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VOS Celebrates 25 years in China

Don’t be surprised when organizations, passionate about their work, confess they want to shut up shop.  This is not what it seems. Especially for the not-for-profit sector, where charities and organizations like Voluntary Service Overseas, the UK NGO celebrating 25 years in China this year, help facilitate change on the ground. The goal is to get the work done and move on, even if it takes two decades to do so. 

Li Hongyan Education Programme leader at the VSO China office in Beijing puts it succinctly: “Our ultimate aim is to make ourselves redundant.”

VSO bring professionals from specific professions to volunteer and work with local partners, to fight together for the elimination of poverty and to assist the disadvantaged all over the globe.

So VSO China takes some satisfaction, Li said, in the fact that its English Language Teacher Training Programme (ELT), its most ubiquitous volunteer programme, will close in 2009.

VSO China Country Director Li Guozhi said this does not mean that all its activities in China will come to an end. “The scale of ELT volunteering will decrease. However, that does not mean we are “downsizing,” because our other programmes focusing on the Norwalk Virus (NV) and HIV/AIDS are growing, and we are driving volunteering for that work.”

VSO China will continue to promote national volunteering work and expects more volunteering for new programmes.

VSO China was founded in 1981 at the behest of the Chinese Government, because the government recognised that English-language study was vital for China’s long-term development and that students would need tuition assistance.  Primarily concerned with education, VSO once had 150 volunteers helping to train the trainers of China’s rural schoolteachers; there are now 50.

More than 1,500 volunteers have taken part in VSO China programmes that have primarily provided teacher training in rural areas.

Much has changed in those 25 years and down through the years the global organization has weathered difficult times.

Founded in 1958, with more than 30,000 volunteers sent to work abroad, the world's largest development charity experienced temporary difficulties in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001 in New York City.  Public uncertainty about personal safety created a ripple of concern throughout the world. 

Almost no individual or organisation was left untouched. For volunteer organisations providing help to countries and people in the developing world, the attack threatened to be devastating. Offers to volunteer fell by more than 40 percent in the months following the attack, but the concerns abated and recruitment numbers began to rise again.

 For the voluntary sector, and for charities like VSO, the drop in volunteers created an opportunity to reconsider the roles they play and the functions they serve in a changing world.

Leona Daly, spokesperson for VSO UK, said: “In the wake of the war on terror, some countries were advocating a withdrawal from the international arena, while others were encouraging even closer ties to stem the threat of terrorism. International development issues fell somewhere between these two, and keeping that agenda relevant was a challenge for all development agencies.”

Daly said: “It made us look at how we engaged with different cultures…if there was more we could be doing to encourage different sections of the community to get involved in our work.”

In 2003, the onset of SARS in China brought further worries for volunteer organisations; some were advised to close their programmes and send their volunteers home. This turned out to be a temporary phenomenon.

An experienced volunteer, of the calibre that VSO likes to recruit, Britain Paul Hider has been teaching and training in the United Kingdom and China for 20 years. Hider worked with VSO China from 1994–97 and from 2005-07, first as an English language teacher in a Teachers’ College in Guizhou Province and later as an in-service teacher trainer in Yunnan Province.

“My specific role enables teachers in poor, rural areas to improve the effectiveness of their teaching.”

Hider trains and helps Chinese teachers of English to adapt their teaching method to be more communicative and active, as required by the Chinese Ministry of Education’s New Curriculum.

“This, in turn, gives their disadvantaged students opportunities for further education and better jobs.”

But all this doesn’t happen without support. Capacity building and partnership development with the corporate sector is one of the important ways charities survive difficult times. Companies such as Accenture, Ranstead, JP Morgan and Citibank in China have business partnerships with VSO that have proved popular with their staff and their shareholders.

For the voluntary sector, the growth of the CSR (corporate social responsibility) agenda has been significant for international development, and it is creating new fertile ground for business partnerships. It represents a shift in the attitudes of both private sector companies and their employees in how they view their contributions.

Li Hongyan said, “Although human resources form part of our expertise, we are not a funding agency. CSR is an important part of our work.”

Through their CSR programmes companies support charities monetarily, but they also learn how the skills of their employees can be used.

Daly said, “These types of initiatives have proved a very popular incentive for staff, particularly those which allow them to take career sabbaticals and volunteer their skills.”

However there still remains a large gulf between a genuine interest in the CSR agenda and making it work on the ground.

“That said, companies who are really stepping up to the mark are reaping the rewards,” said Daly.

As part of its year-long celebration to mark the achievements of VSO in China over 25 years that began in April with a three-day event in Beijing, the Lord Mayor’s Appeal Great Wall of China Challenge from October 8–16 will hold a five-day trek along the Great Wall. The event will be attended by Lord Mayor of London City, Alderman John Stuttard carrying the VSO banner.