Lattitude Global - Previous Volunteering

'I provided the strategic knowledge that helped the leaders of the organisation develop a strategy that meets the changing needs of the charity in the modern world.'

 

 

The Organisation

Lattitude Global Volunteering is an amazing charity that provides 17-25 year olds with overseas placement opportunities.  Originally these were gap years for students prior to starting university although this has subsequently been expanded to placements prior, throughout higher education or between university and full time employment.  The opportunities range from teaching, working in the outdoor environment, being a community worker, medical assistant, or outdoor instructor in every continent across the globe.  

The young adults leave the UK and after an initial orientation in groups in their destination country they are left to live and work in the local community to use their own initiative and only call upon external support when essential.  They leave the UK as young adults and return with a level of self-confidence and maturity that many adults could only dream of achieving.  Once they return many of them provide a briefing to others who are about to undertake their overseas placement; the difference between these 2 sets of people is truly stunning.

 
 

The Situation:

Lattitude Global Volunteering was facing a challenge to their continued existence due to political and social changes in society.  With the introduction of tuition fees for University students, many students and potential volunteers that were concerned with the increased cost of completing a university course were either considering working full time for a year prior to university or going straight from further education to higher education.  

The result of this was that there would be far fewer young people deciding to under take a gap year voluntary project such as the ones offered by Lattitude Global Volunteering.  Young people also had the concern that the skills obtained from a gap year would not be sufficiently relevant to their future life as they would not include any significant work in information technology or the knowledge related economy.

The additional costs incurred in attending university by young people also have an impact upon the financial resources of parents who now feel the need to give their children additional financial support to help them complete university.  This reduces the amount of money available from parents to support gap year bursaries which in turn has an impact on the financial stability of the charity.

These changes created an urgent need to create a new strategy which could redefine the purpose of the charity and identity alternative funding.

Action:

Task:

During my MBA at Henley I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to work with a charity based in Reading (Berkshire) called Lattitude Global Volunteering. 

  • I attended an orientation briefing day and recall an 18 year old who went to teach English in Vietnam for 6 months.  His first class upon arrival attracted 70 children, he was overwhelmed by the size of the class and the children couldn’t learn and within 3 classes he had only 12 students attending.  He could not go home and had to persevere.  Through developing an exciting learning programme he was able to not only keep the 12 students and ultimately regularly teach a class size of 96.   When he returned home he was able to include this in his university application and his level of confidence and self-awareness shone through to other students and academic staff alike.
  • Firstly I needed to gain an understanding of the objectives and operations of Lattitude Global Volunteering
 
  • I contacted the country managers of the countries that recruit volunteers and host volunteers to gain an understanding of the capacities within each country and reviewed copies of their strategies.  I also interviewed returning volunteers and parents, universities and potential employers to gain an understanding of their perception of the experience and the charity as a whole.
  • A new strategy for the Lattitude Global Volunteering needed to be developed.
  • I worked with the Chief Executive and Head of Operations to develop a strategy that could increase engagement with universities, and employers to ensure that the skills developed would best fit their needs, could be something that employers could consider sponsoring and that the overseas placement could be seen as an attractive proposition for young adults when faced with the choice between earning money to pay the higher costs of attending university or taking an overseas placement.
 

Result:

I got a huge amount of satisfaction working with Latitude Global Volunteering and built up a great rapport with the senior management team, the country managers and those preparing to send young adults on assignment.   I was energized by the opportunity to not just make a difference to the young adults but also to help make a difference to their hosts in the developing world. 

I felt humbled to be an observer seeing the personal growth in the young adults that completed their placements.  My initial engagement with the charity had been to enable me to have an organization on which to base my final thesis (management challenge) on in order to complete my study.  Ultimately I realized that the needs of the charity required a flexibility beyond that possible in an academic piece of work which is why I chose to make it a separate consulting assignment designed especially to meet their needs.