Volunteers

Volunteers and interns remained an important human resource for War Child, especially as a low-cost organisation. In 2013, we planned to have approximately the same number of volunteers as in 2012, which would enable the organisation meet its goals within the planned time and budget. Meeting the target, in 2013, 40 volunteers and 19 trainees supported different departments at the head office.

Volunteers and interns are selected through recruitment processes based on their qualifications and expertise in comparison with the support needed. Volunteers who offer their services in an open application are taken into consideration, but hired if they will have a clear added value to the organisation. The benefit of working with volunteers and interns is assessed in balance with the time spent on integrating them into the organisation, the need to provide workstations for them, and the costs of reimbursing travel expenses.

Like paid employees, volunteers are an integral part of War Child; they are informed on all developments within the organisation and participate in all personnel activities. We aim to create a dedicated team of volunteers, who commit for a longer period of time, and we are fortunate to have volunteers who have been with War Child for several years and contribute valuable knowledge and experience to the organisation. As the same time, we only work with part time volunteers so that they can maintain a fair balance between their private lives and the time they spend at War Child.

For many volunteers, their time with War Child is a step on the career ladder, and we have also hired people from our volunteer pool into paid positions. Some of War Child’s former employees also continue to lend their time and expertise to War Child on a voluntary basis.

In addition to our volunteer pool, we have a network of approximately fifty voluntary spokespeople, divided across five different regions throughout the Netherlands, each of which is led by a volunteer regional coordinator. More information about volunteer spokespeople can be found in the paragraph Voluntary spokespeople.

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