The SAMPARC team works in a forested area of the Aarey Colony in India. The thick forestation makes it difficult to secure volunteers, but the team desperately needed help. Find out how they moved forward.
The Social Action for Manpower Creation (SAMPARC) team needed volunteers to help run their programs for children, but they were having trouble recruiting them. Volunteers were hesitant to work with them because of their remote location. “This project is located inside dense forest with risk of attack by animals specifically from leopards. Because of all these problems, it is difficult to invite volunteers and donors to project location. There is no public transportation available to reach our community education center,” explained the SAMPARC team.
The SAMPARC team knew they needed to rethink their recruitment process. They knew that volunteers who were up to the challenge were out there—they just needed to find them. “We needed to promote our work by using different techniques,” they explained. Determined to try something new, SAMPARC team used GlobalGiving’s Network Mapping Worksheet to broaden their audience. They began to partner with local colleges and used social media to recruit new volunteers.
Rethinking how the SAMPARC team recruited volunteers paid off. “We are successful in our pilot project to attract volunteers in our community education centre. We got volunteer support from one of the top colleges. Now, 120 students from that college have joined our project. Apart from college volunteers, we also got good support from individual volunteers,” they explained.
The SAMPARC team is committed to finding new ways to gain volunteers for their programs, by testing out alternative ways to approach colleges and harness social media. Their dedication to their work did not go unnoticed by Tiasha Banerjee, who visited SAMPARC as a member of GlobalGiving’s Field Program. Tiasha had this to share about her visit with their team:
“The staff is highly motivated to work harder and better for the welfare of the area and the children especially.”
Are you ready to start growing your network? Start your Listen, Act, Learn. Repeat. journey today by downloading “GlobalGiving’s Network Mapping Worksheet.” If you are already part of GlobalGiving, go to GG Rewards to earn points for sharing what you’ve learned.
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