By Dr Rich Armitage
Volunteer Global Health is a healthcare non-profit that helps volunteers and charities find each other. We provide a single online platform where charities advertise their projects and volunteers discover them. We act as an intermediary, giving charities a voice and saving volunteers their time. But why are we here?
The Problem
In 2018 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 they were virtually invisible online.
It turns out that this is a common experience. 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.
Why is this happening? With the exception of 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:
- It’s a huge waste of resources (the volunteers can’t have the impact they want to)
- Vital work isn’t being done (the charities are ready to act 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 – enter Volunteer Global Health.
We advertise charitable healthcare projects from around the world on a single online platform. It’s entirely free of charge for everyone – for charities to advertise on our website, and for volunteers to access it. So charities get some much-needed publicity, and volunteers don’t waste time searching for them. It’s a win-win.
Our Mission
We believe that charities should be able to attract the volunteers they need, and volunteers should be able to find the charities they want to help. Our Mission is to make this happen.
Who We Are
We’re a group of healthcare professionals including doctors, nurses and midwives. We work in the UK, but we also care about health in poorer parts of the world. We run Volunteer Global Health on a voluntary basis in our own time.