Paul from the Calabash Trust collected me from the guest house this morning and we headed out of town via Port Elizabeth Central. Weaving through traffic (which compared to Cape Town traffic hardly deserves the name) Paul gave me some background on the Calabash Trust’s Volunteer Programme.
When originally approached by Harold Goodwin of a UK based company called People and Places who were looking for a partner in South Africa for placement of volunteers, Paul was sceptical. “I’d seen some of what went on with young school leaving volunteers coming out to SA without any experience, being dumped at a township project. Often they were there for the ‘jol’, or their motives weren’t exactly pure – white girls wanting to meet the black boys.” (only he didn’t say “˜meet’). “Frankly I was appalled and didn’t want to go that route.”
However he heard Harold and his partner Kate out and he liked what he heard. People and Places seemed to run on an ethical basis which tied in with his own ethos. They recruited retired, skilled people who were often feeling useless in their own society and still had plenty of energy and knowledge to offer – and they were able to pay. So Calabash and People and Places started working together.
Calabash works runs a School Support system and also works with health care facilities when placing volunteers, so typically they come from a teaching or nursing background. Today we were going to visit two of the schools within the “˜cluster’ of 10 schools (what they call a “˜Cluster of Excellence’) that are linked to the volunteer programme. In addition to volunteer placements, Calabash also facilitates week-long visits of teachers and pupils from UK based schools who come out to work with the local schools on specific projects.
Volunteer applicants are screened “to keep the weirdos out”. They are put in touch with ex volunteers and allowed to read their report backs. This ensures that they have a real understanding of what they are signing up for – the positive stuff and the hard stuff. I asked Paul if people don’t come out here with a colonial attitude of “˜saving the poor’ and he laughs. “We beat that out of them before they even start. One teacher asked me, way back when we started this programme, “˜How do I know you’re not just sending me another Great White Hope?’ The idea is for volunteers to work alongside the teachers. They need to have a humble attitude when offering their expertise.
Once approved, the volunteers are carefully matched with a project that can best benefit from their skill set and experience.
Paul explained that Calabash has worked at building and nurturing long term relationships with these schools. They are offered a suitable volunteer and they get to decide if this is a good time for the school to have someone with them for a month or a term. The cluster meets on a regular basis and makes group decisions in that way. Paul: “We want this to be something sustainable; we want these relationships between the schools to continue even if the day comes when Calabash is no longer working with them.”
Another way in which the Calabash Trust and People and Places work ethically is in the matter of finance. With regards to the money the volunteers pay for the “˜voluntour’ experience, the various ways in which this is spent is clearly and precisely detailed to the volunteer – who gets what percentage. Calabash also insists that a volunteer doesn’t use up the resources of the project – food, stationery etc.
As we pull in through the Mboniselo Primary School gates, Paul concludes,
“The big idea is that we are building a shared humanity. When two teachers from two different societies work together they soon realise that they are not that different. Their circumstances may be, but they both have similar challenges and issues in the classroom, with the learners and parents, and in their own homes. Volunteers learn the humanness of poverty – these are real people, real kids. That’s what they walk away with.”
Find out more about:
Calabash Trust
People and Places
