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Running projects without international volunteers will not help “decolonise development”, says expert after a new report is released by VSO and Northumbria University.
Local volunteers are experts, concludes the first-ever research on “blended volunteering”, VSO’s flagship approach that brings together international and national volunteering skills. To tackle global poverty and inequality, the knowledge of national volunteers’ needs to be valued equally with that of their international counterparts, the report found.
The research questions assumptions about volunteering for development programmes aiming to contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Professor Matt Baillie Smith led the study with Professor Katy Jenkins from Northumbria University’s Centre for International Development, working alongside researchers in the UK, Nepal, Tanzania, and Uganda.
The report looked at practical examples from VSO projects. Some of the projects covered in the study include Improving Children’s Learning and Participation (ICLP) in Tanzania, Driving Youth Led Agrobusiness and Micro Enterprises (DYNAMIC) in Uganda, and Sisters for Sisters’ Education (S4S) in Nepal.
“There's been a huge debate during the pandemic about whether we can do everything without international volunteers and how ‘this is a good way to ‘decolonise development’,” says Prof. Baillie Smith. “But just removing international volunteers isn’t going to ‘decolonise development’ and there are some risks of relying on this approach.”
“The burden on local volunteers may increase. We will miss out on the dynamic interaction of a blended team. Whether international volunteers exist or not, there are still power hierarchies that need addressing.”
The research, based on interviews and participatory workshops with volunteers, community representatives, and VSO staff, found that there was no “one-size fits all” approach to designing and putting in place successful “volunteer combinations”. There is a need to adapt volunteer planning and management in programmes based on local requirements and local learning, it found.
“The presence of international volunteers brings energy and donor attention to projects, whilst community and national volunteers enable effective engagement with local communities and increase the likelihood that impacts can be sustained due to their particular knowledges and longer-term involvement,” it said.
As one volunteer for Tanzania’s Lake Zone Youth Empowerment (LZYE) project said, “community volunteers continue to perform their duties and better even after the departure of the national volunteers”.
Much existing research on volunteering in the development sector focuses on the role of “international volunteers” like short-term Western gap year participants, or on “voluntourism”.
“This study demonstrates the importance of a blended volunteering approach which brings together international, national, and community volunteers to maximise development outcomes,” said Dr Philip Goodwin, VSO’s chief executive. “A blended volunteering approach is a significant new way of thinking about how countries can succeed in their development journey”.
Professor Jenkins said that past understandings of local community volunteers have often focused on where they are, not the fact that they are experts in their own right. “The research shows that local community volunteers are not just important because of where they live but rather they bring knowledge and expertise, including context specific experiences, which can hold the blend together” she said.
Read an executive summary of our findings
Find out more on the Northumbria University website, including Q&A's with our in country researchers
Staff at the Centre for Global Development at Northumbria have developed a number of research collaborations with Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). VSO is a thought-leading independent international development organisation that works through volunteers to fight global poverty.
The research project "Volunteering Together: Blending Knowledge and Skills for Development" focused on understanding the concept and practice of blended volunteering. This collaborative research took place between 2020 and 2022, exploring how different types of volunteering come together, how different combinations of volunteers may work in different sorts of ways, and what kinds of impacts and outputs this produces, and for whom. In order to understand the roles and potential of blended volunteering for VSO’s programming and beyond, three case study countries were selected: Tanzania; Uganda; and Nepal.
The research was led by Prof Matt Baillie Smith and Prof Katy Jenkins; the UK-based research team was also formed by Dr Inge Boudewijn, Dr Bianca Fadel and Dr Philip Gibby. Research in each country was led by local partners, whose expertise has been critical to developing an understanding of the different contexts in which blended volunteering takes place:
Dr Egidius Kamanyi, Tanzania
Dr Egidius Kamanyi led the blended volunteering research in Tanzania. He is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. His areas of teaching and research expertise include: Social Theory, Research Methods, Medical Sociology and Anthropology, Disaster management, Community development, Gender, and Natural resource management.
Dr Moses Okech, Uganda
Dr Moses Okech led the blended volunteering research in Uganda, working in collaboration with Christine Adong and Gina Mary Angaun. Moses is an international development professional with significant experience in research, lecturing and livelihoods programming, including expert knowledge of volunteering. He holds a PhD in Political Economy of Development from Leeds Beckett University and has worked as a consultant for numerous international organisations such as the World Bank and the Overseas Development Institute.
Dr Jeevan Baniya, Nepal
Dr Jeevan Baniya is the Assistant Director at Social Sciences Baha (SSB), an independent, non-profit organisation that led the blended volunteering research in Nepal. Jeevan worked in collaboration with Preshika Baskota, Sita Mademba and Rajendra Sharma. Established in 2002, the objective of SSB is to promote and enhance research into social sciences in Nepal. Jeevan and his team have a strong record in community development research and extensive experience of collaborating with national and international academic institutions and development actors.
To find out more about the project and key findings, you can read our final report in the link below:
To cite this report: Baillie Smith, M., Jenkins, K., Adong, C., Anguan, G., Baniya, J., Baskota, P., Boudewijn, I., Fadel, B., Gibby, P., Kamanyi, E., Mademba, S., Okech, M., and Sharma, R. (2022). Volunteering Together: Blending Knowledge and Skills for Development. Northumbria University/VSO.
You can access our research executive summary and briefing paper in the links below:
- Briefing Paper: "Whose knowledges count? The complex realities of blending knowledge and skils between volunteers"
You can access this link to watch/listen to the podcast about blended volunteering as part of the ‘Future Economies start with Youth’ podcast series by the Challenge Fund for Youth Employment (CFYE), with the participation of Dr Inge Boudewijn.
The three case study reports alongside more information about the research team in each location can be found in the respective pages below:
Volunteering Together: Blending Knowledge and Skills for Development
Position: Co -Founder of ENGAGE,a new social venture for the promotion of volunteerism and service and Ideator of Sharing4Good
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