Global Volunteers

1. Engage short-term volunteers to serve at the invitation and under the direction of community leaders while working alongside local people on community-based projects.
2. Eliminate childhood stunting, a debilitating condition that is preventable but not curable. The World Health Organization estimates that 22% of children under five worldwide are stunted.
3. Offer children and adults the opportunity to learn conversational English, the international language of commerce, technology, and opportunity and for many, a passport out of poverty.

Global Volunteers mobilizes and engages short-term volunteers to help developing communities deliver all the essential services every child needs to reach their full potential. Through a sustained, year-round, long-term stream of volunteer assistance, professional expertise and material resources, we directly address childhood stunting and other conditions which cause cognitive delays and restrict children's ability to reach their full potential.

We’ve organized 12 Essential Services into three broad categories to better visualize and leverage their impact:

Eradicating Hunger – providing school and household gardens, child nutrition, micronutrient supplementation and improved stoves.

Improving Health – providing nutrition, hygiene and physical and mental wellness education, infectious disease prevention, de-worming and hands-on care.

Enhancing Cognition – providing general education, girl’s education, potable water and sanitation facilities, psycho-social support.

These 12 Essential Services are applied comprehensively within community development projects where local leaders request them. They are the foundation of the Tanzania Reaching Children’s Potential Program (RCP); a child-focused, parent-driven, family-centered, and community-led effort. It begins with pregnancy, and continues through children’s 18th birthday, with a focus on the first 1,000 days of life. In Tanzania, parents participating in RCP have successfully reduced childhood stunting by 57% through volunteers’ efforts by:

1. Teaching nutrition, hygiene, food preparation to children and adults in schools and in workshops
2. Helping establish household gardens using EarthBox® technology for pregnant women, infants and toddlers
3. Distributing fortified meals, toothbrushes and toothpaste, hand sanitizer and other needed supplies to participating RCP families
4. Demonstrating proper handwashing with soap and water
5. Building handwashing stations, chicken coops, smokeless stoves and rainwater catchment systems
6. Supporting women’s co-ops and entrepreneurial ventures
7. Promoting mental and physical wellness and providing professional health care assistance at Ipalamwa General Clinic (IGC)
8. Training teachers in pedagogy, English and creating supportive classroom environments

Global Volunteers has the experience, know-how and commitment to carry out each of our stated community service strategies. Our legacy of service is demonstrated in more than 36,000 short-term volunteers of all ages and backgrounds over 36 years contributing to long-term development programs in more than 200 partner communities in 34 countries on six continents.

We offer year-round volunteer assistance to help deliver 12 Essential Services to every partner community. We extracted the 12 Essential Services model from the innovative work of the World Food Program (WFP), United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Our landmark work organized these essential services into three broad categories: Hunger, Health and Cognition. These are the areas where volunteers have the greatest impact. In over three decades, we've proven the efficacy of this model, as measured by volunteers, community partners and outside evaluators.

Parents and caregivers are responsible for ensuring their children’s futures, but volunteers provide the necessary information, appropriate technology and ongoing support. Volunteers from all backgrounds, professions and experiences provide catalytic assistance and material resources to help families access the 12 Essential Services – so children have sufficient food and nutrition, are protected from infectious disease, and can exercise their full intellectual capability through education. In this way, volunteers help children become fully functioning local leaders and global citizens. By helping to provide integrated essential services, short-term volunteers are a vital component in the broad framework of community development.

Simple concepts and readily available technologies can launch innovations that engage parents, teachers, children and volunteers alike. Volunteers “build a bridge” to resources for local people in developing communities, and help ensure their children have a chance to reach their full potential.

Meanwhile, as “agents of progress,” children themselves often are energetic adopters of new ideas and behaviors; exerting significant influence on their families. Working with children, volunteers’ positive influence ripples through the community – paving an avenue to lasting change. You can have a dramatic impact on what may otherwise seem to be intractable socio-economic global problems.

Global Volunteers’ unique philosophy of service ensures individuals truly serve others, wage peace, and promote justice directly and appropriately:

• At the invitation of community partners
• Under the direction of local leaders
• On sustainable community-based projects
• Hand-and-hand with local people
• To the best of our individual abilities

Volunteers serve in four primary program areas:
1. Helping deliver the United Nations prescribed 12 Essential Services focusing on children – eradicating hunger, improving health, and enhancing cognition.

2. Teaching conversational English, the international language of opportunity, to children and adults in elementary through university classrooms, businesses, children’s homes, daycare centers, government offices, and English language “Summer Camps.”

3. Supporting community development through projects to advance self-determination, gender equality and social justice, and broadening local capacity by investing in local leadership of collective actions which are important to the community as a whole.

4. Supplementing school-based curricula, including one-on-one services to students to improve their competency in reading, numeracy, computer literacy, health and hygiene, geography, science and other classroom subjects to enhance a student-centered learning environment.