Big Event: School-wide Volunteer Day

The Big Event is a nation-wide college service day.  According to OU's Big Event website, Big Event started in 1982 at Texas A&M University.  Now, 31 years later, there are Big Event chapters in more than 60 colleges.

Source: bigevent.ou.edu

At OU, Big Event is one of the favorite, most well-known annual OU traditions.  Most students are aware of Big Event, thanks to its great size and involvement of students and community.  According to the website, OU's Big Event has about 5,000 student volunteers, faculty and staff participants every year that go out into the Norman and Oklahoma City communities.  

Student organizations, classes and friends form groups to volunteer together.  The Big Event coordinators find and organize places for the student groups to volunteer in different capacities, including painting, yard work, cleaning, etc.

source: bigevent.ou.edu

I like the idea of Big Event, it allows for students to volunteer and see other aspects of the Norman community outside of OU, while in the comfort of their social groups.  Many OU students would like to volunteer to add to their resume, to give back to the community or to simply fill their time with something beneficial, but they may not know of all the opportunities there are to volunteer in the community.  Big Event shows them these opportunities.

For one Saturday, students wake up early, listen to our university President David Boren speak briefly, then divide into their different assignments around Norman and OKC.  The students are able to get out of their comfort zone at OU and give back to the community.

However, I do have some reservations about Big Event, namely that it IS just one day.  Many, if not most, students may participate in Big Event and put it on their resumes as if they contributed some meaningful service to the community.  In reality, there are not so many amazing things you can do in just one day.  Big Event is good to give students a taste of volunteering, but it should not be the end of their volunteering.  

Luckily, OU has also seen this problem and initiated some service projects throughout the year on Saturdays.  This, in my opinion, was a great step towards truly instilling the value of volunteering throughout the year.

My hope is that students continue to participate in Big Event and fall in love with volunteering and feel empowered to, then, reach out to the community throughout the semester on a more regular basis.

Nonprofit Review: The Spero Project in Oklahoma City

Today, I met with a young professional woman who works for the Spero Project in Oklahoma City.

The Spero Project is a faith-based, non-profit organization that seeks to "Confront injustice and oppression by mobilizing the Church to fully engage in a Biblical response to under-resourced populations."

Basically, they are trying to help Christians really act like Jesus and love their neighbor as themselves.  As a Christian, this really inspires me.

The Spero Project has four main areas of focus:

1. Community development
2. Foster care family ministry
3. Marginalized women
4. International refugees

Each of these areas of focus has its own staff members, volunteers and projects.  

After I graduate, I would like to work in the nonprofit sector with international refugee resettlement, so I am most interested in their program for international refugees.

The Spero Project works closely with Catholic Charities who is the government-specified agency to filter international refugees in Oklahoma City.  The Spero Project fills in the gaps that Catholic Charities misses, such as developing lasting, meaningful relationships with the refugees.

Credit: Fort Worth World Relief

According to the staff member I met with from the Spero Project, the refugees area always appreciative for the physical gifts such as getting a job, apartment and furniture, but they find the friendships with the Spero Project staff and volunteers the most rewarding.

Since the Spero Project considers relationships a top priority, they offer volunteer opportunities related to building relationships, such as family sponsorship and learning center tutoring.

Through the family sponsorship program, local American families become host families for the refugee families.  They not only help them with practical things, such as learning English, but also invite them over for dinner and to celebrate holidays.

Additionally, volunteers can work as tutors at the learning center for the refugee children for an hour or two on Mondays through Thursday.

Credit: Fort Worth World Relief

Even if you're not Christian or want to get a career in refugee resettlement, you should still check out the Spero Project.  They're doing some much-needed, innovative service work that is much different from the typical volunteer opportunities.  

Through the Spero Project, you can learn much more about an issue in Oklahoma City and also meet people and learn first-hand from their experiences.

I highly recommend this nonprofit!

Short-term mission work: my thoughts

Full disclosure: I have been on many short-term mission trips, both locally, within the U.S. and internationally.  Because of my experiences, I know firsthand that many short-term mission trips can have only short-term effects.  I define short-term mission trips any volunteer trip shorter than 6 months.

For example, in high school, I went on mission trips to Georgia, Mississippi, within Texas and Costa Rica. I think the closer to home the mission trip was, the more effective it was. (Soon, I'll write a blog about how local is better).

My most effective short-term experience:
It was a week after I graduated from high school in Texas.  I found myself on a bus with my classmates headed to Georgia on a mission trip.

Georgia was beautifully different from North Texas, with lots of greenery, trees and humidity.  Our volunteer work in Georgia was extensive.

Watering the gardens we built and planted
in Georgia in summer 2009. Notice the paint
 all over my arms from painting the fence.

In Georgia, we also cleared a lot of
land.  Manual labor is the most
rewarding because you can see tangible
changes that have long-term value.

We cleaned out ponds, salvaged gardens and painted fence posts.  LOTS OF FENCE POSTS.

In one week, the work the 40 student volunteers put in that week would have taken the residents months to finish.  

Did I mention we painted a lot of fence posts?  The work was short and simple, but it had positive long-term effects.

My least effective short-term experience:
Let me just say: I'm against most international mission trips, but that's for a whole 'nother blog.  For now, I'm discussing length, not location of volunteer work.

My trip to Costa Rica came only a few weeks after the previously mentioned Georgia mission trip.  I worked at a local coffee shop for 8 months, sent out dozens of support letters and saved thousands of dollars for that mission trip.  As it turns out, international airfare is no joke.

The trip itself was wonderful.  Don't get me wrong.  However, my team's work there for one week was not relevant to communities or long-term in many ways.

Our team traveled to some neighborhoods of shacks in Puntarenas,
Costa Rica to deliver a week's worth of foods and necessities.

We handed out food and necessities to people living in very low-income neighborhoods.  Although this work was "good," it was also easy and routine.  The local church members in Costa Rica are quite capable of handing out food and supplies to their needy people.  Imagine if a bunch of Costa Rican teenagers came knocking on your door to give you a week's worth of food.  Strange, right?




We visited schools and talked to children.  Who knows, maybe a Costa Rican child's life was forever changed by our week-long work.  That would be worth it.  However, I think these sort of short-term international mission trips are more for the "helpers" than those being "helped." (I will write another blog about "Humanitarian Guilt").

These beautiful Costa Rican girls lived on the Isla de Caballo (Horse Island)
off of the coast of Costa Rica.  We spent one day with them.

I had the amazing opportunity to travel to the enchanting, mysterious country of Costa Rica, live in a resort for a week and experience new cultures and people.  I gained a lot from the experience, but I just don't think our work was lasting.

Voluntourism: what is it, and is it good?

Voluntourism- travel that includes volunteer work for charities, usually short-term and international

Voluntourism may be a new word to you, but the popularity of voluntourism has grown tremendously in the last decade. This growth is undoubtedly in part because of the ability to connect to foreign nonprofits through the Internet. A quick internet search will show multiple pages of voluntourism websites with locations all around the world where travelers can be tourists and volunteers.

My first experience with voluntourism was in
Puntarenas, Costa Rica in summer 2009.  In this picture,
my group delivered care packages to people living on the islands.

After my sophomore year of college, I wanted to travel, and I wanted to help people, so voluntourism was a perfect fit for me! After searching through the dozens of voluntourism organizations in South America and reading hundreds of online reviews of organizations, I decided I go to Cuzco, Peru with an organization called International Volunteer Headquarters (IVHQ).





In Peru, I taught English in Cuzco, helped a rainforest conservation organization in Puerto Maldonado and worked at a missionary school in Pisac.

IVHQ, like most voluntourism businesses, charges a program fee to help pair travelers with volunteer opportunities, homestays and traveling support and information.

On the weekends when we were not working, the volunteers and I would visit
the local sites as tourists.  This is Sacsayhuaman in Cusco, Peru in summer 2011.

Of course, programs like these are not necessary. An independent traveler could search online and directly find volunteer opportunities and not pay the program fees. I have used this method, as well as IVHQ.

The benefits of using a program is reliability and certainty, but the cons are the program costs and lack of diverse opportunities. For example, the IVHQ Cuzco program only offers volunteer positions in medical, teaching and childcare. However, and independent traveler could find volunteer opportunities in others sectors.

I volunteered with the InkaTerra nonprofit organization
with their jungle conservation program in summer 2011.

Volunteering while traveling sounds like a worthwhile and charitable use of time, but there is opposition to voluntourism because of some unintended, negative consequences.

The stongest argument against voluntourism is that voluntourism steals jobs from the local workforce.




Simply put, if volunteers do a job for free, such as childcare or teaching English, then the local people are not being employed for these jobs. The exception may be for volunteers who do skilled labor, such as medical care, that the local community members can not provide.

Voluntourism is an idea with good intentions: you can travel the world and help people. There are many different ways to connect with volunteer opportunities while traveling, but make sure it's reputable and you're not wasting money. Finally, make sure that your volunteer work will not take away jobs from the local people.