When I think back to my university days, the people I met who were into volunteering abroad were the exotic types. Sunkissed skin, surf-hair or designer dreads, Buddha beads, lots of cheesecloth and sandals, and in possession of an air of the worldly-wise adventurer with a heart of gold. In short, much, much cooler than the majority of people around them, most of whom had never been further than Reigate.
Such volunteers could often be found to be telling tales of heroic volunteering in the world’s poorest nations during their summer holidays and reading weeks, and, during term time, organising sit-ins and petitions to free Tibet and the like. Meanwhile, the rest of us sat around nodding, bathed in guilty, self-conscious adulation.
Of course, this volunteer paradigm is entirely unrepresentative of the majority of people who are involved in the broad and varied world of volunteering jobs. As we know, volunteering takes place in a vast number of ways, from a few hours in a charity shop, to cleaning rivers and beaches, to preserving heritage sites and teaching children to read. In fact, between fifteen and twenty percent of volunteers are in fact IT professionals, recruited to help people in other countries learn and develop IT skills for the future.
The VSO IT volunteer recruitment manager Reshna Radiven told IT Pro website Silicon.com all about it this week. According to Radiven, more and more techies are volunteering, and the demand for them in countries such as Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya is growing. So, the volunteering abroad experience is not necessarily always the same; instead of teaching English, you could teach basic software skills, and instead of building schools and hospitals, you could build the IT infrastructures that can give less-developed nations the boost they need.
Now, of course, I’m not suggesting that IT professionals are not generally as gorgeous and well-travelled as the “classic” volunteers I described are. The point is, however, that more than one “type” of character can volunteer, and volunteer in exciting, exotic and truly meaningful ways, than perhaps we all think.
Author
Rachel Charman, a writer for JuicyJobs; Ethical Jobs UK – an environmentally friendly green job search board specializing in Environmental, NGO, NFP and ethical jobs. For job seekers Juicyjobs can help you find the ideal ethical job in the UK.
