The world at your feet

Interculture Ireland is a charity that aims to promote tolerance and combat prejudice through intercultural programmes and international exchanges.

At the core of its beliefs is the idea that by seeing how other cultures work and live we enrich our own lives and the lives of others.

Through its community-service programme, Interculture offers volunteers the chance to live and work on community projects in developing countries. It has schemes running in Paraguay, Peru, Honduras, Brazil, Bolivia and South Africa.

The programme involves a six-month stay in the country, with the first month spent on a language-training course. Volunteers live with a host family and spend the following five months working on projects in the local community. Projects focus on areas such as children in difficulty, women's issues, health, environment and education.

One past placement was at the Callescuela centre in Asuncion, Paraguay. Callescuela is a drop-in centre for children who work on the street, and offers them a safe environment - and also some teaching to provide the education that they so often have missed out on.

According to the programme director, Catherine O'Dowd, the programme offers great opportunities for the local community to benefit, while providing a fulfilling and exciting challenge for the volunteers. "A lot of it is about personal development," she says. "The reality of it can be very different from what they are expecting and that in itself can be a valuable experience."

Being able to speak either Spanish or Portuguese is an asset for those going to the South American countries, O'Dowd says. But it is not a precondition, as long as volunteers make an effort to get to grips with the basics before they go out - which can then be improved in that first month of language classes.

Participants in the scheme tend to range from 18 to 30, though there is no official upper age limit. Some candidates have been school-leavers wanting an exciting travel experience before going on to college. Others have perhaps finished college but are interested in getting experience working in the voluntary sector abroad before applying for the longer programmes run by APSO, the State agency which deals with service abroad.

The placements are facilitated through Interculture's membership of AFS, a huge international voluntary agency set up after the second World War by volunteers ambulance drivers in the American Field Service. AFS operates intercultural exchange schemes all over the world, with the aim of promoting peace and understanding amongst nations.

In each of the countries where Interculture sends volunteers, there is already an established AFS network, which provides a safety net and contact base should anything go wrong.

Volunteers are required to raise £3,300 in order to join the programme. This fee includes all travel costs, medical insurance, language training, and the host family stay. Interculture offers a lot of support to volunteers trying to raise the money through sponsorship or fundraising; it provides a handbook listing creative ways of raising the cash, and will also put volunteers in contact with previous participants who can share their experiences and ideas.

Catherine O'Higgins, a volunteer who travelled to Honduras in 1997, raised most of her money through a table quiz she organised with her brother. She found that people were happy to donate prizes or contribute once they were made aware of what she was doing. She says that her experiences working on a house building programme in the city of San Pedro Sula were invaluable. "I think it was the people and their warmth - they had nothing and yet they gave me so much."

Another former volunteer, Mary Dunne, took a career break from her office job in Tullamore, Co Offaly, to work in that Callescuela centre in Paraguay last year. There she found a very different way of life and a very different standard of living to Ireland, but says the generosity she found among the children she worked with was amazing to behold.

Like O'Higgins, she ended up wishing she had been able to stay out longer - and plans to return to South America in the future. "I'm sorry it wasn't longer," she says. "Once I got settled the time just flew by."

In addition to the community scheme, Interculture also brings volunteers from other countries to Ireland. The guest educational programme brings African teachers to come and work for a period in an Irish school. And on its community-educator scheme a community worker from one of the host countries comes to Ireland to help work as a trainer with community groups here and share experiences and ideas. The current visitor is from Paraguay, where Interculture will be sending another volunteer to start work in January.

For more information contact Catherine O'Dowd, programme director of Interculture (tel: (01) 478 2046. Eight volunteers are being sought to join the programme in July 2000.