At Survivors Fund (SURF) we often receive enquiries about volunteering – both by those who are visiting Rwanda, and those with an interest in Rwanda but located elsewhere (from Australia to Zimbabwe). As a small organisation, we have the perennial problem of too much work to do, and limited capacity to do it. Volunteers provide a great resource to enable us to do more.

However, for assignments that volunteers undertake to be successful requires management. This is what to date we have lacked. The kind of volunteer that we desperately need is one that take the initiative – to which we can outline a brief of the problem, and then they generate a way to address it (ideally with the need to incur few, if any, costs).

In the past year, we have been fortunate to benefit from some excellent volunteers, which have delivered the following for SURF:
– The translation from French to English of strategic plans of our partners
– The installation and training in QuickBooks (accounting software) for our partners
– The editing and proofreading of our annual reports and proposals
– The identification and research of new funding opportunities

We are always interested in hearing from those with an interest in volunteering – particularly those that can add real value, with little guidance, to our work and that of our partners.

To all those that have to date – thank you!