I met my husband when he was involved with
an international organization that sends volunteers overseas to work in
developing countries, such as Cameroon. My husband is a Canadian who
volunteered to spend 18 months in a rural area in northwest Cameroon, working
with the local Council in the area of capacity building. The organization he
was with was called VSO (now Cuso International), which works in over 40
countries in Latin America, Africa and Asia. The North American volunteer
recruitment office is located in Ottawa. Cuso International focuses on certain
key areas of development, including governance, health and education. (http://cusointernational.org/volunteer)
During the period my husband-to-be was in
Cameroon, I found myself learning about the volunteer experience, while seeing
my husband learn about the local customs, issues and people of his adopted home
for 18 months. I had always thought the purpose of volunteering was to provide
services to communities that could not afford to pay for themselves. However,
what I learned from the many international volunteers that I met was that their
intent of being there was not so much to provide a service, as it was to help
the local people develop the skills they needed to take care of themselves. For example, in the education sector,
volunteers would spend some time with students, but the majority of their time
was used in training teachers and helping improve the way the school system
operated. Of course, the purpose of this approach is to help improve the school
system to a point where it is no longer dependant on international assistance.
