Statement of Intent

International Volunteer HQ (IVHQ) aims to provide volunteer travellers with quality, flexible, safe and highly affordable volunteering placements in developing countries. In addition to providing aid and assistance to these countries, IVHQ endeavors to increase education and heighten awareness through not only the skills and expertise taken by volunteers to their host communities and institutions, but also through the experiences and lessons volunteers will in turn take back to their own countries and cultures.

IVHQ Goals

• Make safe, quality international volunteer travel genuinely affordable.
• Assistance to local communities and organizations through providing short term (one week to six months) international volunteers.
• Heighten awareness of issues in developing countries through first hand volunteer experiences.
• Authentic international volunteer travel experiences, achieved by living and working with local people, communities, organizations and families.
• Education for both local people (through volunteers) and volunteers (through their volunteer travel experience and interaction with local people).
• Provide a opportunity for people to experience different cultures and international travel affordably whilst making a difference.

History of IVHQ

International Volunteer HQ (IVHQ) was formed in early 2007, with the aim of making volunteering possible for everybody through affordable, safe, high quality projects in developing countries. In 2005 and 2006 after finishing his Master of Business in finance and sustainable logistics, the Executive Director – Daniel Radcliffe volunteered abroad. Naively, he was initially surprised to find there were no opportunities to volunteer abroad for ‘free’, unless he wanted to commit himself to 12 months in a service like the Peace Corps. However, after thinking about this (putting his logistics degree to good use), he came to the conclusion, that this made sense, because if a community was really in NEED, then where would the money come from to pay for these volunteers’ food, accommodation and supervision. Despite this, he still could not find a volunteering organization that provided affordable and yet most importantly high quality volunteering opportunities.

On returning home to New Zealand in late 2006, IVHQ was born with the goal of providing safe, affordable and high quality placements in areas where there is a real NEED for volunteers. IVHQ provides affordable placements by partnering with organizations based in the country where volunteers wish to work. This is extremely effective for a number of reasons.

• Local organizations are in the best position to see where volunteers are really needed. The staff in these organizations are locals, have been raised in the area and know it inside and out. They can speak the local language, they know the local people and are in the best position to provide guidance, safe supervision and support to you the volunteer.
• Partnering with local organizations reduces costs making the projects more affordable for you the volunteer. This means more people are able to volunteer resulting in higher volunteer numbers meaning more is achieved.
• The entire project fee that you pay goes to our partner organization. While this fee is necessary to pay for your accommodation, meals, airport pick up and orientation among other things, it is better that it goes into the community and helps develop the area you will be working rather than getting stuck in a western country.

IVHQ gets emails everyday from organizations around the world requesting partnerships, yet one of the strengths of IVHQ is our selection process. It is a sad fact that there are many volunteer programs with sub-standard accommodation and services even though they charge a small fortune to volunteers to allow them to ‘help’. Every program that IVHQ offers has been personally inspected and selected by directors from IVHQ. We have been there and done that, long before you, so we know exactly what you will experience.

Based on our low fees and high quality programs, IVHQ is experiencing unprecedented success signing up a large number of volunteers every week. IVHQ is now one of the world's largest volunteer placement organizations, sending over 4000 volunteer travellers abroad. This has meant the need for expansion and IVHQ is currently in the process of opening new programs in other developing countries. Based in New Zealand but providing volunteering opportunities to people all over the world, IVHQ is growing rapidly and in 2012-2013 plans to open programs in Argentina, Sri Lanka and Russia to complement our existing programs.

To contact our Executive Director – Daniel Radcliffe, you can call him on +64 6758 7949 (please check time in New Zealand before calling) or email him at daniel@volunteerhq.org He is only too happy to answer any questions or queries you may have.