THE COMHLÁMH CODE OF GOOD PRACTICE AND VOLUNTEER CHARTER
Summary
Volunteer Charter
Volunteers Agree To:
1. Reflect on my motivations for and expectations of my volunteer placement.
Volunteers’ individual motivations for making the decision to go overseas can be very mixed. They can range from seeing volunteering as a means to helping you make bigger decisions about your life, to wanting to work to achieve specific development aims. For people who are thinking about volunteering overseas, it is very important to examine motivations before making any final decisions. Being aware of their motivations will help volunteers to develop realistic expectations for their involvement.
2. Familiarise themselves thoroughly with their role description before departure.
Written role descriptions go some way to dispel uncertainties volunteers have about what they will be expected to do on their placement. By familiarising themselves with their role description this can prompt them to ask further questions about it and about the reasons why such a job is necessary. Contact with ex-volunteers who have worked on that placement will help volunteers prepare so that they can utilise their time overseas well. Sending organizations should help facilitate this process.
3. Respect local customs and adopt the role of learner and guests.
A major motivation for volunteering, expressed by volunteers, is to ‘give something back’, to ‘help out’ people less fortunate than themselves. This motivation, however, can sometimes lead to volunteers being overzealous as they work to maximise their impact. Often they can come with a sense that they know best, showing little respect for local customs and knowledge. However, it is often the volunteer who learns more from the hosts, than the hosts from them. The principle in the charter aims to encourage the volunteer to be aware of their role as learner rather than just ‘giver’.
4. Act always in a professional manner and be flexible and adaptable while in my placement. In our Volunteer Forum, volunteers pointed out that some volunteers take a less than professional attitude to their placement. For example, they may turn up late, leave early, or behave in a manner more appropriate for a holiday than in providing a service to the local community. Furthermore, while volunteers may receive role descriptions, as often as not volunteers are expected to be flexible and adaptable in what they do while on placement, and in their attitudes to the local community and their colleagues. This principle aims to underline these points to volunteers.
5. Take due care of my personal safety and physical and mental health.
Health and safety issues are vital for volunteers. While the sending organisation can provide volunteers with guidance, it is the responsibility of the volunteer to abide by that advice and to use their common sense. Volunteers should find out about the local health and security situation as part of their general research on their host country. Some sending organisations may provide health insurance for volunteers but most will not. This principle encourage volunteers to take responsibility for themselves with regard their personal safety and physical and mental health.
6. Channel the experiences and knowledge gained while overseas into Irish society.
As pointed out in principle 3 above, volunteers on overseas placements are in a privileged position of being able to learn about their host country and the experience of working in a developing country. This principle aims to encourage volunteers, on their return, to use the knowledge they gain to raise awareness in Ireland on issues affecting the developing world. Most immediately, this can include being available for other volunteers. It can also include giving talks in their local areas, becoming part of support and/or campaign networks, and/or receiving training and participating in development education. Engagement with local media through writing articles or giving interviews is a further option.
7. Accept and sign a Code of Conduct embodying these principles.
Many sending organisations give volunteers a Code of Conduct to sign before going on their placement in an attempt to ensure that they are aware of what the organisation expects of them in terms of appropriate behaviour. This principle aims to encourage sending organisations to include the principles of the Charter within their Codes of Conduct and so encourage volunteers to follow them.
Code of Good Practice for Irish Sending Organisations
Sending Organisations Agree To:
1. Have volunteer programmes based on realistic aims and objectives with appropriate and useful volunteer roles.
In developed countries, including Ireland, there is a demand from the public for volunteering placements overseas. Sometimes it may be that volunteering programmes in developing countries are set up in order cater for this demand rather than fulfill a perceived need in developing countries. This principle aims to ensure that host projects participate in programme planning and development so that programmes fit with local needs and requirements and volunteers have useful, rewarding placements that actually address local problems.
2. Provide sufficient resources and support to run volunteer programmes in an efficient and sustainable manner.
Volunteer programmes should be designed to benefit host projects and communities. It is necessary, therefore, that budgets for programmes are sufficient to ensure these programmes are well run, including providing local well trained in-country staff.
Budgets should also contribute extra resources to facilitate host projects’ growth in a sustainable manner, thus allowing them to provide services to local communities outside of their volunteer programmes.
3. Provide marketing and imagery consistent with good practice, and clear expressions of organisational aims, ethos and values.
Good clear information is essential to allow potential volunteers to choose their placement. This principle aims to ensure that sending organisations do not make false claims as to the efficacy and effects of their programmes, or the extent to which volunteers can ‘make a difference’ to the lives of the people in host communities. By being clear about their aims, values and ethos, organizations will also help volunteers know that they are in agreement with them. Finally, it aims to ensure that host communities are portrayed pictorially in a positive manner consistent with good practice, such as the Dóchas’ Code of Conduct on Images and Messages.
4. Provide potential volunteers with free, fair and unbiased information on their organisation and volunteer placements.
This principle encourages sending organisations to provide potential volunteers with lists of independent resources on volunteering overseas, such as the Comhlámh Book Working for a Better World: A Guide to Volunteering in Global Development or its website www.volunteeringoptions.org. Another source would be unmediated access to ex-volunteers who had a placement with that organisation. In this way, potential volunteers would be aided in their decision-making and would be able to learn more about their host country and placement.
5. Use fair, consistent and transparent recruitment procedures.
Here the Code of Good Practice seeks to encourage sending organisations to have standardised selection procedures, which are made clear to volunteers from the outset. Some of the content of interviews, for example, would be to explore individuals’ reasons for wanting to volunteer. Other procedures would be to check references in a consistent manner, including any official checks that
are necessary. Finally, another suggestion would be to provide feedback to those who failed to be selected.
6. Assist and provide for the varying support needs of volunteers.
This principle aims to encourage organisations to provide support to volunteers, such as one-to-one or group support sessions. The existence of these facilities should be made apparent to volunteers at the interview and induction stage. Provision should be made also for volunteers to refuse tasks if they feel they are unable to do them. Another recommendation is that agency staff providing support to volunteers should receive training.
7. Ensure that volunteers participate in appropriate preparation, training and induction.
This principle encourages organisations to review their training and induction needs and produce a training policy. Training can be provided in-house or by outside agencies, or a mix of both, and can also be provided in host countries and projects on arrival. Volunteers should be provided with a training schedule appropriate to their roles. In this way, organisations can assure that volunteers
arrive well prepared to adapt quickly to their host country and their assigned roles.
8. Ensure the protection, safety and well being of volunteers and those they work with as far as possible.
Provision is made with this principle for the drawing up of policies ensuring the protection of volunteers from potential harm, and from potentially harming others. Such policies could include, for example, a risk assessment for volunteers in their placement, insurance guidelines, protection of volunteer data, child protection and anti-discrimination policies.
9. Provide recognition for volunteers
Without volunteers, sending organisations could not exist. Volunteers therefore should be recognised, both formally and informally, as being of value and importance. This could be done through an awards system, or through volunteer newsletters or local media coverage. Monitoring and evaluation
systems, debriefing and exit interviews also provide volunteers with opportunities to make their views heard, and it’s important too that these views find their way into policy and that this input is acknowledged. Finally, volunteers’ service can be recognised by the award of a statement or certificate of service at the end of their placement or, if preferred by the organisation, some form of
reference.
10. Provide ongoing monitoring and evaluation
Monitoring and evaluation are important to measure the effectiveness of the programme. To ensure it works all stakeholders, with particular reference to the host project, should be involved with, and informed of, the M&E programme, and their roll in it, in advance. It is also preferable that the results of M&E are communicated to all stakeholders, to make them aware of any changes that might be implemented as a result of their participation.
11. Provide debriefing for returned volunteers.
The purpose of de-briefing is to focus on the personal dimension of the placement and give the person the opportunity to reflect on the experience and pass on their views in a useful way. It gives the organisation the opportunity to acknowledge the role of the individual and both give and receive considered feedback. De-briefing allows for closure, for "unfinished business" to be dealt with. The debriefing meeting can also be used to inform volunteers of opportunities in Ireland to continue their interest in development, such as through returned volunteers associations or wider networks such as Comhlámh.