the Idea
This may seem obvious, but first and foremost you need to have an idea. In many cases,
this is sparked by something you’ve experienced and a desire to ‘do something’ about it.
Alex Tarrant, co-founder of Personal Overseas Development (PoD, p168), describes the
dawning of the idea that gave rise to his organisation:
It all started in the summer of 2001 when Mike, Rach and I (old friends and now business
partners) spent time in Tanzania, volunteering our time to help set up a small British
charity. It was an amazing trip that turned out to be career changing for all of us. One of
the ideas that came out of the work was to recruit volunteers from the UK to go and work
with the charity in Tanzania, and this led to us starting PoD.
The fact is, you may have hundreds of ideas, but trimming them down to the core aims of an
organisation is essential. To arrive at this point, some of the searching questions you might
need to ask yourself are: What is it that I want to achieve? How do I plan to go about it? Has
it been done before? Is there a genuine community need for the services I envisage? Whose
experiences can I learn from? A good way to kick off the process is to get out there and talk
to as many people as possible, to find out how others got started, the obstacles they encoun-
tered on the way, and soak up any advice they’re willing to dole out. Details of NGOs worth
approaching can be found on the websites listed in the Getting Help section on p252.
Aim for a Participatory Project
The crux of a successful project is that it’s participatory. This means more than simply
talking to the local people where you plan to initiate your project. It means that the idea
for the project should essentially come from them. It also means including them at every
step: discussing the project with them; taking their views and ideas on board; and giving
them as much hands-on involvement as possible – including involving them in the day-
to-day running of the project. In essence, it means working with the local community
towards a common goal.
It is important to stay in regular contact with the local community to ensure that the
community remains supportive of the project and that it’s continuing to meet their needs.
It also helps if your project has the capacity to evolve along with the community’s needs.
Key ways to ensure that a project remains participatory and well connected to the com-
munity include employing locals as project managers and staff and basing the organisation
in the overseas community, rather than as a satellite in your own country. Katherine Tubb,
founder and director of the volunteer-sending agency 2Way Development (p182), points
out some ways in which her organisation remains participatory:
We only work with existing organisations that have been in operation for one year or
more when we place volunteers. At all times, the organisation directs the nature of the
voluntary placements we organise, as we are looking to address specific skill shortages
they have identified. We do not run any of our own projects, but support locally driven
activities... Overseas, we have about three or four volunteer researchers who are based in
areas where we place volunteers. Their role is to monitor charities that we work with and
source new information...
Alex Tarrant talks about using similar means in implementing PoD projects (note the
strong presence of the word ‘local’ in his description):
Most of our projects are ‘local’ projects, driven and managed by the local community.
In other cases, the local community is always involved and all our projects are evaluated
on their benefit to the local community... We either respond to local requests to provide
volunteers or we approach local projects and ask if they would like volunteers. We feel
[spending time in the overseas communities] is important, and that is why we either have
our own staff in each country, or we work with an organisation or charity that is based
there. It is very important to keep in touch with the local communities and we feel it is
also essential to have strong local support for volunteers. From the UK, we make visits
each year to our overseas projects.
Penelope Worsley founded the successful Karen Hilltribes Trust (p169). She describes how
she maintains local participation in the Trust’s projects:
We depend on the overseas communities to tell us what they need. We insist that they
complete reports, surveys and are monitored before we fund the projects. We work to-
gether... [The overseas communities] are not only the beneficiaries but also the managers
of the projects, so they are fully involved in the projects. It is extremely important that we
visit the projects and see where the money is spent and discuss plans for the future. I visit
three times a year for 10 days at a time.The Teach Ghana Trust (www.teachghanatrust.org.uk; [email protected]) is a UK-based charity,
established in 2003 to advance the education of children in Ghana. The founders’ motivation
for setting up the Trust was a frustration with many volunteer-sending agencies who didn’t ap-
pear to be prioritising the needs of the overseas communities in which they were operating. In
reaction to this, the Trust aimed to arrange volunteer teaching placements in schools in Ghana
with the needs of the children being the absolute priority. However, as the trustees developed
their programme and began to interview for volunteer placements, they began to seriously
question the consequences of their volunteer placements and whether or not they had chosen
an appropriate means of achieving their initial goals. In early 2006, the Trust reviewed its poli-
cies and voted not to pursue any further volunteer placements.
While this may seem like an odd move, it is well worth considering the motives behind this de-
cision. The Trust’s experience highlights the necessity of really considering the impact of a project
on a community, the importance of placing the needs of the community ahead of your own
aims and agendas, and the realisation that the best way to help isn’t always the most obvious.
Here are some of the reasons that prompted the Trust to end its volunteering programme:
We knew that, as an organisation, we were in a good position to arrange placements
in schools in Ghana. However, we wanted to make sure that any volunteering scheme
we implemented was offering real, long-term and sustainable solutions to the issues we
were seeking to resolve.
We did not want to make schools in Ghana reliant on volunteers. There was a danger
that a reliance on volunteers would lead to schools not recruiting Ghanaians to teach,
which would not be good for employment levels and the domestic economy.
Equally, the Teach Ghana Trust had no guarantee that it would be able to send out
volunteers consistently – in fact numbers would fluctuate throughout the year. As such,
we would not be able to guarantee a consistent service to schools, making it difficult for
them to plan effectively.
The majority of our applicants were unqualified. We were anxious that we could not
be sure that we were arranging a placement for somebody who would make an able
teacher and who would be of real benefit to the children they taught.
There are already a number of organisations which offer excellent volunteering
schemes. We did not want to duplicate their work, or increase competition for volunteers
and funding that are so badly needed elsewhere.
Ultimately, the goal for the Teach Ghana Trust would be for schools in Ghana to no
longer require volunteers, but to be able to teach pupils with a staff of trained, salaried
Ghanaian teachers. We believe that a better way to ensure this would be to act as a
charity which endeavours to ensure a greater number of able, locally trained teachers
rather than alternatives to such teachers.More Harm Than Good
10: Start Your Own Charitable Project :The Idea