Our Story

In 2017 I wanted to spend time overseas as a medical volunteer. There are countless grass-roots charities in need of volunteers in the Developing World, so I set out to contact them.

To my great surprise, these charities were almost impossible to find. I spent a huge amount of time searching online, asking colleagues, and scouring social media. After two weeks I’d found only a handful of projects to volunteer with. These were small charities in Sub-Saharan Africa, and were virtually invisible online.

It turns out that I’m not alone. Lots of healthcare professionals – doctors and nurses, midwives and dentists – want to volunteer with small charities but simply can’t find them. Understandably, most of these quickly give up on the idea of volunteering.

The Problem

Why is this happening? Apart from the enormous NGOs, most charities lack the funds they need to advertise effectively. Their budgets are tiny or non-existent, so they struggle to spread their message and can’t attract the volunteers they desperately need.

This is a big problem. There are lots of charities who urgently need volunteers to help them. And there are plenty of skilled volunteers who want to do just that. The problem is – these two groups can’t find each other. Charities can’t advertise effectively, and volunteers don’t know where to find them.

We need to fix this problem for two reasons:

1. It’s a huge waste of resources (the volunteers can’t have the impact they want to)
2. Vital work isn’t being done (the charities are ready but don’t have the volunteers they need)

The Solution

We need to make it easier for charities and volunteers to find each other. This could be achieved by giving charities a louder voice, and sending volunteers to a place where they hear that voice. This is where Volunteer Global Health steps in.

We advertise charitable healthcare projects from around the world on a single online platform. It’s free for charities to advertise on our website, and free for volunteers to access it. So charities get some much-needed publicity, and volunteers don’t waste time searching for them. In other words, it’s a win-win, for both the charities and the volunteers.