Download the entire VisaRus School Directory!New!
 |
Tatiana Gavrilova Editor |
Tania is a full-time journalist who occasionally finds time out of her hectic shedule to write for VisaRus. We'd like her to write more, but then so would everybody... |
| Would-be volunteers are finding more and more that commercial organisations are cashing in on their goodwill. Tatiana Gavrilova offers her advice on side-stepping these parasites... | ||
Cashing in
Volunteers come in all shapes and sizes. To mention but a few, there are year-out students looking for life experience, real Samaritans who dedicate vast amounts of time to helping those in need, and armchair volunteers who think long and hard about the difficulties and dangers before finally deciding to make a donation to Oxfam instead.
For those who simply have some time on their hands, say a career break or a gap between studies, spending some time as a volunteer could be an interesting and life-changing experience. A quick search on our favourite information-seeking tool, the internet, brings up a whole raft of sites and links. Most of them share one common feature- “XYZ international invites you to volunteer in country a, helping people B for amount of money C..”
Wait, stop, did I read that right? ‘voluntary organisations’ that make you pay money to volunteer? Isn’t that against the whole point of volunteering? Well, volunteering is good business because there are people who are willing to pay to have someone else organise the experience for them. That’s fine for people who are willing to do that, but wouldn’t all that money be better spent directly by the volunteer on the people in need?
I have often heard the same story- people come to Russian cities as students, see poverty and want to help. They try to find a place to volunteer their services, but don’t even know where to begin. There are even teachers who, rather than vegetating during summer breaks, would rather do a good turn for a needy cause somewhere… if only they could find the needy cause.
Help is at hand, because VisaRus will soon be opening a volunteering programme that puts suitable volunteers directly in touch with appropriate organisations. Site users already registered as teachers will be able to apply to the programme and, if successful, have their details hosted in a special area of the site accessible only to charitable or similar organisations. Likewise, registered volunteers will be able to browse organisations and view contact information. New users will have the option to be signed up as a volunteer without going through the teacher registration process.
Any users or visitors to the site can request more information from tania at visarus.co.uk
Article viewed 1145 times| 4 comments | Leave a comment | More articles by this author
Add to:
Random Quote by Woody Allen
"I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia."
RSS random quotes for your site