A team of volunteers have built and launched an app over the weekend in the hope of uniting New Zealanders to help each other through Covid-19. Its creator explains how Voluntarily.nz works. New Zealanders are rapidly entering isolation as we try to contain the spread of Covid-19. My company Vend sent our global workforce home … Read more
A recent opinion piece on the Spinoff warned of the dangers of voluntourism, a term for programmes that charge travellers for short-term volunteer experiences. Here, two volunteering organisations tell Josie Adams why what they do is different. A tourism-volunteering hybrid, the burgeoning industry of “voluntourism” has been criticised for charging westerners thousands while costing communities … Read more
Back to university today? Beware the flashy voluntourism brochures promising a chance to save the world, writes AUT lecturer Daniel Crouch. It was my first day as a lecturer, February 2018, and I was feeling pretty nervous as students filed in. Just before the nine o’clock start, a young woman approached me at the front … Read more
In our Q&A series, The Lightbulb, we ask innovators and entrepreneurs to tell us about how they turned their ideas into reality. This week, we talk to Collaborate co-founder Poppy Norton who’s helped create an app matching charitable organisations with volunteers. Nominated for a Hi-Tech Award for the second year in a row, Collaborate is the brainchild … Read more
If burnout is a problem and the promise of self-transformation and self-care aren’t working, then what now? Dr Katie Bruce, chief executive of Volunteering New Zealand, offers an alternative. This New Year, along with everyone else, I found myself watching Tidying Up with Marie Kondo while fawning over Bullet Journaling on Instagram and ordering a ton … Read more