On International Volunteer Day, 5 December 2011, the Australian Government thanks the 732 Australian Volunteers for International Development supporting development efforts in countries across Asia, the Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Latin America.
Since the 1960s the Australian Government, through AusAID, has supported more than 12,000 volunteers to live and work in 33 countries as part of the overseas aid program.
Today Australian Volunteers are continuing to make an enormous contribution by sharing their skills and working with local counterparts to build capacity and strengthen organisations and institutions in countries where Australia delivers aid.
Saving lives in the Philippines
David Field has taken 18 months off from his role as chairman of the Cudgen Head Surf Life Saving Club in NSW to be an Australian Volunteer with Australian Red Cross in the Philippines. David is training locals to be lifesavers and helping establish a surf lifesaving club on the island of Boracay. He is working with the local community to raise water awareness and reduce the incidence of drowning, which claimed the lives of 6000 children in the Philippines last year.
Australian Volunteers for International Development
In May this year, Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd launched the Australian Volunteers for International Development program (external website), in recognition of the value of volunteering and the Government's commitment to increasing opportunities for Australians to support international development efforts.
'As Australians, when a disaster hits around the world or when we see poverty, we always ask ourselves–what can we do?' Minister Rudd said.
'The answer to that is that we can make a difference.'
AusAID is working in partnership with Austraining International, Australian Red Cross and Australian Volunteers International to deliver a streamlined, effective and transparent volunteering program that will increase international volunteering positions to 1000 deployments a year by 2012-13.
Seeking justice for women in Cambodia
Canberra woman Alison Barclay is helping address gender-based violence in Cambodia as an Australian Youth Ambassador for Development. Alison is volunteering with the legal aid agency, Cambodian Defenders Project, to assist women who have survived violence during the Khmer Rouge regime to access justice through the court system.
Training midwives in Ethiopia
Ballarat woman Rosey King recently returned from supporting maternal health efforts in Africa. Deployed through Australian Volunteers International, Rosey spent two years training midwifery trainers at the Hamlin Midwifery College in Ethiopia. Rosey's students, the first group of trainers to graduate from the AusAID-funded Midwifery College, have since returned to their local communities in rural and regional Ethiopia, where they are passing on their training to local midwives.
Find out more about how Australian Volunteers are supporting aid and development efforts abroad.