We can join volunteer work easily, thanks to “project abroad”.

 

              In this blog, I am going to talk about the organization which is called “project abroad”. Maybe almost all of the readers of this blog do not know what it is. In fact, I did not know it recently. So why did I choose it for this blog? Through my blog so far, I have talked mainly about Doctors without Borders. That is because I am interested in volunteer activity, and I want to join or support this kind of things. However I realized that it is difficult for me to participate in Doctors without Borders except to contribute fund raising campaign, for example it needs medical license and skill to speak English or French. Only raising fund is not enough for me, I want to go and work for people who need supports in practice. On the other hand, I can join “project abroad”! This organization recruits anyone like from high school students to old people, and also age, gender, background and experience do not matter. If we want to do it, we can do it. Then, what kind of volunteer activity it did, and in the first place, what is it?

 

              “Project abroad” was started in 1992. Its activities are not only dispatching volunteers, also providing chances of internship and experiencing culture and life in a country. This head office is in United Kingdom, and branches are in all over the world, like Japan, United States, Canada, Australia, France, South Africa and so on to inform the program more people. Every year, about 10 thousand volunteers work in around the world, and became the organization which represents the U.K. and the U.S. All its programs are so impressive for me, but the best one is of cause dispatching volunteers! There are so many countries where actually it works like in Africa, Asia, East Europe and Latin America.

 

              There are many kinds of volunteer program, and I will introduce parts of them. First one is “care”. It is to care children in orphanage, day-care center and kinder garden. Main works are to support basic care like diapers, change of clothes, meal and bath, to play game with them and to teach them skill of life. Depending on the host country, volunteers interact with street children. They provide food, advice about health, teach literature and take them to beach and play to forget their harsh life. Poor English skill or no license does not matter in this program. Second one is to teach children Japanese and English. And we can teach them other things which we are good at, for example mathematic, music, computer, P.E., dance and art. We do not need experience and license. Third one is to preserve environment, for example, helping sustainable farming, maintaining African protection area of nature and conserving ecological system of the tropical rain forest in South American. Forth one is to build and mend school, library house and orphanage. It leads that people can access education, spend stable lives and improve their qualities of lives.

 

              In this blog, I can not explain “project abroad” enough, so I will continue this topic to next blog and give information more detail. I hope you get to be more interested in volunteer works! Thank you for reading.