CWW is different from many other development charities; we don't undertake our own projects overseas or just send money. Instead we work with local organisations to find out what the needs of their organisation are and then find people who have the right skills to work alongside them and address those needs.
CWW explores the things partner organisations need to develop and continue to provide services that meet the needs of their local communities.
No service delivery: Eg. Instead of sending volunteer teachers, we will work with volunteers that will try and assist an education department to work on curriculum development or inclusion of children with learning difficulties. Instead of building water and sanitation systems for communities, we will help the local organisations who already do that to strengthen their approach, by working with engineers and sharing new skills and experience.
Situation analysis: First we have to find partner organisations which will be able to effectively use the support provided by CWW and its volunteers. Over the last year CWW has analysed more than 200 organisations in 9 different countries. We don't charge our host partners but make sure we work with organisations that have the capacity to work effectively with CWW volunteers.
Needs based: For our work to be sustainable, we must make sure that it is genuinely what the organisation needs. Our Operations team spend time with our partners looking at their performance, direction, processes, stakeholder satisfaction and the positive impact they are having.
We then have to understand the work in terms of the respective roles of CWW, our partner organisation and our volunteers. We use a work plan format to agree the overall framework with each partner organisation and then revisit the work plan jointly with volunteers and the partner organisation as the work evolves. We use monitoring from our volunteers, partners and their stakeholders to evaluate the impact of our work making changes to workplans where neccessary.
Technical assistance: We provide volunteers who have particular skills and experience which our partner organisations cannot access locally, or cannot afford. These people are adaptable and dynamic enough to share their own abilities to help solve our partner organisations’ challenges. We believe our approach is the most sustainable and best use of the time people volunteer to give overseas by working through us. This type of support is highly valued by organisations overseas as it is led by them, increases their skills and resources, and enables them to become more self-sufficient.
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