Thursday, August 2, 2007

A visit to a one-of-a-kind volunteer organization.

VSO Bahaginan

Share with them
not just your skills & resources
but also your
hopes and dreams.


Ms. Anna Marie Dizon of VSO Bahaginan was so kind to accommodate us even though there was quite a problem with our appointment. :P

After a long series of finding a volunteer organization we can interview, VSO Bahaginan came into rescue! Credits to my group mates! Go Group 5!

After, let's get into serious stuff...

VSO Bahaginan - not just a typical volunteer organization that render services to a community. Its more than that. It render service in the means of helping other volunteer organization which involve the delivering of volunteers. VSO Bahaginan is a developmental organization committed to fighting global poverty and disadvantage through a wide range of volunteer development programs. Its UK-based organization works through, together with the volunteers, sending them to more than 30 countries in the developing worlds such as Asia, Africa, the Balkans, the Pacific and the Caribbean.

It has major recruitment bases found in the Philippines, Canada which is the first recruitment base, UK, Kenya, India which right now hasn't reach the federation status member yet and lastly, Ireland.
VSO Bahaginan has 3 major volunteering programs:

1. International Volunteering Program.
VSO Bahaginan recruits skilled volunteers with professional qualifications and experience from a range of disciplines from everywhere in the Philippines to live and work in local communities, sharing skills and changing lives.


"Some people might say why bother to help others abroad when millions of disadvantage Filipinos need all the assistance they can get? Well, if every society waited to "get everything together" before reaching out, the world would be truly a mess! the wonderful things about VSO work is that it breaks down the borders in the collective consciousness. No more 'us' and 'them', we're all in it together.

- VSO Pamphlet
2. KABAHAGI - National Volunteering Program.
VSO Bahaginan supports the promotion of local or national volunteering by way of partnerships with voluntary and volunteer-involving organizations in a range of activities that would support and promote the mobilization and strengthening of local capacities. We encourage active global citizenship that contributes to the development of local communities through volunteering.

3. Youth Volunteering
VSO Bahaginan recognizes the role of the youth in nation building. We offer young people a chance to make a real difference to community projects in the Philippines and the UK through the Global Xchange Programme.

* Among all the programs, this has the most competitive application due to limited slots.
*Recruits youth ages 15-25
*Short volunteering program without possesing any professional qualification
*Volunteer work will be consisted of 3 months Volunteer work in Mindanao
3 months in UK. ---> Even a developed country has pockets pf poverty
"No matter where you are, poverty exists, in different context".
*
Whatever skills will be harnessed.

Accomplishments of VSO
there is really more than the list!

~Volunteers area awarded by different governments recognizing the invaluable assistance they provided.
~Most Volunteers after coming back finds themselves more valuable and chose 80% of them to become International Development Workers.
~Volunteers became advocacy officers dealing with missing persons, peace builders, and project officers of different organizations addressing poverty reduction.
~Annually, they send 100 Filipino Volunteers on over 34 developing countries.


"Volunteerism has different reasons and motivation. It a way of giving a part of yourself such as dedication, time, skills, personal experiences and not just things in excess. You do it because of Altruism, out of the kindness in your heart. And at the end, you realize that you've gain a lot more from the learning".

-Ana Maria Dizon
Recruitment Staff

Learning? It's within yourself, you realize that you can make a difference because of your national curiosity of people and by contributing to global understanding of issues.

You become more optimistic since you have been exposed different realities unimaginable.

"Better becoming one less person than nobody knowing"

Commnity Profiling


This lecture was different from the others; it gives you the hint that play is over and let's get to the serious business.

Sir Deocariza discussed community profiling. A preparation to all CWTS students before we embark on the journey of our own, to a community assigned to us.

It is not easy to go into a community and try to give them your service without the proper knowlegde of the said community.It involves a lot of planning. There are several things to be considered first:

What kind of service the community needs...

Give them a fish... they will eat the fish for a day
Teach them to fish, they will fish for a lifetime.

Their realities is different from yours.
What you think they need isn't what actually they need.

This where Community Profiling comes in.

Community Profiling is an inventory of information of the key features, needs and resources of a community.

This is very important because it gives you a better understanding of the community. It eventually helps you decide what projects are suitable for a certain community we are to render.


Community profiling is a rigorous process and involves a lot of steps to be taken.
1. Organization and Planning
2.Data Collection
3. Data Processing and Presentation

It would be much easier if a community already has an existing profile since you just have to update them. But take note, only few communities have the budget to do a community profiling, so most of the communities don't have their profiles which means one thing, one has to start in scratch.

It easy as said but far hard when you are actually doing a community profiling. A lot of issues and problems and arises and there are a lot of things to be careful about especially when it comes to ethical issues.


But at the end, only one things is important: Being able to render service and at the same time learning from it as well.

And I'm excited. :P