At A Curve in the Road, Thank You to All Our Volunteers

This summer, for the first time in 14 years, World Camp is not leading a volunteer teaching program. Summer 2015 will mark the official close of our long-standing Outreach Through Education (OTE) program, as we make a full transition to year-round, locally driven programming spearheaded by 3 major initiatives: World Camp Clubs, MediServ, and Camp Hope.

This is a huge, but important step for World Camp. HIV, gender inequality, and environmental degradation remain pressing issues for Malawian communities. But – in large part due to what WC’s OTE program and others have accomplished – needs related to these issues, and the best ways to address them, have changed.  

Nevertheless, this step feels foreign and a little surreal. Since the founders of World Camp traveled through southern Africa in 2000, summer has meant organizing and leading volunteer trips. It has meant the chance to introduce new, wonderful people to the World Camp family: energetic volunteers traveling across the world with a shared passion and vision. A time of incredibly hard work and immeasurable fun leaving an indelible mark on hundreds of volunteers and tens of thousands of students and individuals.

For so many of us, being a World Camp (for Kids) volunteer or intern was one of the most formative experiences of our lives. Being a WC volunteer was both deeply personal, but also communal. While we learned about ourselves and explored new places, we also interacted with diverse people and built new relationships. While most volunteers experience great personal growth, we can’t discount the impact we were making. Over 400 volunteers served communities on three continents, reaching nearly 23,000 people directly. Life-saving HIV prevention information was being spread in remote communities that otherwise lacked access to such knowledge. The morning songs and large groups of foreigners brought excitement to our students, as well. The national HIV prevalence rate has gone from around 20% to 10.6% in Malawi over the time WC volunteers have been teaching.

The incredible dedication and insight of our volunteers over the years helped World Camp grow deep, meaningful roots in Malawi – our operations in Honduras and India were always more tentative. While local translators, field assistants, staff advisers, and camp participants have always been a crucial perspective and source of support for World Camp, we've placed an even stronger focus on local ownership in recent years. Our goal of increasing Malawian participation and leadership in every aspect of World Camp’s work has led us to year-round programming managed and implemented by Malawians.

Having been WC volunteers and having seen the amazing impact our volunteers have had, World Camp continues to value the role that passionate, intentional people can play in development in any part of the world. When we look at the future of WC we see a strong role for volunteers but in a different capacity. It has long been the hope of all WC volunteers to see Malawians with the skills and knowledge to manage their own community development. We see great potential in our partner communities and staff, and the time has come to support rather than lead them.

Volunteer opportunities with World Camp are not closed – there are always ways to stay involved and we hope you will be there to support our work and engage with us, as we hope to remain involved with you. 

Thank you all for everything you’ve done to enable World Camp to grow to its current state. We absolutely could never have succeeded without each and every one of you. Know that you have made an impact, not only on World Camp, but the children with whom you came into contact. Thank you for helping us reach out to these individuals, together we made a difference.

Please check out our other programs if you haven’t already. We think it’s pretty amazing to see what started as group of friends and grew into a family of diverse volunteers has flourished into. Thank you for supporting us – thank you for being us. 

Reach out to us at any time with any questions about this transition. We’ll be in touch too! Still with alumni updates, Throwback Thursdays, alumni happy hours, and more. We hardly see this as an end to the relationship WC has with alumni, but rather just another curve in a very long, exciting road.

Below you can check out a slideshow we have created covering all 14 years of the volunteer program to mark this occasion. We have also created a webpage on this topic. That can be found here.

Emily Stallings

Managing Director

January 2005 Volunteer, Malawi

Summer 2008 Program Coordinator, Hondo