your choice. However, you can take your volunteering to a higher level again if you wish. Below we provide some other opportunities that exist for dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers.

Volunteer co-ordinator:

In order to offer for this help, we need you to be familiar with the project with which you will offer to co-ordinate volunteers for. You may be a previous volunteer, or someone local nearby one of the projects who has the internet equipment and time necessary to assist the director of the orphanage / project. We pass on any applicants who wish to volunteer in the project to you and you answer their questions and organise their placements and travel details to pass on to the project director.

Especially if you will be travelling to a new project you may want to offer to help communicate with later volunteers and to assist the director with communicating with futures volunteers. In some cases, the project director may choose to assign a volunteer coordinator who is volunteering at the project and who may be given a small donation out of the volunteers fees with which to help cover internet and travel costs associated with communicating with new volunteers, but this will be negotiated by the director themselves.

Regional Supervisor

Regional Supervisors help train volunteer coordinators and review and make decisions on new projects to join Kids Worldwide. Regional Supervisors also offer training to directors of projects in management and accounting procedures to help fulfil the requirements ofKids Worldwide. All Regional Supervisors must have spent a period of time as a Volunteer Coordinator prior to taking on this position.

Project co-ordinator:

This involves finding projects in developing countries to take part in our volunteering program and interviewing and communicating with the directors.

We will provide you with the criteria and documents to ascertain whether a project would be suitable for taking volunteers. Some volunteers like to take on this position after they have already volunteered in one of our projects by making contacts in the country where they volunteered, before returning home.

After discussing with the director what you have in mind, you may need to organise volunteer coordinators for the project once you have collected all the necessary information. It may require that you initially discuss with volunteers who sign up and then hand over the duty to one of the first volunteers who will come out to stay for a longer period of time.

Publicity Team:

Help spread the word through mailing lists, discussion groups etc online and in your community. When you return from your volunteership, request to become part of our Publicity Team and share the highlights from all the projects to your community. You will take part in a special mailing list where you can come to know what's happening with KIDS projects around the world and can discuss with project directors and volunteer coordinators around the world. Assist volunteers travelling to their project with fundraising ideas and advice. Make PR materials for them to use. The ideas are endless!

Sponsorship co-ordinator:

Many orphanages would like to receive sponsors for the children in their care. Especially when the children get older, higher education can be costly and beyond the reach of the orphanage to send them.

You may like to assist the director of a project that you identify with, in finding sponsors for the children and take photos and design information about the children to give potential sponsors. This will work well if you continue to communicate with volunteers who are still at the project and get them to send regular updates to the sponsors in your country.

 

Lending a helping hand

To become a volunteer working in an orphanage will undoubtedly be a life-changing experience. You will be getting to give your love and attention to children who most desperately need it.

To grow up in an orphanage, automatically means that a child is one amongst many. The children do not receive the same attention and personal care that a child would who was growing up with his or her parents, despite the best wishes of the orphanage staff.

You will invariably find, that as a volunteer from abroad, you will become a curiosity to the local people. Just by your mere presence, you may well be able to assist them in receiving donations from community members that may not have been offered had you not been there. Utilise this sentiment, and offer to go with the staff when they go to take kids to the doctors and collect food and other materials for the kids.

Share a way of life & friendship.

Not only do you live amidst the locals, but you may also be staying with other volunteers. Many of our volunteers have made strong friendships with the other volunteers whom they have met during their stay, and they continue to communicate and meet each other when they return home.

Cultural Immersion

As a volunteer, you get a completely different experience to that of the average tourist. For starters, you are accomodated on site at the project in which you are involved. This means that you get to experience real life as the locals live it - both an eye-opening and an interesting experience!