Is your Peace Corps spirit alive and well?
Are you still itching to “save the world?”
Are there places you’ve always wanted to see and things you’ve always meant to do?
Are you Retired and Ready? Or Ready, anyway?
**NGOabroad** (http://www.NGOabroad.com) may be the program for you. It specializes in international volunteer opportunities for people with experience, even *decades* of experience, and shows you how to put your skills (both life skills and professional) to work in meaningful ways in entirely new environments.
Since we first described **NGOabroad** on The Third Third a few years ago (http://www.thethirdthird.com/perspectives/view.php?pid=20071105110501), its creator, Ann McLaughlin has developed scores more opportunities for volunteers our age – teachers, business folks, entrepreneurs, doctors, nurses, parents, grandparents, human rights activists whose skills can be put to work addressing some of the world’s greatest humanitarian needs. For example:
(1) There are postings in Ghana, Kenya, Honduras, and Equador where you might teach literacy, English, math, or music to children forced into child labor and only now returning to their families; or help AIDs orphans succeed in school so they can succeed in life.
(2) In Cameroon, Uganda, Sierra Leone, India, Nepal, Bolivia, and the Dominican Republic, tutors and counselors are needed, especially for girls and women who have been denied an education.
(3) Abandoned kids recruited by rebels or orphaned by war in Sierra Leone need teaching, tutoring, and help getting out of orphanages and into families.
(4) If you can teach vocational education – as a car mechanic, carpenter, mason, home builder, boat builder, or wood worker, people in many countries need to learn these skills to improve their earnings. You might also teach accounting and bookkeeping, sustainable agriculture, bee-keeping or mushroom-growing.
(5) Fledgling indigenous schools in Bolivia, Honduras, and Equador and others in Nepal, India, Himalayas, and Mongolia also need builders, teachers, tutors, psychologists, youth workers and soccer coaches.
(6) In addition, small business development knowledge and assistance is needed in Africa and South America.
(7) Midwives, nurses, physicians, acupuncturists, and health care paraprofessionals can provide essential help in Africa, India, the Andes, and Nepal.
(8) And even journalists like me, Ann McLaughlin says, can help out in places where news organizations have been silenced or shut down.
Ms. McLaughlin doesn’t mince words. “Consider getting back to me in October or November and volunteering yourself,” she writes to me in the message containing this update. “I think there will be some fascinating work for journalists/writers.”
She’ll be out of the office through August and September visiting possible new sites.
So contact her now (by July 15) for an application (info@NGOabroad.com) or, as she said, consider getting back to her in October or November.
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