I am going to depart from my usual monthly format and share with you a personal story based on a recent volunteer experience.
After the World Volunteer Conference in Amsterdam in January 2001, my husband and I began to talk of doing a special volunteer project in honor of the International Year of the Volunteer. In April I saw an online posting about the International Executive Service Corps, and after an online exploration we submitted an application for the corps.
The International Executive Service Corps (IECS) was founded in 1964 bya group of American business leaders, headed by David Rockefeller and Sol Linowitz, to assist enterprises in developing countries, and now in emerging democracies and markets, by providing the technical and managerial expertise and experience of volunteer experts. Since 1965 IESC and its volunteers have completed more than 21,000 projects in 120 countries. IESC has roughly 70 offices in 50 countries and the IESC Skills Bank contains the names and qualification of more than 13,000 American men and women willing to donate their skills and experience to enterprises in overseas assignments. IESC has traditionally focused on volunteers with expertise in business and industry, but recently they have expanded to include volunteers with expertise in health care, environmental protection and non-government organization development. Thought many IESC volunteers are retired, a substantial number are still working, but have a spirit of adventure and a real desire to help others. Husband and wife teams are encouraged. (www.iesc.org)
On July 5th we left for a one-month assignment in Armenia as part of a project to strengthen local Non Governmental Organizations (NGO's). Our assignment was to develop and deliver three training sessions in three different cities on basic nonprofit management. We combined my experience in the nonprofit world and my husband's experience in the business world into a three-day seminar called "Four Strategies for Building Professional and Organizational Credibility." Our target audience were newly organized NGO's that are in the process of developing grants for international funds administered through World Learning and USAID.
Armenia is a very small country bordered by Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijanand Iran. It is about the size of the state of Maryland. It was part of the Russian and then Soviet empire for more than 200 hundred years. The collapse of theSoviet empire left it isolated and impoverished.
We have spent the month of July with incredible people struggling to solve social problems with very limited resources. Volunteers have banded togetherto address issues that a struggling government cannot deal with. (Very few NGO's have paid staff in Armenia.) We have met volunteers working with street children, single parents, disabled children and adults, special needs populations, theelderly, the unemployed, and aging veterans. We have met with groups of teachers searching for new information and new teaching methods to improve their teaching skills; associations of young journalists passionate about preserving the freedom of the press and freedom of speech; university career women publishing research on gender inequities within their society; young men and women educating their generation about basic human rights; attorneys fighting for prison reforms and the guarantees of human rights; and men and women of all ages trying to builda new democratic society that will respect human rights and address human suffering.
We went to share knowledge and skills and to somehow contribute in a small way to these developing NGO's. We left enriched by the experience and humbled by the dedication, passion and hard work of the Armenian volunteers. They are eager to learn more about our structures and our approaches to problems and yet they know they must find their own unique solutions.
An unexpected benefit of this experience was the opportunity to meet atleast a dozen other volunteers, from the U.S. and other countries. Some were retired people traveling the globe to share their skills and knowledge in the belief that we are a global society and have a responsibility to one another. One gentleman was an executive VP for a large multinational organization before his retirement. Another woman, mother of eight, was an assistant vice president for a large bank prior to joining the Peace Corps. She said she wanted to give something back for all that she had received in life. She is now an IESC volunteer spending six months in Armenia to teach organizational development to NGO's. My husband and I were humbled to be in the presence of these wonderful, talented, dedicated international volunteers. Believe me, they often work under difficult conditions, but the personal sense of satisfaction is unbelievable. Volunteerism is flourishing in our global society.
I share this with you this month for several reasons. First, consider being an international volunteer. I guarantee you it will expand your horizons inway you cannot imagine. There are many organizations like IESC looking for talented, willing people, including the United Nations (www.iyv.org). There is something incredibly rewarding knowing that we volunteered our time and skills to work with these local volunteers. We were not paid consultants coming to tell them how to do things. They respected us because we, like them, were volunteering to make a difference.
Second, this is a wonderful example the power of the Internet to recruit and place volunteers. We heard about IESC through an online posting. We explored the organization and applied online. Our assignment came via email. We had two phone conversations prior to our departure for Armenia. All arrangements, questions, etc. were handled via email. Our orientation and background information came by mail. We met our first IESC representative in person one day after arriving in Yerevan, Armenia. It was the easiest, most convenience process we have ever been though.
Finally, I would like to interest some of you in reaching around our globe to assist volunteers in Armenia as they search for resources, ideas and knowledge to address their problems. If you would like to consider creating a partnership with an NGO in Armenia I would love to help you connect with folks I met while there. I know groups that need schools supplies, art supplies, children's books, basic office supplies, and people willing to share their expertise and knowledge. If you work for a nonprofit perhaps you can share current knowledge, textbooksand resources on such things as multidisciplinary approaches to special needs education or developing effective intergenerational programs. If you are a memberof a corporate volunteer program or a membership organization you could adopt astruggling Armenian NGO and send supplies, books or money. $100.00 will buy an unbelievable quantity of food for homeless children. If you are interested in helping in any way, contact me and I will try to put you in touch with an appropriate person in Armenia.
My husband and I are grateful to the United Nations for declaring 2001 the International Year of Volunteers because it gave us the push to do somethingspecial. We encourage our readers to do something special in honor of IYV, including exploring the options for global volunteering. Never underestimate the power of a single person to change the world (Margaret Mead).
