How your donation helps

Your support will have a life-saving impact on the lives of children, families and communities that urgently need our help. 

Emergency aid helps in the short term, but doesn’t last forever.  VSO doesn’t send aid, we send highly skilled professional volunteers that save lives and share their skills with local people to make a long lasting difference for generations. 

VSO volunteers help improve the standards of care in hospitals, give children a future through education, train poor people in the skills they need to feed their family – whatever needs to be done to empower local people to lift themselves out of poverty.

With this approach, VSO has created a continuous ripple effect – the knowledge and skills they share will be passed on from one person to another, so one volunteer’s contribution can go on saving lives long after they have returned home.

For example, Dr Paul Williams a VSO volunteer doctor based in Uganda trained over 200 community health workers to reach a population of 60,000. His work has made a huge impact on saving lives. He helped to reduce the rate of mother to baby HIV transmission from 50% to 1%. 

For every £1 you give, 90p goes directly to our work in the field, making VSO one of the most cost effective charities in the sector. 

Please help us to save lives today and for the future.