All the beautiful people

The Niger River, Mali

Way back in August 2007, I had an idea to start a crazy little organization called Meaningful Volunteer.  Check out my original thoughts on the matter here.

Since then, Meaningful Volunteer has blossomed and grown.  Volunteers are doing wonderful things in the Philippines, Grassroots Uganda goes from strength to strength, Mama Pamba is taking form, and we have funding to launch a mosquito net program and build a solar powered school in Uganda.

And just recently, we formed a partnership with My Best Friend's Closet in Vancouver.  They are selling craft from our Ugandan and Filipino based craft groups.

Now, as I look back as 2010 comes to end, I realize what the common thread has been that has helped Meaningful Volunteer grow. The answer is simple.

Beautiful people.  Abundant amazing beautiful people.

The person from My Best Friend's Closet is a good example.

The person who raised $1,000 for the malaria operation is a good example.

Ditto for the person who:

• Raised $5,000 for the school in Uganda
  
  
• Is working through the legal process for the land purchase in Uganda
  
  
• Is in the process of organizing a design contest in New Zealand to send a fashion designer to Uganda
  
  
• Is organizing a fund raiser for Meaningful Volunteer without our involvement
  
  
• Works as a member of our board
  
  
• Sells our fair trade merchandise
  
  
• Is checking out Nepal as a potential volunteer destination
  
• The person who raised $1,000 for Mama Pamba
  
  
• ... the list goes on!

And a special mention to our awesome staff and all those who volunteer their time.

Peace, love and good happiness stuff to you all.

I've posted this again, but I'll post it again because it sums up so many of the people who are making Meaningful Volunteer great.

Is doing nothing the best way to fight malaria?

Malaria is no fun.
Trust me on this.

Hell no!

"Bernie" over at Planck's Constant seems to think it is though.

Apparently, mosquitoes don't cause malaria^*, but poverty and ignorance do.  Bizarre.

If an almighty God came down from heaven and magically removed poverty and ignorance, malaria would remain.  If He instead chose to remove mosquitoes, malaria would be eradicated overnight.

Back in 1933, 30% of the residents in the Tennessee River valley area were affected by malaria.  Due to the cooperation of thirteen south-eastern states and the extensive spraying of DDT, malaria was all but eliminated by 1947.

Even today, malaria still has a presence in the States.  It is kept in check by extensive malaria control programs in California, Florida, New Jersey, Louisiana, Minnesota, Michigan, North Dakota, and Texas, among others.

I wonder how Bernie - a resident of the States (judging by his blog) - would feel if he were present in the Tennessee River valley area in the '30s and the government let him wallow in his "poverty and ignorance"?

Or how would he feel if his aunt contracted malaria after one of the aforementioned states pulled its funding?

Folks like Bernie tend to repeat the mantra that the market will solve everything: Don't send nets to Africa and some entrepreneur will step forward and sell nets to the locals.  Ta da!  Problem solved without foreign intervention.

News flash: There is no market in many parts of Africa!  The residents of Buyaya - where Meaningful Volunteer is based - cannot participate in a market based economy because they have no discretionary income.

Most residents survive as sustenance farmers, harvesting fewer and fewer crops as the years go by as the soil gets depleted.  They are - in effect - spending more than they make and are caught in a poverty trap.  They cannot buy nets because they have less-than-no-money.

Ideally, Africa would become self-sufficient and market forces could kick in.  Meaningful Volunteer tries its best to create disposable incomes through initiatives like Mama Pamba and Grassroots Uganda.

But, in the meantime as residents of Buyaya struggle everyday with malaria, Meaningful Volunteer will continue with its malaria program as Bernie looks upon dispassionately.

---

^* Technically true.  The malaria parasite that lives in mosquito saliva causes malaria

Five questions to ask before booking your volunteer trip

Over at Volunteer Global, Sarah lists five questions to ask before booking your volunteer trip.

I thought I would respond to them from Meaningful Volunteer's perspective.

The satisfying thing about answering these questions, is that is information is all readily available on our site and all I need to do is link to it!

Let's look at our fair trade fashion label project Mama Pamba as an example:

1. How much does the placement cost, and what does this cover?
   Mama Pamba costs $700 per month and this is where we spend the money.
   
   
2. Where exactly is this placement?
   Buyaya in Eastern Uganda.  We also have a detailed census that we conducted about Buyaya and photos of the accommodation.
   
   
3. What kind of work will I do?
   Mama Pamba is a relatively complex project.  We have created job descriptions for several roles within the project. For example, here is the job description for the human resource manager position.
   
   
4. What kind of schedule do volunteers have?
   This is covered in the aforementioned job descriptions.
   
   
5. Do you have alumni I can connect with?
   We have abundant volunteers who are happy to share their experiences.  Anyone of our staff members can provide this information.

We also just released our volunteer manual for Uganda. You can download it here.  We believe informed volunteers are empowered volunteers!

Volunteering is a dirty word

Volntourism is a new word bouncing around the internet.  It's so new that my spell checker doesn't recognize it!

"Voluntouism" means volunteer tourism.  You head off to Parts Unknown for some tourism, and then do so volunteering on the side and get some snaps of yourself with the less fortunate.

This article and this article are especially damning of voluntouism.

One lass is Vietnam was given the following training:

It’s the third door on your left. Don’t talk about war, politics, or religion.

Yikes!

In Cambodia, orphan children try to lure in tourists to visit their home at an orphanage.  The orphanage is kept squalid so that the tourists will leave a sizeable donation.

I have seen enough orphanages around the world to know this is true.  Money gets piled into (some) of them and it rarely benefits the orphans.

As an organization, Meaningful Volunteer needs to respond and learn from these criticisms.

For a start, we were planning to use volunteer labour to build our solar powered school in Uganda. Bad idea.

A much better idea is to use a lot of local labour to build it.  That way they will:

• Have some ownership of the project
  
• Be more likely to take care of it going forward.

Staying on a the education theme, we know that practically no child under nine can read a single letter, and no child under twelve can read triplet words (Cat, dog, hat...) in Buyaya.

These are terrible statistics and is something that Meaningful Volunteer can have an impact on.

We even have measures in place to ensure we are making a difference by doing control group testing.

And we do our best to have well informed and trained volunteers as I mentioned in my last post.

All the criticisms of volunteering (which we try to do) and voluntourism (which we are trying hard not to do) are welcome. They keep me up at night and be constantly asking the question: "How can we be more meaningful?  How can we be more meaningful?"

How to Empower a Volunteer

An Empowered Volunteer

Give them the information they need.

That's it!

It's not rocket science. It's not brain surgery.  It's not even rocket surgery.

And yet it is surprising how few volunteer organization do this.

The contents of our volunteer manual for Uganda is shown below.  You can download it from here.

• A history of Meaningful Volunteer and our philosophy
  
  
• Biographies on our staff
  
  
• How we spend your fees
  
  
• A history of Uganda
  
  
• What to expect when you arrive in the country
  
  
• Background on your placement area
  
  
• How to keep safe
  
  
• The Complicated Art of Giving
  
  
• Frequently asked questions
  
  
• A language primer

Rubber Soul 2010

Rockin' Out in Seoul for HIV/AIDS!

A BIG thank you to everyone who came together for Rubber Soul 2010!

Rubber Soul had rockin' bands spread across many cities:

• Vancouver
  
• Seoul
  
• Sydney

There was also a dining fund-raiser in Madison!

All up, about $US 5,000 was raised for Meaningful Volunteer!  Well done everyone!

This money will be used by Meaningful Volunteer to build a solar-powered school in Eastern Uganda.

Sizeable donations were also made to Little Travellers, Dr. Peters AIDS Foundation and Oxfam Canada.

Esther

Who is going to benefit from this in Uganda?

Esther N. is going to benefit from this.  

Esther is thirteen years old and HIV positive. This has left infections in her ears and her tongue to get out of control.  Esther will attend the solar powered school in Uganda and begin to learn to read and write.  Currently, she cannot recognize a single letter of the English alphabet.

Her studies will be supplemented by on-line materials that Meaningful Volunteer has developed.

Esther, and many like her, will benefit from the help of all the organizers (you know who you are!) and volunteers of Rubber Soul.

Remove the Politicians. Add farmers and fisher-folk.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference is under way in Cancun, Mexico.

Many of the world's leaders are absent from the event.  It is has yet to be covered by many mainstream news agencies.

This is depressing.  I can think of few issues greater than the fate of our shared planet.

Here's an idea: Kick the politicians and lobby groups out of Cancun and let the farmers and fisher-folk make the decisions.

The science is straight forward.  The solutions are do-able and affordable.  I trust that the farmers and fisher-folk - who are at the forefront of climate change - would do a far better job than the politicians.

World AIDS day and Meaningful Volunteer's Complete lack of HIV/AIDS Program

December 1st is World AIDS Day.

Meaningful Volunteer is marking the day and raising awareness by helping to organize Rubber Soul.  Rubber Soul is a chilling, swaying, rocking and foot-stomping international concert series for World AIDS Day.

Money raised by Rubber Soul will go towards a solar powered school in Buyaya, Eastern Uganda.

According to the United Nation's Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic, there are some promising signs with the fight against the disease.  The number of new infections has been declining since the late 1990s to reach the current level of 2.6 million. AIDS related deaths have decreased 19% from 2004 to 2009: 1.8 million died in 2009.

On the flip side though,  2.6 million people were infected in 2009! 1.8 million people died in 2009!

So, while we are making progress, it is still a massive problem.

So, what is Meaningful Volunteer doing about it? Nada.

We have looked at doing HIV programs for a long time now, but whenever we start looking into it, the problem gets harder and harder.

Here's an example of just how hard the issue can be.

At a guess, the HIV rate in Buyaya is 40%.  We haven't done any testing yet, but if it is anything like the ladies in Grassroots Uganda (who we have tested), then 40% is a good enough guess.

So what do we do about this 40%?  We supply them with ARVs.  ARVs are the medicine you take when you are HIV positive.  A person on ARVs should be doing three things:

1. Have regular contact with a doctor
   If the ARV dosage is too high, then the HIV builds up an immunity too quickly.  If it is too low, then the ARVs are ineffective.
   
2. Be eating an healthy diet.
   
3. Get regular exercise.

Number three is easy in Buyaya as the ladies spend much of their day collecting firewood and water, farming, and taking care of children.

Number one is hard.  Just transporting the ladies to a qualified doctor is a logistical nightmare.

Number two is nigh on impossible within Meaningful Volunteer's budget and expertise, because it would require solving the problem of lack of healthy food in Buyaya.  A massive problem in itself!

It just gets depressing when we try to attack the problem of HIV in Buyaya in a holistic way.

We may start an HIV education campaign in Buyaya soon.  Our first step would be to get the locals back to a zero level of HIV education by removing misconceptions.  Did you know, for example, that condoms increase your chances of getting cancer?  Or that people in Europe actually inject the virus into condoms?

Micro-Volunteering. Good or bad?

"Mirco-volunteering, just like normal volunteering, only one-eight the size." Number Two (kinda).

I usually cringe when I hear the phrase "Micro-Volunteering".

It brings to mind images of people clicking on a Facebook like-button for something like Save Darfur expecting that they've actually done something useful for Darfur.  Perhaps they've raised awareness of what's happening in Darfur by just a smidgen as people read their Facebook feed, but that is about it.

Then I saw this video by Ben Rigby at a TED talk.




Very interesting.  If this is what micro-volunteering is, then I like it.  Perhaps we should rename Facebook like-button-activism as nano-volunteering?  Maybe even yocto-volunteering?

We can't all head off to "deepest darkest Africa" and try to work with the less fortunate.  We can all volunteer in small ways though and work together to make this world a better place