ESSEX, England — Earlier this week I met my old friend Josh at my favourite pub for a few drinks and a catch-up. After the first round of beers I told him about The Borgen Project and the work the organisation does, ready to ask for a donation. Our conversation quickly turned toward the impact of volunteering we’d both done since we last met and our opinions were divided on the impact we’d both made.
My friend raised some practical issues that charities and organisations like The Borgen Project often face when lobbying for donations.
Before we last met in the beer garden of my favourite boozer, I had been to Nepal and taught English to Tibetan refugees while Josh had spent three months in Tanzania with the Voluntary Services Overseas continuing with an ongoing project to improve conditions in the area. Our experiences were very different and whereas I viewed my month in Nepal as largely successful, Josh was much more pessimistic about the impact he had made during his three months of volunteering.
Josh was part of a group which organised an Aids information day for the people of Kamachumu, a town in the Bukabo region of Tanzania near Lake Victoria which I was surprised to learn was one of the most polluted lakes in the world. Josh told me that swimming in the lake increased your risk of heart disease by 50 percent!
The aim was simple: Inform the locals on Aids protection and prevention – but there was a hitch.
The VSO volunteers had spent days preparing for the event announcing it over loudspeakers on cars driven through the villages and organising speakers to come and dispel the myths of Aids which prevent locals from taking life-saving precautions. The event was drawing to a close when the final speaker, a respected local preacher, took to the platform to address the crowd in Swahili. The English volunteers couldn’t understand what was being said until a Tanzanian volunteer translated for them.
It was too late.
The preacher held up an Aids Information leaflet that he’d cut into the shape of a cross and was telling the crowd that condoms were evil and against God’s will. Aids was a divine act and God’s choice, he told the villagers who responded with enthusiastic applause.
“They probably trusted him more than us” Josh said to me sighing.
With just a few words, the preacher undid the hard work that Josh and his team spent days planning for and potentially endangered the lives of anyone who took his advice.
“What’s worse is we wanted to do Aids testing at the event but couldn’t follow it up with any support. The money just wasn’t there. We couldn’t diagnose people with Aids and then just leave them, it would have been cruel.”
Experiences like this unsettled Josh and have made him second-guess the impact he made by volunteering. “There’s a bigger game to play” he told me.
I pushed my friend to consider the positive things his team achieved while in Tanzania.
Once of Josh’s main aims was to address gender inequality in the community which they achieved by organizing a football tournament for girls. “Outside the domestic sphere the girls really didn’t have a life – there wasn’t any allowance for a social life. The football tournament was just impossible before we came along.”
Josh and the other volunteers managed to engage hundreds of girls from the surrounding villages to play in a two month football tournament. For the first time, the girls were playing a team sport together which usually is played exclusively by men. “This sparked off the gender equality conversation in the area and gave a reason for the men to re-examine what they thought of the women,” said Josh.
Although he was disillusioned by his experiences, I reminded my friend that the work he did was a cog in the wheel and someone was surely in Tanzania now picking up where he and his team had left off.
“But I feel like I gained more from the experience than I could offer,” he said to me.
“That may be so” I said, “but it doesn’t end there. Hopefully you’ll do more volunteering in the future, enriched and educated the experiences you’ve already had. You’re a global citizen now – engaged with the struggles the developing world faces and willing to help. Your contribution may seem small now, but if you continue to help through volunteering, charity work or donations, the contribution you will make over a lifetime will be great.”
– Charles Bell
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