VSO celebrates 50th Anniversary: Newcastle and North East a thriving hub of 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 Newcastle have made worldwide. The city is home to one of the organisation’s most active local groups; VSO North East.

Since the region’s first volunteer, Charles Coxon in 1962, 189 Newcastle residents have volunteered in 48 countries in the 50 years since VSO was set up, from China to Cambodia, Malawi to the Maldives, and Romania to Russia.

The thriving volunteer community in Newcastle is extremely active; raising money and awareness for the charity, and bringing past and present volunteers together with supporters to share their experiences. The group ensures that volunteers can continue to find ways to change the world and their community when they are back in the UK, and are organising a conference and exhibition on 21 June to celebrate VSO’s impact on the world.

Over VSO’s 50 year history, 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, Newcastle’s volunteers have shared skills and experience right across the globe from occupations as diverse as an electronic engineer, a health educator, a nutritionist, a food crop specialist, a town planner, a maths lecturer, a physiotherapist, and an HIV & AIDS peer educator.

Newcastle 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: VSO is established with volunteering programmes operating worldwide
• 1960s: Charles Coxon, the first volunteer from Newcastle heads out with VSO from 1962 to 1963.
• 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 begins recruiting volunteers from Kenya, Uganda, India and the Philippines in recognition that people living in developing countries also have skills and experience to share and a right to participate in volunteering.

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."

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 Newcastle’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.