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Connecting Volunteers and Social Projects Globally

Pascal Christiaens, the Managing Director and Co-Founder of Volunteer World, created an independent platform that connects volunteers and social projects on a global scale.

We thought that deserved a shout out, don’t you?

So we asked Pascal, from our Düsseldorf Travel Massive chapter, a few questions about how they started and what motivates them to keep going.

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What is your initiative about? Who does it help?

The platform provides a community marketplace to compare and apply to international volunteer opportunities. We believe that fairness, transparency, and independence are key to creating sustainable positive change in the volunteer market. The cost transparent nature of Volunteer World unveils a fair price level for volunteer programs, while simultaneously equalising the opportunities for grass root projects, agencies and large volunteer organisations to attract volunteers.

What inspired you to create this initiative? 

If you are planning to volunteer abroad, you will quickly realize that the options are nearly endless. Just a quick online search is often enough to scare people away. Hundreds of organizations advertise countless projects and trying to compare the available options is often as exhausting as it is confusing. Felix Rädel, one of our co-founders, experienced this first hand while searching for volunteer opportunities in Namibia. Overwhelmed by the lack of transparency, he realised that there had to be a better way. Together with Christian Wenzel, we decided to found Volunteer World – a website that provides highly motivated and qualified volunteers with an easy, safe and transparent way to volunteer abroad.

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What has been your biggest success or accomplishment? 

We are very excited about the overwhelming positive response we received so far and the great interest by the international press. Never the less, for me, our biggest success so far is that we were able to mediate 3,516 days – almost 10 years of volunteer work in 2016 alone.

What do you hope your initiative will accomplish in the next 2-5 years?

In 5 years we hope that the majority of volunteer programs will be arranged via Volunteer World. We will be the focal point for voluntary work abroad and have mediated a large number of qualified volunteers. Through this, the volunteer market has become transparent and the application process significantly simplified. Grassroots projects as well as large international organizations have similar chances when competing for qualified volunteers. Following the current trend overall, more people go abroad to spend their holidays helping people in need.

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How can someone help or get involved?

If you want to volunteer, you can simply sign up on our webpage and get started by looking for opportunities to help others. As an organisation you can very easily set up your account and manage your social programs to get people to volunteer for you.


Purposeful Traveler is a series that profiles inspiring people or projects making a purposeful change to the way we travel. You can connect with Pascal Christiaens and Volunteer World on Travel Massive, Facebook and Twitter.

 


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