Voluntary Workcamp association of Ghana – VOLU

Worldwide volunteers seized the opportunityto use the experience of a young expatriate, Gordon E. Green, who was teaching English at the Mfantsipim School, Cape Coast, to experiment with the innovation of promoting workcamps at Tsito in Awudome On evaluating this workcamp experience, Quakers in Ghana decided to seek the assistance of the International Voluntary Service for Peace (IVSP) in London to train a Ghanaian to advance onthe innovation of workcamps in Ghana.

On return, he offered a one year full time voluntaryservice as the Organizing Secretary. The success of the workcamp became attractive to a black United States Christian minister,Reverend James Robinson, who inspired the United States Operation Crossroads Africa to experiment with their services in Africa in cooperation with VOLU. It was this cooperation which eventually led to the formation of the American Peace Corps. The cooperation is only one of many of numerous international agencies which have helped to accord VOLU’s workcamps the international character they have always developed and maintained.

Voluntarism and VOLU

People have always volunteered to do their little bit to protect or advance their family, clan, tribe,community or their environment. Voluntarism has taken different forms over the years. It has developed from the unorganized to organized voluntarism.VOLU, which was founded in 1956, has been the torch bearer in the area of voluntary workcamps. Apart from being the most stable, consistent and oldest organized workcamp organization in Africa, VOLU has played a major role in the development of workcamps in the whole world. VOLU continues to exchange volunteers with all European, American, Asian, Latin American and African workcamp organizations.

Our Vision

The vision of VOLU is to become the most versatile and trustworthy volunteering organization in Ghana and Africa as a whole.

Our Mission

VOLU’s mission is to mobilize students and the youth to render voluntary service to needy communities through work camping activities.

Aims and Objectives

• To organize and run voluntary workcamps in Ghana, either independently or in collaboration with other voluntary organizations or government departments.
• To bring together all those interested in voluntary work either as active campers or as sympathizers.
• To encourage voluntary service to the community both among the campers and in the communities for which the campers work.
• To bring together educated and illiterate, town folks and villagers and Africans and non –Africans (international) in a common respect for manual labor by doing useful constructive work in their spare or leisure time.
• To help poor communities to do work which they would otherwise be unable to do by themselves.
• To further international and interracial understanding by inviting people from abroad to attend camps in Ghana and by sponsoring Ghanaians to go to workcamps abroad.