Our History
SPAN began in the summer of 2005, when SPAN Founder and current Executive Director Rebecca Mitchell volunteered in Nakuru at an orphanage and school. There she met, now SPAN Country Coordinator, Cameron Dunkin, and Kenya Regional Director Leonard Muyelele. All recognized the potential of partnerships between volunteers and grassroots organizations. They also knew that there had to be a better way of bringing volunteers to Africa than the status quo, which was incredibly expensive and ineffective for both volunteers and organizations. Working to find the way to bring meaningful volunteers to quality-ensured grassroots placements with proper opportunity for preparation and minimal costs sparked the creation of SPAN.
SPAN believes in three basic tenets of volunteering and international partnerships:
- Costs are to be kept as low as possible for volunteers. When volunteers’ overhead expenses are kept to a minimum on our part, more people are able to volunteer, stay for longer periods of time, and even have extra funds available to support the organization’s projects.
- Communication must be open and often. SPAN works to prepare volunteers in detail on the projects they will be working with, providing summaries of past volunteers, ideas for best practice on upcoming projects, and giving contact opportunities between the volunteer and their volunteer placement, homestay, and regional director to answer any questions before take off. Connecting past and present volunteers is another way of developing a community of similar interest in African development.
- Partnering NGOs have the opportunity to review all volunteer candidates. Our partnering organizations are given the opportunity to review volunteer candidates and approve only the ones found relevant for their needs. Thus, SPAN puts the power in the hands of the organization to review volunteer applications, ensuring quality and relevance of all volunteers to their placement.
In the past two years, SPAN has sent nearly fifty volunteers to over seventeen organizations under these basic beliefs. We have had doctors, CEOs, teachers, college students, trades people and more come to give their time, energy, and skills. They have done incredible work, from building basketball courts and libraries, teaching, cooking, bringing electricity and water to schools, working and fund-raising for malaria education campaigns, assisting in HIV/AIDS clinics, developing marketing and accounting strategies, and many other meaningful activities. Most importantly, these were all done in partnership with local, African organizations.
SPAN currently has extensive placement opportunities in Kenya, and is developing now in Zambia also. We look to bring these opportunities to more regions and countries in Africa, growing slowly and steadily to ensure quality.
We welcome any questions, as you consider how you can get involved!