Southern Africa Federation of the Disabled (SAFOD)

International Volunteer Programme

This programme is still currently being reviewed and will be officially launched soon. Please subscribe to our newsletter to get updates about the programme, or send us an email on volunteer@safod.net if you want to be contacted as soon as the International Volunteer Programme is officially launched. We also welcome your views regarding the programme design on the aforementioned email address.

Under the international Volunteer Programme, the volunteers will be placed either at the Regional Secretariat in Gaborone, Botswana, or at an office/location of any of the ten SAFOD’s national affiliates in Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

In addition, this International Volunteer Programme will be strategically synced with the SAFOD Youth Ambassador Programme, a separate SAFOD programme that seeks to create a platform of all youths, with or without disabilities, from all corners of the world, who support SAFOD’s mission, vision and objectives in Southern Africa and are willing to voluntarily contribute towards the work/programs of SAFOD.

In Botswana, in particular, a volunteer may choose to directly work at the SAFOD’s affiliate, known as the Botswana Federation of the Disabled (BOFOD), if the goal is to support BOFOD rather than SAFOD Secretariat per se, or may work at the SAFOD Secretariat if the intention is to support any of the current SAFOD’s eight programmes and/or activities.

For volunteers applying to work at either the SAFOD Secretariat or BOFOD office, there will be a small administrative fee (US$350 per month) which will contribute towards the monthly accommodation expenses for the prospective volunteers (they will stay in a shared apartment), including other logistical expenses such as security at the apartment, transport to and from office; internet facility within the apartment, utilities like electricity and water; among other things.

For volunteers applying to work in any of the other nine countries, the SAFOD Secretariat will offer to facilitate and liaise with its affiliate in that particular country in terms of logistics (accommodation, transport, etc.), so the monthly administrative fees that the prospective volunteers can pay would therefore vary from one country to another.

In any case, SAFOD will allow a minimum of three volunteers at a time in each country so that neither SAFOD, nor our affiliates, nor the volunteers themselves are overburdened with the costs of managing the programme (we want to keep the costs as low as possible) until such a time when SAFOD secures funding from elsewhere to subside the programme costs.

Working with SAFOD Affiliates

Besides liaising with SAFOD affiliates on logistical issues as outlines above, SAFOD will also discuss with the affiliates any capacity needs that may require external support from individual volunteers worldwide. Once the needs have been identified and analyzed, the SAFOD Secretariat will work with the affiliate to develop TORs for prospective volunteers which will be posted on the SAFOD website. The volunteer opportunities will also be shared with:

  1. Other SAFOD partner organizations that may accept to publish them on their websites
  2. Specialised websites for volunteer initiatives, such as the idealist.com, unvoluntring.com, omprakash.com, etc.

Note that the TORs will not be ‘cast in stone’, as interested individuals will be allowed to directly inquire with the affiliate, and discuss terms accordingly.