Clean Water For All

For those of you who have ever thought about volunteering abroad, know someone who wants to volunteer abroad, or simply want to support an organization doing great work abroad, I thought I’d tell you a bit more about Village Volunteers.  Village Volunteers, the organization that I went through for this Kenya trip, is a Seattle-based non-profit that partners with Community Based Organizations (CBOs) all over the world.

Shana Greene Dormitory

If you’ve read my posts on Emmanuel’s school in the Maasai Mara or Joshua’s Common Ground for Africa, which is a school, bio-intensive farming training facility, and water filter plant, then you already know about some of the terrific programs that Village Volunteers supports.  They also work with programs in the fields of healthcare, economic development, women’s empowerment, childcare, and more.

Village Volunteers works with these programs in two ways.  The first is to send international volunteers like me to work with CBOs on specific projects or to provide general assistance.  All the marketing work I’ve done for the water filter project in Kiminini was a direct result of the partnership between Village Volunteers, Common Ground for Africa, and the Kenya Ceramic Project.  The second way Village Volunteers supports these organizations is to help them find funding sources through grants or connections to private donors.  Many of these amazing organizations simply wouldn’t be able to survive or flourish without the help of Village Volunteers.

Recognition of Shana and Village Volunteers

To give you an idea of how much these global programs appreciate the help of Village Volunteers, Joshua from Common Ground for Africa told me that he named one if his daughters after Shana Greene, the Executive Director of Village Volunteers.  There’s also a Shana Greene Dormitory, and Emmanuel’s primary school publically recognizes both Shana and Village Volunteers.  I’ve personally been so impressed with the quality of the people and program that I recently joined the board of directors of Village Volunteers.

If you have any interest in either volunteering internationally, volunteering domestically to support Village Volunteers, or supporting Village Volunteers financially, please visit www.VillageVolunteers.org for more information or you can e-mail me at jeremy@villagevolunteers.org.

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