Volunteers for Social Service is a non-profit international agency empowering people through personal development and self-sustainable community projects. We are committed to develop the full potential of a person as a compassionate service-minded leader.
Besides motivating and placing volunteers to projects all over the world, we give special emphasis on a holistic approach in helping them in their personal growth by offering activities such as Tai-chi, yoga and meditation instruction as well as team-building and self-empowering seminars.
While some of our programs include formal training before dispatching volunteers, we believe much of the learning happens while doing service and through a continuing relationship with our volunteers during and after their project.
You can find a number of relevant projects in this website, but for details and specifics of how to volunteer, please contact us by e-mail. Right now a major rural development project is in the works in Haiti in collaboration with AMURT where multiple volunteer opportunities exist.
The main office where volunteer placements are being coordinated and trainings conducted is in :
1245 S. Norton Ave. Los Angeles CA 90019.
For more information or for volunteer opportunities e-mail mark@vssnet.org or call at :
(323)735-3701 - ask for Deongira or leave message
(301) 675-9858 - J. Clark
About VSS:
History:
Volunteers Social Service was founded in India in 1959 to engage youth in community service activities. In 1979, Volunteers Social Service was incorporated as an independent organisation in the state of California by americans who had met the organization earlier in India. We started as a small community self-help group and have since branched out. Today there are community self-help groups across the USA, Canada and Jamaica, of which the one in New York City was incorporated in 1988. Our volunteer groups assist other organizations in their work or if big enough start their own projects. These projects are typically sustained and funded through the personal efforts of our volunteers. As Volunteers Social Service has grown in experience and maturity, so also have the ambition and scope of our programs. Our volunteer training center in Pennsylvania has been well established and we are focusing now on a nationwide rites-of-passage program to help at-risk youth and ex-juvenile offenders. Abroad we support a vocational training center and agricultural cooperative in Jamaica and Haiti as well as a rural development project in India, where our organization started.
To read about the history and stories of the founders, see the founders page...
Leadership:
As VSS has pledged to motivate and train volunteers to do social service, we offer a number of seminars and curriculums for personal development that help an individual to gain self-confidence and service-mindedness. When Kurt Hahn inspired a youth training program which became Outward bound in the US after his passing, he would not have imagined that it would be one of the important milestones and is now being adopted as training for managerial teams in all kinds of corporations and enterprises. There are now a multitude of programs to help the transition from youth to adulthood, or so-called rites-of-passage which have proven successful to rehabilitate juvenile offenders as well as give team-building skills to corporations and their staff.
VSS has adopted the training curriculum of Outward bound as explained in its manual "The conscious use of metaphor in Outward bound" in its annual boys and girls camps, in its "spiritual warrior" weekend training for the youth and adults and in the over-all approach to guiding a young person on his or her path. This particular program has actually benefitted population groups accross the board including juvenile offenders in LA. From 1992 onwards this program has been improved by an extensive value system approach and through the experience gained from our youth educators.
Yoga & Meditation:
The enriching factor for our volunteers is without doubt the practice of Yoga and meditation which we offer to teach and recommend to all. Compared to 15 years ago, we now find every business, student and even kids practice the calming and soothing streches with breathing and meditation to recharge themselves and gain the peace of mind to see things more clearly. For our volunteers we prefer choosing projects that provide an environment for those practices. And besides, VSS volunteers have started projects themselves that could not be tackled by many others, such as removing dead bodies after a Hurricane in India, establishing food granaries and cooperatives in a most remote place deep in the desert of Burkina Faso or not running away at the recommendation of foreign embassies during civic unrest in Haiti.
Service:
Service is the opposite of selfishness. But the paradox is that the more we can do it, the more we get inner strength as a reward inside of ourselves. But in a society teaching us to consume and "get" this seems almost an impossible thing to learn. When people see that others can be in far worse misery, their petty little problems suddenly seem irrelevant. Learning not to "have" but instead to "be" of service increases self-esteem and is fulfilling which only practical experience can convey.
To undergo pain and hardship for others in need without getting any reward or recognition for it is real service. The suffering of another is as good as one's own... Therefore service is a universal trait of human beings helping us to develop the spiritual qualities of compassion, tolerance and endurance.
While care for one another is a priority, we must not loose sight of our environment with its plants and animals that also have a right to live, therefore priority for our projects include those that also take care of the environment.
CONTACTS :
We work in close collaboration with various organizations and agencies that we get training from or that we help supply volunteers :
1.) AMURT - Our biggest partner and benefactor of our volunteers. http://www.amurt.net/
2.) SSAC - affiliated with VSS, it provides most of the training and follow up to keep our volunteers continuously inspired and motivated.http://www.innersports.org/
3.) Renaissance Universal - one of the philosophical backgrounds to the idea of VSS, and working towards a global renewal or "renaissance". http://www.ru.org/
4.) The Forum - developing compassion through an open forum - learning how to be service oriented through mental training. http://www.landmark-education.org/
5.) Mankindproject - Worldwide rites of passage organization - New Warrior Training Adventure .http://www.mkp.org/
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