About Volunteer Centre
The Volunteer Centre is a non profit organisation for local and international Volunteers.
With our global network of voluntary service organizations and relationships with local and national NGO´s and communities, we place, educate and support Volunteers for more than 30 years. We provide unique volunteer opportunities with the objective of bridging the cultural gap between South Africa and other nations as well as the immersive experience to help those who really need it and make a huge or a little change.
How it all begann
South Africa's first Volunteer Center (originally Voluntary Aid Bureau) started in Cape Town in 1979, as a project of the International Year of the Child. This office opened in 1980, first organised by volunteers. It soon became clear there was a great need for such a service. The Volunteer Center team includes a volunteer management committee, paid staff and many wonderful volunteers.
Vision and Mission
Motivate and develop effective volunteering through consultation, training, information and placement services for the benefit of all. We want to help building a nation that cares!
Our Team
Helping Build a Nation that Cares
Manager: Nozuko
Volunteers: Anita, Zandile and Yara
Our Programmes
ICYE (International Cultural Youth Exchange)
ICYE is an international non-profit youth exchange organization with the Head Office in Berlin, Germany. ICYE was formed after the Second World War to foster peace and understanding in the world through the exchange of youth. ICYE promotes youth mobility, intercultural learning, and international voluntary service, in 36 countries around the world.ICYE‘s goals are to foster peace and understanding in the world through exchanging our youth.
The Volunteer Centre is a federation member of ICYE Organization, so we are able to send and receive international volunteers. The programme depends on the individual. Your personal abroad experience could be one month up to a year in different social fields.
This means that we will be your support system while you volunteer with us. We will support you in finding an accommodation - in our case, we like it more intercultural, meaning that you will stay with a local host family for the duration of your stay! We will try our outmost best to match you with the relevant project.
VCYC (Volunteer Centre Youth Club)
The Volunteer Centre Youth Club should create an Network of local, national and international Volunteers to improve themselves. Volunteering means experience! Experiential learning enhances personal development! It doesn´t matter where you're from, how old you are or what kind of skills you have. Giving something back to the community and profit from each other.
The VCYC creates genuine partnership and cooperation characterized by mutual give-and-take. This means you can volunteer your time and skills to any of our local partner organization and you get in return more skills, experience and the option to take part in other Volunteer Centre activities, like networking sessions with other volunteers, Museum tours and a lot more!
You are interested? Feel free to contact us!
WBL (Work Based Learning)
This program is aimed at scholars who are in educational institutions i.e. vocational colleges, this allows scholar to be exposed in their field of study and to gain experience for future employment or entrepreneurship startups/ideas.
The Volunteer Centre and partnership with organization from Italy-YOUNET, would like to invite you to participate in the BEE: Building Empowering Environment for youth Employability project.
The BEE project is founded by the European Commission through the program Erasmus+ and it involves 13 partner organizations from 4 different continents.
Our global partnership aims to tackle youth unemployment by bridging together educational sector, labor market, youths and public institutions and enabling young people to undergo work-based learning period (WBL).
In the long run, thus BEE contributes to empower youths’ potential to be successfully integrated in the labor market and to reduce the skills gap and increase their economic competitiveness. We believe we can make a positive difference both at local and international scale through involving youth organizations and strengthening cross-sectorial networking that will create new opportunities for work based learning mobility.
With this global partnership development, we are turning our special attention to the co-operation and networking within South African context. However, the coordination organisation from Italy-YOUNET- is supporting an international awareness campaign to reach out to business and industry representatives, community leaders, schools, and students to boost employability of young people. The campaign is taking place in India, Portugal, Croatia, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Greece, Cyprus, Philippines, China, South Africa, Kenya and Brazil.
We request you to cooperate and support us to create new opportunities for work based learning mobility. Should you be interested in building long lasting opportunities for youth exchanges, trainings abroad and other empowering opportunities for youth, our global partnership would be pleased to actively cooperate with you.
EVM (Effective Voluntary Management)
The Effective Voluntary Management was created for organizations to set up their voluntary programme and learn to recruit and place volunteers based in their goals.
We offer a training programme that will help you increase the capacity of your organization. When complete, you will be able to develop your organisation’s volunteer policy and increase your skills in Effective Volunteer Management training that takes place every quarterly.
The Volunteer Centre presents 3 day intensive workshop. This course is developed for managers/ coordinators of volunteers to assist them in strengthening their management and support systems for their local volunteer programme and takes place twice a year.