Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) - Media reports

A British charity founded in 1958 to send skilled volunteers to work for two-year periods in developing countries. The host government provides a living allowance and accommodation; VSO provides briefing, air fare, and a grant.

Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) is an international development charity that works through experienced volunteers living and working as equals alongside local partners.

VSO has offices in the UK, Ireland, Canada, the Netherlands, Kenya and the Philippines and a recruiting partner in India; Since its founding in 1958, VSO has placed over 30,000 volunteers (2004) in developing countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Eastern Europe. By 1968 VSO had 1420 volunteers overseas.

In the early 1990s, in order to meet growing demand for highly specialised and skilled volunteers from its partners in developing countries, 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 is evolving into an international federation of these recruitment bases. International volunteers are recruited through all of these bases and they can be placed in any one of VSO's programmes (e.g.

In addition VSO

supports a number of national volunteering programmes (including schemes in India, Ghana, Kenya and others) 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 7 southern African countries offers two youth volunteering programmes, their own Youth For Development scheme, and Global Xchange in partnership with CSV and the British Council offers short-term consultancy-style volunteer placements, to complement their traditional long-term (two year) placements, following the merger with British Executive Service Overseas (beso) in March 2005, a smaller charity with similar aims but which dealt with short-term volunteering.

Also, several large companies, including Accenture, PricewaterhouseCoopers, SAP and others, second some of their staff through VSO to work directly on international development projects.

At the UK Charity Awards in June 2004, VSO, which is primarily funded by the British government's Department for International Development, was named International Development Charity of the Year, with judges citing VSO's innovative approach to international development and volunteering.

Media reports

How VSO a Kenyan VSO volunteer is helping the health crisis in Malawi. From The Nation, Malawi, 26 May 2006 Footballers' Wives actor Zoe Lucker visits VSO projects in Zambia, 35 years since her parents worked for the charity. Sunday Mirror 21 May 2006 VSO focuses on senior teachers from Education Guardian, January 10 2006

Eight Ways to Change the World, a Panos Pictures exhibition on the Millennium Development Goals, involving VSO.