MOVING FORWARD

On Thursday (December 9), I participated in an outreach training with CUSO-VSO and learned that volunteers would be raising funds to recover some of the costs of being placed. Although the idea of having to go out into the community seemed daunting to me at first, the outreach training connected me to various opportunities to stay in touch with people, who might be curious about volunteering in Africa or elsewhere. I also saw this as an opportunity to expose them to the world of doing volunteer work in the Third World and to possibly encourage them to do the same.

CUSO-VSO is a non-profit organization, which relies on agency partners and individuals to carry out their poverty work. Hence, they work with their volunteers to expand their reach in the community and have thought up different creative ways in which to best assist volunteeers with fundraising. One of these ways is the fundraising webpage, which volunteers can connect to their blog page or professional associations pages. I, for one, created this new Google blog strictly for the purpose of communicating to my donors my progress in fundraising, but also update them (and other curious ones) on the work I will be doing in the Sinazongwe District. As such, I will continue to communicate from the field. The other positive note to fundraising is that I have, at the least, six months to meet my goals.  

I suppose the first step is to establish some fundraising goals. I propose to meet the base amount of $2,000 and then push for the ideal amount of $4,000. If I break this down to a per person pledge, I would need to speak to at a minimum 200 people and get them to contribute at least $10, which I can certainly do.

The next step is to move forward with the fundraising page and then start uploading very relevant and interesting country information about my new home starting in February 2011 and especially about the Sinazongwe District.

So, STAY TUNED IN to my upcoming blogs in the very near future!!!