Volunteer Articles

Colin's Biography

By Colin 2009

Colin Salibury is the Founder and President of Global Volunteer Network. After spending time volunteering in Ghana, West Africa, Colin saw the tremendous difference volunteers could make in helping local organisations achieve their goals. This desire to partner with organisations to meet community needs saw him launch Global Volunteer Network in December 2002. This is his story. 

My journey began in Papua New Guinea in 1988 with the simple act of tossing a stone into Lake Kutubu. I was 18 years old.

I left school with only three school certificate subjects and a leaving  certificate that said, “Colin is best suited to practical subjects,”  so I enrolled in an electronic technicians course.  I finished the course and spent the next three years installing alarms. However, during this time I had the opportunity to go to Papua New Guinea on a six week trip volunteering with the Christian Radio Missionary Fellowship. I didn’t know it then but this was to change the course of my life.

There are many things about this trip that I vividly remember; flying over the jungle and landing in a field, the four hour trek through the jungle, (inclusive of leeches) and a two hour canoe trip in nothing more than a dug out log.

When I arrived at the village I was struck by the children and their bloated bellies and rust coloured hair. This was my first experience of real poverty, a glimpse of how two thirds of the world lives.

I remember wandering down to the lake and throwing stones into the water feeling a deep yearning to help these people and to make a difference- to leave my mark. As I threw a stone into the lake I wondered what could one person do. I watched the ripples moving out and saw the impact one stone entering the water made. At that point I thought if I could inspire others it would be like the stone’s ripple, one small ripple, leading to a bigger one and a bigger one. A ripple of change.

When I got back home I became involved with Youth for Christ (YFC) and worked in their Te Hou Ora ministry with at-risk-youths.  While I was with YFC I had the opportunity to travel to the Philippines and so began the next stage of my journey. I was billeted with Raphael and his family in the heart of a slum. Living amongst the people I saw how happy many of them were, there was a lot of joy and contentment and a real sense of community. This challenged my thinking because I used to believe poor means miserable but I quickly learnt that happiness is not about being poor or rich, it’s about your state of mind. Satisfaction comes from where you are at.

I saw a Mormon missionary arriving in his suit which seemed so out of place in the slum. Up on the hill was a beautiful Catholic church with manicured grounds that also seemed out of place.  Down the road from the slum were several mansions and one had a sign on the gate that said “Jesus has set me free.”  I wrestled with what that meant for Raphael and his family.

When I got home to New Zealand I couldn’t buy anything for a month, I was so affected by my experience.  It was another point in my journey where I was challenged by so much and had this growing desire to do something and to connect.

As a result I decided I needed to go to university and study. Whilst my teachers thought I was better suited to practical work I believed I could do more with myself.  In 1994 I undertook a Bachelor of Arts in Social Policy, which I completed. I then stayed on to do my masters in International Development. I wanted to have a real involvement in working with communities in developing countries.

My master’s was a two year course that involved writing a thesis. I decided I wanted to live in a developing country and review some of the adult literacy programmes that were being offered. At this time I was working for World Vision three days a week, so in 1997, with their support, I went to the north of Ghana to review three literacy projects taking place with the Konkomba tribe. World Vision provided a motorbike and organised a family for me to stay with.

Arriving in Ghana was a culture shock and the heat was immense. I had to fly to the north of Ghana to a town called Tamale. This was a new form of travel for me. I had to stand on the scales with my suitcase to be weighed and then I was issued a ticket. The ticket didn’t have a seat number, so as soon as the gates opened it was a quick dash across the tarmac to get onto the plane and get a seat. Fortunately I was young and could run fast.

When I arrived at the village I was informed I had to meet the Chief to get his permission to be there. Our communication was through a translator which made it slow, but he told me the following story which I have never forgotten and have repeated often. It describes our partnership philosophy with communities.

“A farmer sows seeds to germinate and grow and yield and harvest. But if you sow seeds like corn and you place a stone on top of the seed, it will grow around and around and finally die. But if somebody moved that stone away it would germinate and produce a good harvest.”

The Chief said, “You coming here is helping us remove the stones.” He let me stay. I spent the next two months living in a mud hut with no power and a lady to cook my meals. During this time I observed three different literacy programmes. The villagers were very keen to learn. After working all day in the fields they would come in and have night classes under lanterns. Their long term goal was to learn English. They thought it would provide more opportunities and they could go to the city and their children could have a better life.

On my way home I was given the opportunity to present my findings to Action Aid in London, one of the literacy programme providers. I went home, wrote my thesis and passed my Masters.

What struck me the most in Ghana was the schooling. A class of 100 children would have one teacher. It was clear that many children were missing out on an education due to the shortage of teachers. It was at this point my thinking around GVN was born. Whilst I knew that long term trained teachers were needed; I could see that in the short term if we provided volunteers to the schools, many more children would be able to access education.

Back in New Zealand I got a job as a community development advisor with Internal Affairs and for a couple of years I put my ideas on the back burner. In 2001 I spent a lot of time learning how to use the internet which I was fascinated with. I learnt how to use it as a promotion and marketing tool and at the end of 2001 I started formulating the idea of a volunteer organisation. I wanted to give people the opportunity to experience life in another community, share their story and gain as much from their experiences as I had, and I wanted it to be affordable.

So Christmas 2001 I launched the GVN website. I had found three programmes in Ghana, Nepal and Ecuador on the internet that I wanted to send volunteers to and formed a relationship with these organisations. To my amazement applications flooded in. In our first year, 2002, we placed 240 volunteers. I was working two full time jobs with the help from Jo, my wife.

The same year we decided we should visit the projects we were sending the volunteers to, so I travelled to Ghana, Nepal and Ecuador spending about four days in each country.

Towards the end of 2002 I really wanted to learn what happens on the ground. What makes a good project, how does one provide for volunteers effectively and how can you give them enough work in order for them to have a meaningful experience. So I resigned from my management role with the government and took my family to Romania for three months. We had been contacted by an American couple, Bruce and Sandy Turner, to help them set up a volunteer programme over there. They had been given permission to take children out of the Spitals (government run orphanages) and set up five group homes.

My wife Jo, who is a teacher, worked with the volunteers and the children in the morning while I worked on establishing an organisational structure and looked after our two girls. In the afternoons we went back to our apartment in the Galati district and ran GVN from the laptop.

GVN grew very quickly and we had to open up many new projects, all of which we wanted to visit before we placed volunteers to ensure they were suitable. Life became very busy.

In 2004 I realised that placing volunteers was fantastic but I could see a real need to assist our partners with funding for capital projects and programmes. The idea of setting up a foundation that could raise money was born. In 2004 I visited a village in Uganda that had been decimated by Aids. All those between 20 and 50 had died and only the elderly and children were left. There was a real need to educate the children.

Flying home I thought I had to do something for those children, I had to provide for them. Glancing through a magazine I saw an advert to climb Kilimanjaro and raise money to save the Rhino. I thought, “We could do that,” but we could build a school in Uganda instead. Back home I found a trekking company who would lead the trek, launched it on our web site and had 20 people sign up. I was very nervous. I hadn’t done anything like this before. Everyone had raised USD2000 each for the project, so we had USD40, 000 for a new school.

It was a fantastic experience. We spent five days climbing Kilamanjaro and all 20 people reached the summit. After the trek we flew to Uganda and viewed the plans for the school. A year after conceiving the idea, the school was built.

The success of this prompted me to organise a bigger fundraising trek, so we took a group of forty to Base Camp on Mount Everest to raise funds for an orphanage. Kathmandu orphanages are poorly run with the proprietors focused on making money and not caring for the children. This was to be a benchmark model for future orphanages. Enough money was raised to build the orphanage and start another one.

A trek to Machu Picchu in Peru followed. When we arrived on August 15^th, 2007 it was just as the Peru earthquake hit.  Thanks to the power of the internet I was able to send an email to our contact list asking for financial help and when we got back from the trek $10,000 was in our account. This enabled us to fill a truck with supplies to go to people stranded in the rural areas.

In 2007 I also set up the Stop Child Poverty website, which was based around the United Nations Millennium goals. I wanted to encourage people to do something to move towards a world without extreme poverty. I was invited to attend the UN half time Millennium conference in Geneva and then on to New York where Global Volunteer Network’s youth ambassador was invited to speak. Later that year I was privileged to meet Bill Clinton and have Bill Gates endorse GVN in Newsweek.

This year, 2009 GVN celebrated its 10,000^th volunteer. We have 29 projects in 21 countries and are well on our way to having raised a million dollars for the Foundation.

As Mahatma Gandhi proclaimed, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world."  I reflect back to the lake in Papua New Guinea. The ripples cast out by a single stone started my journey which is far from finished; I see this as just the beginning. As a naive 18 year old I believed I could make a difference, one ripple at a time. Do you?