LAST week, I attended the International Volunteers’ Sharing Session hosted by the Philippine National Volunteer Services Coordinating Agency (PNVSCA) at Quezon City, Philippines. I was among the representatives of local partner institutions (LPI) who work with a United States Peace Corps (USPC) volunteer and presented the experience of La Trinidad local government units (LGU). This was a good program of the PNVSCA as I learned different challenges encountered by both the LPI and the International Volunteers.
I had been writing pros and cons of having a DRRM oriented politician in our LGU. The effect of understanding Republic Act 10121 always leads to seeking of resources to implement program in Disaster Risk Reduction and Management. But local government units have limits in employing personnel. Thus, working with volunteers should be among the strategies to add resources to existing DRRM workers in the locality.
La Trinidad MDRRMC has resorted to this by requesting for manpower from partner volunteer providers such as Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and USPC. In the Philippines, there are a lot more providers than the two agencies I’ve mentioned. International volunteers can also come from Korean International Cooperation Agency (Koica), Australian volunteers, United Nation volunteers, France volontaires, and others. If your request was not available from one, you can ask from the other. Just make sure that you comply with their requirements.
But before having to request for a volunteer, there are a lot of things that needs to be considered. Firstly, the international volunteer who is to be assigned to you is coming from a far different place with different culture and language. They will surely miss their life at some point thus, it is important that they will have a new family in your place. There should be a host family who would be there to provide their needs, including comfort, when they would need one.
Caring Filipinos, however, sometimes overreact in some situations during an international volunteer’s stay. One of the sharing revealed that sometimes, when a volunteer just needs an hour or two to sleep and have rest, the host family, especially our elders, react untowardly. I understand that we may care, but we also need to consider that when they need time to sleep, they have to sleep. And they don’t want us to disturb them by asking how they feel every two minutes.
Secondly, working as a volunteer means no compensation of any kind or whatsoever. Therefore, when a volunteer comes to work for us, at least we provide a chair and a table for them. I thought this is basic, but when I heard their stories, some of our kababayans (not in La Trinidad) do not provide. It would be much better if they could have their own office too. For them to concentrate on whatever work they need to accomplish.
Finally, when you will have a volunteer, you need to have a schedule with them for a talk, updates, and discussion regarding their work plan. Some volunteers get lost along the way and could not deliver what is expected from them when not monitored by their Local Counterpart. Once in a week should be fine. Every day would be the best.
These are just some of those I thought important considerations when working with your international volunteers. I mean, of course, other expected problems in the Philippines like Filipino time, stray dogs and cats, language barriers, culture differences (Like eating rice three times a day), hazard prone geography, and others are there, but can be adopted to. Luckily, here in La Trinidad MDRRM, we have our brilliant volunteers who are working productively and does daily collaborations, with the support from all the employees of this LGU.