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Newsletter
January 2010
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THIS MONTH'S TOPICS
1. FROM THE SERVICE: Congratulations to our online volunteering community!
2. TIP: How to deal with inappropriate requests
3. EXPERIENCE: Focus on online volunteers: Summer Johansson
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1. FROM THE SERVICE: Congratulations to our online volunteering community!
In 2009 the UNV Online Volunteering service has seen an unprecedented growth in activities: the number of volunteering opportunities that development organizations published on the service website increased by 55% compared to 2008. The growing demand was easily absorbed: more than 8,500 online volunteers – 126% more than last year – engaged in tasks for which organizations required support.
The winners of the annual Online Volunteering Award demonstrated once again the significant impact of online volunteers’ support on the projects of development organizations. They exemplify the exceptional contributions that online volunteers made to peace and development in 2009.
Finally, the participation of online volunteers and organizations in the Volunteering for Our Planet campaign was crucial in achieving the registration of more than 1.5 million environmental volunteering hours and enabled UNV to send a strong message to the world leaders and delegates at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen.
Let’s build on these accomplishments and work together to set further milestones in 2010.
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2. TIP: How to deal with inappropriate requests
All volunteer opportunities are reviewed by the Online Volunteering service team prior to their publication on the website. We make sure that the opportunity descriptions are clear and in compliance with the criteria for opportunities. Opportunities are screened to ensure a smooth collaboration between organizations and online volunteers, limit potential risks and ascertain that they are in line with the UNV mandate. Opportunities that ask online volunteers to approach donors, submit funding requests or become involved in tasks with legal or financial implications, for example, are not eligible for publication. For more information about the criteria visit the Opportunity critera page.
If an organization that you are supporting online requests you to engage in activities that are not part of the task described in the opportunity as published on the Online Volunteering service website, and if you feel that the request is inappropriate, we encourage you to raise this with the organization or contact info@onlinevolunteering.org for advice.
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3. EXPERIENCE: Focus on online volunteers: Summer Johansson
“At times I keep the Blackberry under my pillow to respond to emails in the middle of the night”, says Summer Johansson. These emails are usually not related to Summer’s full-time job in Chicago, USA, but come from her students in refugee camps in Afghanistan or Uganda, or co-tutors worldwide. Summer is an online volunteer for RESPECT University (RU), a project of the Canadian NGO RESPECT International that provides post-secondary correspondence courses to refugees and internally displaced persons in various countries.
Summer started her engagement with RU as a tutor, teaching a course about small and medium enterprises to refugee students in Uganda. Shortly after, she started teaching a business course to young college-age girls in war-affected areas of Afghanistan. “As a tutor, I develop the course lessons, supplementary reading materials, and assignments. I mark all assignments and provide in-depth feedback to the students, as well as additional examples for further insight.” Currently she is working towards setting up courses for students in Kenya, Bhutanese refugees in Nepal, and Burmese refugees in Thailand.
She took on the additional responsibility of Regional Coordinator for Anglophone Africa, Asia & Asia Pacific. “I manage and coordinate with focal points at various NGOs with whom we work in order to provide RU courses, recruit, train, coordinate and monitor all RU tutors, as well as research and reach out to new and potential NGOs that are interested in providing RU courses at their facilities“. Her efforts have helped promote RU to new regions, and brought over 500 new refugee students to enroll with RESPECT University. The toolkit she has developed now equips tutors with all the necessary information and materials required to conduct long-distance courses for war-affected refugees/internally displaced persons.
“I love this work and believe in it so much that I literally devote on average 30 hours per week. Whilst maintaining a full-time job, I literally work on RU every second I have. I have the privilege to learn and understand the goals and dreams of my students. I have found that teaching has been a revolving pattern. Even though I am teaching, I continue to learn from my students”, she says.
While the majority of her volunteer time is devoted to RU, Summer is extending her support to other organizations too. The opportunities for which she chooses to apply are within the realm of proofreading and coordinating. “I try to focus on my strengths and if an opportunity is featured where I feel that I can contribute effectively, then I will apply”. She has helped the Target MDGs Program in Indonesia to better inform society about the Millennium Development Goals by proofreading their promotion and communication tools, and coordinated a team of eighteen online volunteers promoting the UNV Online Volunteering service in India.
One wonders how she manages to combine her volunteer activities with a demanding full-time job. “I budget my time by spending between one and two hours per day on volunteer activities. I typically spend an hour answering emails, or grade papers during my lunch break at work. The other hour is spent on the same sort of tasks when I return home from work. However, the majority of my work takes place on the weekend.”
