The history and impact of Village Volunteers was described in our September 2025 blog, and we have been able to make two grants since then. None of this would have been possible without the loyalty of a small number of sponsors who have contributed to the scheme over many years. They have our and our partners lasting gratitude for their continuing support.

Such loyalty, however, cannot be counted on indefinitely- people’s circumstances change and of course no-one lives forever. Furthermore, those sponsors had some common characteristics: Most of them, directly or indirectly, had become connected to ICA and its work in Africa through ICA:UK’s Volunteer Service Programme (VSP). This trained and prepared young people for volunteering overseas, with many of the opportunities for placements being with ICAs in Africa.

As well as the sponsors, all the current members of the International Working Group (who voluntarily keep this programme going) went through the VSP as participants and/or trainers and either are African, live in Africa or have worked there.

With the changing nature of overseas volunteering (and international volunteer-sending agencies) and the changing demands from young people, ICA:UK discontinued the programme in 2006, which was probably the right decision, but it did deprive Village Volunteers of a source of people with connections to ICA and experience of working in Africa.

Attracting new sponsors (who mostly don’t have such experience or connection) has proved more of a challenge (not that fundraising is easy anyway!), especially in a context of a lot of negative press about international aid (reinforced by significant reductions in aid budgets globally) and in an economy where many are facing an increasing cost of living. There may, however, be signs of hope.

In an article on Participatory Grantmaking, the question of who should decide what and who gets aid funding was answered thus:

As the sector looks to decolonise and shift power, there is a growing realisation that these decisions should be taken by the communities where the money will be spent: that they, rather than funders based thousands of miles away, are best placed to decide what their needs are and how best to meet them.

We would broaden that to include supportive local organisations, but the principle remains: that funding should be directed not towards strategies and programmes developed and designed externally, but for investing in the capacity of communities and the organisations that serve them. This is what Village Volunteers does. We will expand on this in our next blog.

Over the coming months we will be working on a fundraising campaign to attract new sponsors, but if you are already interested, you can read more and sign up at https://ica-uk.org.uk/village-volunteers/ or contact Jonathan Dudding at jdudding40@gmail.com