How does Love Volunteers choose projects to support?
Love Volunteers is extremely committed to a community-based approach to each and every one of the hundreds of programs we support around the world. Before a program is established or a new partnership is formed, we conduct a strict auditing process to ensure they meet not only our expectations but those of our volunteers. This auditing process, which is also undertaken annually on existing projects, is centered on four main areas of compliance:
Safety - Our number one priority is ensuring the safety and security of our volunteers. Specifically we look at the project site, the volunteer housing, host-family audit records and security checks, the local team and support staff, emergency procedures, etc
Legitimacy - We really do a lot of homework here, often involving letters or meetings with local government officials or registry offices. We check our partners are a) who they say they are, and b) are certified to be running their program/s
Sustainability - We assess the impact the projects are having on the local communities. We often find the most reliable way to do this is to actually speak directly to members of that community. Is there a real benefit being felt by those who the project are supporting? Is this need real and justified?
Ethics - This is a really important area for us, not only from an organisational perspective, but from a personal one. Love Volunteers was founded from a desire to provide access for volunteers to only truly ethical, truly beneficial projects - so were passionate about this! Fortunately, it is pretty easy for us, as it is for our volunteers, to know if a project is being operated with ethical integrity. "Where is the money going?" Is often the best test of this!
From a business point of view we also look at viability, value, and vision - ie. how we can help the project grow/increase its impact within the community.
For a more in-depth feel for what Love Volunteers does, what we represent, and how we operate, we suggest visiting our Facebook group page, or reading blog articles about us. After all, we could tell you how great we are all day long, but we would rather you heard it from an outside perspective, and we're confident that this is what you will find!