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By Anne-Marie Dingemans - Part 1
I want to share the most beautiful volunteer story with you. Volunteering is a difficult job, but a rewarding one. The help a foreign volunteer can offer to a small, local community service organization is invaluable. These projects are always under funded, and partly because of that, understaffed as well. For the volunteer, the language is always a barrier, and there are cultural differences to overcome. For us Westerners, projects feel disorganized, there is a lack of planning and order, and it can feel like there is not much to do for a volunteer. This is largely just our perception, as the extremely polite Latin American will not quickly give orders or put the volunteer to work. But the presence of a couple extra helping hands can mean the difference between having to try to control a group of 40 screaming kids, having to deal with just 20. Apart from the staff member staying a bit more sane, it has nice effects (understatement of the month) for the amount of individual attention a child receives. If a volunteer stays longer at a project, they will get more comfortable with the language, customs and routine and grows to be a valuable member of the team, often organizing special projects and activities on their own. But there was one lady who took volunteering one step further.
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