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VSO celebrates 50th Anniversary: Leicester ranked within top ten towns and cities for VSO volunteers

VSO, the world’s leading development organisation, begins the countdown this week to its 50th anniversary on Sunday, by celebrating the contribution volunteers from Leicester have made worldwide. Leicester features in the charity’s top ten towns and cities for volunteering with VSO.

From Ghana to Guyana, Kenya to Kiribati, and Malaysia to Mozambique, 183 Leicester residents have volunteered in 48 countries in the 50 years since VSO was set up. During that time, the type of person volunteering has changed greatly. From the original ‘gap year’ students of the 1950s to highly experienced volunteers today with an average age of 41, VSO volunteers skills have progressed from a keenness to do something worthwhile to a much more strategic emphasis on tangible, transferable professional skills. Indeed, Leicester’s volunteers have shared skills and experience right across the globe from occupations as diverse as a midwife, a wildlife ecologist, a construction instructor, a physiotherapist, a horticultural research assistant, a marine biologist, a HIV & AIDS health educator, and a methodology trainer.

Leicester residents, along with volunteers from an increasing number of countries, have done much to help VSO meet changing global needs across the last five decades:

• 1950s – Bernard Wilson, the first volunteer from Leicester travels to Malaysia in 1959.
• 1960s: VSO works with victims of leprosy and supports countries preparing for decolonisation.
• 1970s: VSO focuses more on professional skills as it places its last school leaver overseas.
• 1980s: The average age of a VSO volunteer rises to 28 and 1,125 volunteers are overseas.
• 1990s: VSO is invited to help rebuild the destroyed education system in Rwanda, post genocide and at the end of the decade launches VSO Business Partnerships, enabling companies to release staff for placements of between three months and two years.
• 2000s: VSO’s Diaspora volunteering initiative is launched to enable more people from black and ethnic minorities to share their skills with communities in their country of origin. Just last weekend, the government recognised the importance of the Diaspora volunteering initiative, with a £3 million funding commitment to VSO.

Jonathan Dimbleby, President of VSO said:

"I've been involved with VSO for many years. What is essential, and what I've seen time and time again, is the on the ground partnership and genuine sharing of skills. The impact on the individuals and organisations with whom we work is far greater and far more sustained than you might imagine of a charity of VSO's size. Relationships are forged that endure. Relationships that are extremely useful in both countries.

There is no question that people who do VSO find it a life changing experience, as anyone who has done VSO will testify. Whether they belong to an earlier generation when volunteering was done in a much more simple way, or whether they are high fliers from business or public sector doing a short term placement today, they are hugely affected by it and it changes their world perspective. They may have been sympathetic before, but after volunteering they see the country they volunteered in as part of a set of greater challenges globally. They become ambassadors for internationalism and this could not be more important than now, amongst the backdrop of global challenges we face."

Elizabeth Hiscocks, 61, volunteered with VSO in The Gambia for a year between 2002 and 2003. Mrs Hiscocks, of Huncote, Leicester, was a tutor to student nurses in the tiny West African country.

“I was given a very warm welcome in The Gambia – VSO has a long and successful history of volunteer work in the country so everyone was used to our presence. I also travelled to Senegal and the islands of Cape Verde. When I came back to nursing work in the UK my entire outlook was transformed. I couldn’t believe how much we have here by comparison – drugs, equipment, and staff. I knew a great deal about the difference but nothing could have taught me so much as actually working there did.”

To find out more about volunteering with VSO go to: www.vso.org.uk or call 020 8780 7500

ENDS.

For more information, footage and stills or to set up an interview with a returned volunteer please contact George Ames, 020 7403 2230, george@forster.co.uk

Notes to Editors

• VSO is the world's leading independent international development organisation working through skilled volunteers around the world.
• www.vso.org.uk
• For Leicester’s volunteering footprint over the last 50 years and case studies see separate sheet.
• Archive broadcast quality footage and stills are available of VSO through the ages.