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Austraining is strongly committed to supporting volunteers and Host Organisations as one of the Core partners through AusAID’s AVID program, to ensure great outcomes are achieved. Where things don't go to plan, we do our best to learn what we can and apply these lessons to improve things in future. This blog has highlighted a key challenge in the development and volunteer field; that we seek to work with Host Organisations that can support a safe, secure and effective volunteer assignment while at the same time ensuring that we don't preclude organisations that will benefit most from capacity building inputs that Australian Volunteers can provide. There is an inherent level of risk that an individual volunteer assignment will not work out as planned, and this can be for a variety of reasons that may be within or outside of the individual volunteer or Host Organisation’s control. We believe that the Australian Volunteer program plays an important role in supporting developing countries and strengthening Australia’s relationship with them. Of course, we are concerned when any of our volunteers encounter problems or frustrations and we welcome their views and feedback; we all seek a common goal. It is only through such feedback that we can continually test and improve what we do. However the vast majority are satisfied with their volunteer experience and 92% of returned volunteers would recommend the Australian Volunteer program to their friends and family. Furthermore, 83% believed that they made a positive impact on their host organisation and the community.* Volunteers make a real difference in developing countries. Together with our partners, Austraining works to a comprehensive set of standards, which include safety and security, ongoing in-country support, allowances for volunteers and accompanying dependants, and pre mobilisation requirements such as tailored training, including language training. During Ashlee Betteridge’s time in Timor Leste, there were changes in management and Austraining mobilised an experienced staff member from the Indonesia team, as well as the Regional Director and the International Operations Manager, to Timor Leste. To increase in-country support in Timor Leste, Austraining has since increased the number of personnel in the Timor Leste team to three and is currently recruiting a fourth staff member. Austraining is committed to ensuring that volunteers receive support in line with AVID program Shared Standards. Anthony Rologas - Program Director- Volunteering - Austraining International *Orima Research Survey of Returned Volunteers - October 2012

This is a useful contribution to the volunteering discussion. I was a volunteer over a deacade ago and my experinece was very similar. Volunteering in developing countries is a privelage for the volunteers. One thing I remember very clearly in my pre-departure training with AVI was to keep my expectations very low. This was very good advice. Key skills you need to be a volunteer is humily and an ability to deal with ambiguity. How you test this with eager early career professionals in volunteer program is a challenge, particularly when numbers of volunteers is used as a metric of program success. How any organisation (developing context or not) deals with eager early career professionals needs to be carefully thought through and planned. If eager early career professionals are note actively engaged it can quickly become a management issue. Humility and ability to deal with ambiguity are important skills for any work you do in development. A volunteer placement will soon let you know if you have them. I have spent the last deacade working in Development, for this I have my volunteer experience to thank for.

Please let me add the link to this paper to my previous comment, for those interested: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800910003447 This must be one of the most under-cited papers: while it has the usual possible limitations of a cross-country regression study, the intuition and theory is very sound, in my opinion, and quite possible the tip of the iceberg. Un-gated discussion paper version here: http://www.uq.edu.au/economics/mrg/2709.pdf Cheers Ryan

Well said, Margaret - thanks. You final paragraph and the first one in 'what didn't we hear?' hit the nail on the head. After following this literature closely for a number of years I am very glad to at least see some people talking openly about this. There is little to no evidence of improved development outcomes (not solely economic, as you point out), particularly at the macro level. This is even the case if you look at selective and promotional case-studies for benefits to countries and communities (eg. from ICMM). The more important question should indeed not be how do we maximise the development benefits, but what are they? What do they look like over time, particularly beyond the immediate local community? What are the transmission mechanisms? Relative to other private sector actors engaged for development partnerships, is this a more effective sectoral engagement and investment than other sectors (eg. manufacturing, agriculture, services), where we have evidence of of positive human development spillovers? Thanks again and hope to see more critical work on this.

Thanks for this informative blog Stephen. I did not know that Australia and New Zealand had so much sway in the lending decisions of the WB and the ADB. If indeed the case, then your blog says as much about Australia as it does of our international financial institutions (IFIs). The former is worrying for me as an Australian taxpayer and latter is even more disturbing for someone who has a high regard for both the ADB and the WB.

Thanks Margaret for this post which does a great job of framing the wider issues that arise in this space. I particularly appreciate the acknowledgement that the EITI approach is just one part of the puzzle. In terms of a dearth of information about 'development' impacts I wonder if this is because there aren't many or whether it is because what has been missing to date is a mechanism for identifying and documenting them. In other parts of the private sector in developing countries businesses and their owners probably don't document development impacts and outcomes because that information is not what they use to make decisions about the future. But that does not mean there are not development impacts present (of varying kinds) that can be identified, documented, quantified and evaluated. However the methodologies and expertise in this type of activity may not be traditionally present in the skills sets of a private sector entity (and I would largely argue that it is unrealistic to expect them to be in small businesses but it is more appropriate for large entities to include these functions in their team). I noted that during 'mining' week there were some protests about AusAID supporting mining in PNG and elsewhere, it would be interesting to know what responses (if any) there were to this.

Ashlee I think you are very courageous to raise these issues, all of which many have wanted to for so long but have not been strong enough to do so. Well done.

Hi Tim, Thanks for adding your thoughts to this discussion. I agree with you that the way assignments are framed should be re-examined. It sets up all kinds of unrealistic expectations. I also agree with you that there is merit in the program and benefits for the Australians that participate, but perhaps the word volunteer needs to be dropped? The 'youth ambassadors' phrase has a nice ring to it, so I'm not sure why it has been so strongly branded as volunteering when the 'ambassador' qualities are likely the key part of many of these roles. Being an 'ambassador' for Australia comes with responsibilities to behave and engage in appropriate ways and doesn't make it seem like the 'ambassador' is making some kind of sacrifice to participate (like the word 'volunteer' does, or is interpreted as).

Thanks for sharing your experience. I think the point you raise about the expectations and power relations being settled after six months is an interesting one. I think it further reinforces that the ICM needs to be in there visiting the host organisation, checking how things are going in those early days, to help create working relationships that -- while they will still obviously take time to grow and mature and become fruitful -- are based on a mutual understanding of the volunteer's role, a shared purpose and willing participation on both sides.

Hi SvM, Thank you for your thoughtful comment. Your reference to the Peace Corps made me wonder what the assault rates are on Australian volunteers? This info is not publicly released as far as I can find and I have (once again anecdotally -- I know a lot of volunteers) heard of this happening among the Australian cohort. Like you, I found the 'pastoral care' offered by Austraining to be lacking and unresponsiveness to feedback, particularly when it came to safety and security of volunteers. Often if you were involved in an incident you were scolded instead of supported -- no matter if you had been doing the right thing or not. There also seemed to be a lot of buck passing to the on-call Australia-based psychiatrists -- while that is a useful service for volunteers to access professional counseling to deal with emotional fallout/stress/etc, it isn't a substitute for in-country assignment support -- both are needed.

Hi, Thanks for your comment. So much of it comes down to the in-country management team. My housemate was an AVI in Dili and thankfully I received the information I wasn't receiving from my own ICM on security and other issues via her, because she was being regularly updated by AVI. She felt much more supported than I did and had a successful assignment. This lack of support is particularly concerning because Austraining looks after the youngest cohort -- the youth ambassadors -- so they should be providing the most support. In Dili at least, most of the AVIs were older and their assignments seemed to have more focus and clarity. But all this is only anecdotal.

Ashlee - you're correct. It costs approximately $70,000 per volunteer for 12 months.