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Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO)is an international development charity with a vision for a ‘world without poverty‘ and a mission to ‘bring people together to fight poverty’. Voluntary Service Overseas recruits professionals to work as volunteers, living and working alongside local populations in developing countries. Founded in 1958, Voluntary Service Overseas has sent over 50,000 volunteers to over 140 developing countries. As of 2014 Voluntary Service Overseas currently works in 35 countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) is a company limited by guarantee.
Voluntary Service Overseas currently works in the following areas: Education, Health and HIV & AIDs, Participation and governance, and Secure livelihoods.
Voluntary Service Overseas has three wholly owned subsidiaries:
- VSO Trading Limited (England and Wales),
- British Executive Service Overseas (England and Wales) and
- Beijing VSO Consulting Company Limited, a Chinese-registered, wholly foreign-owned enterprise.
VSO’s governing body is the International Board, currently comprising 10 trustees. The day-to-day management of Voluntary Service Overseas is carried out by the Global Leadership Team. The Global Leadership Team has operational oversight of VSO’s global work. Each Global Leadership Team member is responsible for an area of VSO’s global operations, including finance, human resources and organisational development, and geographical management of Africa Group and Asia and Pacific Group.
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Voluntary Service Overseas is part of the Voluntary Service Overseas Federation – an international network of organisations that share VSO’s vision of a world without poverty, in which people work together to fulfil their potential. The Voluntary Service Overseas Federation comprises VSO (operating as both VSO International and VSO UK), VSO Ireland, VSO Jitolee (Kenya), VSO Netherlands and VSO Bahaginan (Philippines). Each VSO federation member is a self-governing, not-for-profit legal entity. Each federation member (and VSO UK) has nominated a representative to the VSO Federation Council, an advisory body created to advise the International Board on matters relevant to the VSO Federation.
VSO established partner agencies in Canada, the Netherlands, Kenya/Uganda (VSO Jitolee), and the Philippines (VSO Bahaginan). In 2004, VSO launched a partnership called iVolunteer Overseas (iVO) in India with iVolunteer, an existing volunteering program of MITRA, an Indian NGO. VSO’s structure evolved to become an international federation which now includes Ireland, China, and India as well as the above-named countries. International volunteers are recruited through all of these bases, and they can be placed in any one of VSO’s programmes.
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In 2011 VSO, in partnership with Lattitude Global Volunteering, Restless Development, Skill share International, Progressio, International Service and Tropical Health Education Trust (THET) launched International Citizen Service ICS to provide volunteer placements for 18-25 year-olds. The group, funded by the Department for International Development DFID, now includes Raleigh International and Tearfund and will work with 3,000 volunteers annually across 60 countries.
Voluntary Service Overseas recruits and trains experienced, professional volunteers aged between 18-75 to live and work in the heart of local communities. International volunteers can be from any country and are recruited through by recruitment partners in: China, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Kenya, the Netherlands, the Philippines, southern Africa and the UK.
Supports more than 100 national volunteering programmes over 20 countries. Acts as a ‘knowledge broker’, bringing local grassroots organisations together to share learning and best practice, for example through the Regional AIDS Initiative of Southern Africa, with a network of partners in seven southern African countries.
Partnerships Voluntary Service Overseas works with local partners in the communities they work with, placing volunteers with these partners to help increase their impact and effectiveness. Voluntary Service Overseas also works with corporate partners, such as Accenture, Randstad, Kraft Foods (Cadbury), Ben and Jerry’s, to provide them with ways to contribute to VSO’s development goals in a way that provides benefits to both parties.
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