adaptability

Adaptability is essential for anybody chosen for such volunteer work. Volunteers go as teachers, engineers, accountants, agricultural advisors, doctors and nurses, surveyors, skilled tradesmen—as the organisation grows, so does the diversity of assignments to which New Zealanders are sent.

Such projects as the Good Neighbour team in Thailand, Kampong New Zealand in Malaysia, the Sherpa hospital in Nepal and the improvement of marketing techniques in Western Samoa have had noticeable social and economic effects on the host communities. The less glamourous work—teaching or personnel training—has its own intrinsic attractions, providing the volunteer with his own satisfaction—perhaps the knowledge that his presence in a particular area means that for one or two years children learning English will have a teacher for whom it is the native tongue, and whose way of life it totally different to their own.

What the volunteer gives up in the way of material things may be great, but what he gains in understanding of his fellow men more than compensates.