From my Herefordshire home office, with the valleys in the background, I regularly go online and volunteer with people in Kenya, Nepal, Ethiopia and Bangladesh, helping to address a potential food crisis. An organisation doesn’t have to fly me anywhere, meaning there’s no carbon footprint. All I need is simply time to exchange my skills and knowledge with people in these countries who in return help me learn and gain so much.

Nearly four decades ago, when I first volunteered for INGO VSO as a forestry graduate, to work in a community project in western Nepal, things were different. I worked alongside fellow European volunteers, a scattering of Dutch and Belgian, from many different backgrounds. But back then there were no nationals from Nepal volunteering with me.

At the time, I helped introduce permaculture to the western part of the country. It’s a way of regenerative design, based on ecological principles that promote environmentally friendly, economically viable and socially just solutions for growing food. Using an acre of degraded farmland, I founded the Jajarkot Permaculture Programme (JPP). It grew to become an array of projects spanning four districts, 65 villages, and eight farms. It had 120 staff and volunteers at its heart. Thanks to volunteering, I launched my career and I now work with a third generation project, the Himalayan Permaculture Centre, based in the country’s Surkhet and Humla districts. It uses informal volunteers.

Volunteering has changed dramatically since I signed up for it in 1985. Research released recently by VSO and Northumbria University suggests that using both international and local volunteers is now more effective to tackle inequality and poverty. The first-ever report on “blended volunteering” found that “the presence of international volunteers brings energy and donor attention to projects”. National volunteers allow “effective engagement" with communities, it said. They also increase the likelihood that impacts can be sustained due to their particular knowledge and longer-term involvement”. The report looked at project examples from Tanzania, Uganda, and Nepal.

Up until now, most research involving volunteering has focused on “voluntourism”, such as visiting orphanages. The research notes that each type of volunteering activity brings different skills and ideas and the potential for young people to become involved in facilitating change within communities that is purpose-driven. By volunteering in a mixed team, there is potential to harness people’s resources and energy to contribute to broader development, versus a “gap year” activity like building a school which has limited potential for contributing to community development on a sustainable basis.

To this mix of volunteering, some organisations such as VSO are also now adding “e-volunteers”. It was in 2018 while running my own course seeing how aid organisations could use the principles of permaculture to improve their work that I got the idea for becoming a remote volunteer for charities. When the pandemic hit, and trainers could not travel, this seemed an effective solution to keeping projects running. As time went on, we came to see that we could achieve success by collaborating remotely. In the past year, I’ve worked as a coach and advisor, supporting national and international volunteers, as an online volunteer myself.

My work, which amounts to about seven hours a month, includes putting together presentations on agroecology, reviewing proposals and giving feedback on how volunteers can put them in place. The conflict in Ukraine has shown us how fragile our food systems are. Agroecology is one of the solutions to strengthening this and includes reducing harmful activities such as use of poisons by localising the food production where possible, shortening the value chain. This result in a win-win for society and the environment, addressing climate change and conflict.

E-volunteering gives people the chance to volunteer and use their skills in a useful way, without taking a career break or loss of income. It’s difficult for some people to commit to full time volunteering because of financial and family reasons. As a volunteer, I exchange inspiration, ideas, and information with other people. I’ve forged strong relationships with people through screens, although of course there’s a disadvantage to not being able to see people in person. There’s things that we can’t do online like visit our favourite farms together or socialise after a long day’s teaching and learning.

People have always volunteered. There were three reasons I went to Nepal - to gain experience, see different places, and help. Through volunteering, nationals can participate in projects, raise their voice, and upskill. But international volunteers can also benefit. Through my time volunteering, I’ve realised that the communities I’ve worked with have strengthened my knowledge. While volunteering provides cultural immersion and may foster new ideas, the true transformative potential lies in collaborating as part of a diverse team that “blends” programmes and generates inspiration and innovation through working together.

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