VOLUNTEERS

Volunteers, whether national, regional or international, can play a vital role in sustaining field centre activity. In this programme, there will be two types of volunteer involvement.
  • Volunteer Expeditions. During the life of the CeCoCo programme,  a series of individual expeditions of can give manpower and logistical support to a range of operations (for example, diving, sailing and building projects). For an example see  www.raleigh.org.uk
  • Individual Volunteer Placements. Field centres can attract and house  individual or small groups of volunteers. Volunteers may arrive only  for short-term visits, but as part of a constantly replenished stream of visitors. These volunteers will pay for their accommodation and give their labour, and in return receive hospitality, security, experience, insight and education. 

A novel longer-term aspect of the CeCoCo programme is the linkage proposed between the Field Centres

This linkage or CONNECTIVITY will encourage 'individual' volunteers to move  between sites. Thus during a typical two month visit to the region, a volunteer may spend a few weeks in several Centres, with further time spent taking in the wider flavours of the countries whilst travelling away from the sites.   
The use of volunteers is often a logistical problem for host organisations, for two reasons:

Firstly, it is difficult to organise an ordered stream of volunteers to dovetail with the time-varying needs of the local centre. CeCoCo helps to overcome this problem in the increased scale of the volunteer recruitment operation, which enables a) a well-resourced volunteer contact system in Europe and the USA and b) a more flexible response to individual centre needs.

Secondly, considerable initial effort is normally required to bring volunteers up to a level of 'usefulness'. For this reason long-term volunteers are usually the most welcome, but they are more difficult to find. The CeCoCo connectivity however, which will create uniformity of operations between member Centres, will allow training received at one centre to be equally applicable at another, thus volunteer experience and usefulness will build steadily during their stay in the region. On balance, therefore, a Centre taking in CeCoCo volunteers will reap the benefits of long-term stays, even if actual visits are only a few weeks.

The attractions of this scheme to the individual volunteer are:

  • guaranteed quality of accommodation
  • facility to pre-plan all travel, including increased security of pre-payment of many costs
  • opportunity to gain wider cultural exposure during travels between sites, based on recommended (securest) itineraries
  • opportunity to gain experience of a range of coastal environments and populations
  • guaranteed access to a standardised range of monitoring and research techniques
  • possibility of gaining Vocational Training credits to validate work experience