Where Will You Send Me

I received inspiring email from a I?m a

"First year medical student and military officer (2d Lt USAF)."

He wishes be a volunteer somewhere on the planet, he seem very sincere and a good guy. I am not sure, one week is a short time though to fly out of the country and acclimate, volunteer, figure out where you are, adjust, then do work. If he was in the same area as me, I could do something with him, hmmm

Any ideas, I think I will be in Nepal or India around July, possible I fly to Malawi or Niger in this time period. I would love to have a medical student with me to help analise Niger and help on my Malnutrition project.

http://wherewillyousendme.blogspot.com/

I feel a personal type need to figure out a way for all this energy I see on the planet to be utilized. There are many people who wish to volunteer, my experiment on the giving away sweaters or jackets in Peru so far seems feasible, and effective. I could maybe try to expand or work on this, funding for him. or by me is always an issue. I personally like the proposition of 100 percent of the money clearly being used to help. In many ways a person already traveling in some country can help cheaper than a person that has to be sent.

Medical expertise or access to sources of medical information is valuable on many issues

All of this comes down to one problem, I see organizations, my guesstimate is about 85 percent are just churning volunteers as a way to fund some type of make money for themselves project. Or the legitimate ones seem to have a 80 percent management fees and only about 20 percent gets to the needed situation.

Next comes the problem, I am not in the least wanting to make people beggars. I will not help to just give to people silly things. I do not wish to just feed a person, I want o help them to learn to feed themselves.

I will have to dwell on this, however this is one of them issues where the more ideas the better. It is feasible in my mind to make a website that would be self-sustaining and earn enough money from advertisers to pay for the volunteers. Not simple to explain, however it may be possible to have a susustainable form of financing for Volunteers, that would be paid for by advertisers on a website.

The next problem to be effective, self starters are needed, that wish to apply their energy, do real work, understand that volunteerings not going to the worlds most popular tourist area and volunteering.

More of going to the worst place for tourist, having nobody to talk to for a month, come home ragged and in pain. Knowing you was making the best attempts to do the right thing.

Thanks

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Chris said on Saturday April 15th, 2006 12:03:00 PM

I say do something like hooking up with a Gulf Hurricane devastation zone Habitat For Humanity home build. There's a screamin' need, a build lasts about a WEEK and pays dividends as you pick up some homebuilder's skills. That could come in handy as a force multiplier - for passing on skills to others elsewhere or just for building (say subcontracting) your own home build to save you big bucks. If you live in it for a year a two and sell it you'll make some good money. Repeat that and as they say the 3rd home you build is free.

ruftravel said on Sunday April 16th, 2006 03:01:00 PM

read jared diamond's book collapse. then went to peru and shocked that andes being bare or replanted with eucylaptus trees (which they thought were native trees). had this idea to go to wwf for funding, use money to go to high schools or local church to find teenagers to plant native trees plus local grass and shrubs next to them (tres don't grow alone). then every year thereafter for up to ten years, a volunteer or organizer would go back to each planting. if the tree,grass,and shrub were still growing, the teenager would be paid. result -- help poor young people with an annual stipend, motivate them during the year to make sure the tree gets a good start by paying each year for growth, and reforest parts of andes.change this however you want to.michelle neubert, monterey calif