Volunteering will provide a truely life-changing experience for both giver and receiver.
Volunteering has a lot to offer people from a wide variety of backgrounds and walks of life. Being a volunteer enables you to face new challenges, develop creativity and expertise, meet new people as part of a team doing meaningful work, making a difference and growing personally, by learning new skills, gaining new experiences, and achieving a sense of accomplishment.
AVIF advocates sustainable development NOT handouts.
The main difficulty for any volunteer is that you WILL be asked for money by Kenyans. you come from a relative “land of plenty”.
The worst thing we can do for the Kenyans is take away their initiative & entrepeneurial creativity & resourcefulness by giving them handouts. A few items are acceptable e.g. donated classroom goods but too much more and the children will simply grow up to expect handouts .. not grow up independent & resourceful.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT is the key !
Our volunteers bought solar cookers for the women of Rabuor Self-help group Summer 2007 instead of simply giving a $20 note, these women now have a chance to improve their lung health, improve their quality of life, increase their ability to work (i.e not be busy cooking for so long), lessen their dependency on firewood & therefore lessen their impact on de-forestation i.e. help the environment, ease the effects of climate change .. and so on .. and so on.