Tabea Witting

What I liked most about VIN is the concept of working with local volunteers. From my first day I got confronted with VIN meetings, that I only grasped parts of as they were all in Nepali. That i quite frustrating, when you are not used to that kind of situation. But the important point is, that this is the way to reach the people, that you want to have an impact on. It is also important to be authentic and honest to make people believe and trust in the volunteer work. I have only seen the outcome of a long process, that has obviously taken place in Jitpur and I think, this must have been quite a piece of work. The international volunteers are more an issue of validating the work of VIN, but the really important work is to have constant presence in the community to gain the people’s trust.

So what kind of work does that leave with international volunteers? In my opinion it is good for them to be around everywhere and learn about the whole process before they go anywhere to “change the world”. After you get to know the way things work in this foreign culture you can slowly try to become part of the process. What we CAN do is of course a lot of childrens work, documentation and also practical involvement. And maybe there is a lot of more possibilities to effectively place IVs’ work, that I don’t know yet or that are based on personal skills each person brings along.