Participants from organisations in Peru, Bolivia, Jamaica and Guyana benefitted from a Volunteer Programme Development and Management (VPDM) course, which was conducted last month at the Lake Mainstay Resort, in Region 2.
The course, which was run from November 14 to 25 by Cuso Guyana, in partnership with the Institute of Distance and Continuing Education (IDCE) and the Volunteerism Support Plat-form (VSP), is being described as the first course of its kind offered in the Latin America and the Caribbean region.
The VPDM course, Cuso Guyana said in a press release, is one that aims to develop the skills of volunteer programme managers in integrating and effectively managing volunteering as a strategy for national development.
Its objectives are to deliver information that will: integrate community and citizen volunteering as a strategy to achieve programme and project objectives; generate ideas to promote sustainable citizen participation through volunteer programme management strategies suited to country contexts; adapt best practices (project concepts, tools and models of national volunteering) to existing national volunteering work; and affirm the importance of properly managing volunteer resources to increase the effectiveness and quality of the volunteering experience for citizens and communities.
There were 18 participants in the course from Youth Challenge Guyana; Artistes in Direct Support; Habitat for Humanity Guyana; Protected Areas Commission; Women Across Differences; Help & Shelter; Volunteer Youth Corps; Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport; IDCE, University of Guyana; Office of Resource Mobilisation and Planning, UG; Guyana Girl Guides; Guyana Council of Organisations for Persons with Disabilities; Council of Voluntary Social Services (Jamaica); and Victim Support Unit, Justice Ministry (Jamaica).
Of the participants, who were between the ages of 19 and 60, nine were volunteer (programme) managers while others were volunteers representing their organisations; others were part of an NGO with the aim of establishing a volunteer management programme in their organisations.
The course was facilitated by a team of seven individuals in an effort to equip potential trainers with the capacity to deliver an effective VPDM course.
The trainers were: Carol Kiangura, lead facilitator, who is the National Volunteering Programme Manager of the VSO International Office in Kenya; Patricia Deguise, Cuso volunteer attached to IDCE; Raquel Asencios, National Volunteering Programme Manager for Cuso (Peru); Gregory Glasgow, Chairman of the National Committee of the Guyana Community-Based Rehabilitation; Pere DeRoy, Projects Officer and Jennel Reid, coordinator of the National Volunteerism Sup-port Platform; and Germain Watson, Manager, National Volunteer Teachers’ Pro-gramme, Youth Challenge Guyana.
Cuso said the VPDM course is part of the support it provides to develop national volunteering in partner countries.
It added that it would continue to offer this course through its partners in Guyana—IDCE and the Volunteer Support Platform—and will be expanding it to the rest of the region.
The Canadian-registered Cuso International is one of the largest non-governmental international development agencies working through volunteers in North America. Its work in Guyana follows a ‘strategic alliance’ with the Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO), which has withdrawn from Guyana and the entire Latin America and the Caribbean region in order to void duplicating their efforts in individual countries.