International Volunteers Day: Celebrating volunteers across the Overseas Territories

International Volunteers Day (IVD), observed annually on December 5th, is a time to honour and celebrate the invaluable contributions of volunteers. This day recognises the dedication and hard work of individuals who generously devote their time and expertise to FOTBOT and countless other charities and organisations, striving to create meaningful, positive change within their communities and across the globe.

IVD was established by the United Nations General Assembly in 1985 to recognise and celebrate the contributions of volunteers worldwide. It was first observed in 1986.

To celebrate IVD 2024, FOTBOT is spotlighting a number of charities and volunteers from the Overseas Territories (OTs).

Arijah Children’s Foundation - Anguilla

Founded in 2006, the Arijah Foundation is the first non-profit organisation dedicated to serving Anguilla’s children with special needs. Their mission is to support children with special needs throughout Anguilla, giving them help for today and bright hope for tomorrow.

The Arijah Children’s Foundation, fondly called the Arijah Foundation, is named after Arijahm a 17 year old girl born with a genetic condition affecting her mental and physical development. Created in 2006 by Arijah’s parents, Renuka and Alex Harrigan, the Arijah Foundation has grown to help dozens of children with special needs in Anguilla in the past 15 years.

Their website highlights the profound impact of their mission, showcasing how children with special needs and their families are supported, nurtured, and given hope for a brighter future. It also reflects the transformative experience of volunteers and donors who feel inspired and blessed as they join in the journey of caring for these children and their families.

The Arijah Foundation offers a range of services and programs to children and adults with special needs, free of charge. This includes but is not limited to enhancing each child’s development, growing successful students, building basic life skills, treatment for a range of issues and needs and respite services for parents.

You can find out more about the Arijah Foundation here.

Acts of Random Kindness (ARK) - The Cayman Islands

Cayman’s ARK is a Registered Non-Profit Organisation, founded in 2006 and run by volunteers. ARK’s focus is on improving the standard of living in the homes of the under-priviledged; ensuring that no one goes hungry or homeless, encouraging and providing education, aiding children and adults in life-threatening medical situations, and ensuring any matter of crisis or suffering is eased by collective community support.

ARK endeavours to be a friend to people in unique circumstances of crisis; to demonstrate kindness through loving acts of service. ARK is a friend to strangers and approaches humanity with great love and compassion - without judgement. ARK provides several programs; MER, Tiny Homes, CASA and Reconnect.

Mentor, Educate and Reinforce (MER), was implemented in the 2019-20 school year at George Town Primary. It is an education initiative that provides intensive learning remediation, at a key stage in the lives of underprivileged children with learning difficulties. Through evidence-based reading and literacy intervention, it focuses specifically on improving the learning prospects of highly capable children who have been adversely affected by poor home and family lives, and by poverty. ARK was delighted to announce that in the 2019-20 school year, more than half of the students advanced between 1.2 to 2.2 years in reading accuracy and overall fluency gains.

With the help from volunteers and sponsors, ARK has completed two Tiny Homes for those in need in what they say is a giant stride towards building a community where everyone has a decent place to call home.

The second ARK Tiny Home, for Miss Marva, was completed in July 2024.

Through the CASA program, ARK raises the standard of living island-wide. ARK renovates dilapidated homes suffering from storm damage and other dire conditions as a result of economic hardship. They meet with families during a “home visit” and get a bird’s eye view into the dire state of their homes - some of which are unsuitable for living. Through generous donations of money, materials and time, sponsors and community groups help to give these families hope.

ARK reconnects electricity and water for families who cannot afford to pay or maintain their utilities. This program is invaluable for families; without electricity and water, a functioning bathroom, children cannot live in a clean and healthy environment and acceptable living conditions.

You can find out more about ARK here and listen to the FOTBOT podcast with Tara Nielson from ARK here.

Animals in Need Foundation - Gibraltar

Animals in Need Foundation (AINF) is a Gibraltar based charity that works together with the local and international authorities and organisations to help improve the lives of many abandoned and unwanted animals. AINF is run by volunteers and is supported by one part-time employee.

AINF has been established as a Gibraltar registered charity since June 2016. Initially, the charity was simply 2 people who had a passion and drive to help abandoned and mistreated dogs in local communities with the aim to help rehome neglected and mistreated dogs.

In the last 4 years AINF has focused on helping the most mistreated, vulnerable and ‘invisible’ of dogs. They have successfully rehomed over 3000 animals during this time. On average there are 60 dogs in the Charity’s care at any given time and on average, 30 dogs are rehomed per month. The dogs are rehomed in Gibraltar, Spain, Holland, Germany, Finland and Sweden. AINF have also rehomed cats, rabbits and hamsters.

The charity has a number of projects that they continuously work on. Their mission is to take the most vulnerable dogs who are either sick, pregnant, old or on death row, and place them in the safety of private kennels. Once in kennels, their medical needs can be looked after, they can be fed and socialisation improves which means they are far more likely to be adopted. AINF have taken dogs deemed unadoptable and found them loving homes.

AINF works to prevent a station in Northern Spain from putting dogs to sleep for no reason. It involves hard work and a lot of fundraising as money is needed to bring the dogs down, put them in private kennels and pay for blood tests and follow up medications as the dogs usually have blood infections. The charity’s German counterparts have helped with all the dogs coming down from Northern Spain which means they have homed over 50 dogs in the last 4 months from this project alone.

In addition, the charity helps shelters such as the La Linea shelter and the Los Barrios shelter. AINF takes the dogs from the shelters and places them in private or training kennels where they receive more focused care. This means that the dogs are more likely to get adopted. In 2021, after the Los Barrios shelter was flooded, AINF took 20 dogs into their care.

More information can be found here.

Volunteers from AINF taking part in the weekly dog walking which run every Saturday morning

Falklands Conservation - Falkland Islands

Falklands Conservation is a non-governmental organisation working to protect the wildlife in the Falkland Islands for future generations. It is the largest membership based conservation charity in the Islands, since 1979. It is run by a small team, with 13 staff based in Stanley, 2 wardens on New Island, and 1 additional staff member based in the UK. They rely on a number of dedicated volunteers both in the UK and in the Falkland Islands who are vitally important in enabling the charity to undertake its work.

Volunteer activities vary from taking part in community events to feeding oiled penguins in the Falklands Conservation Oiled Seabird Rehabilitation Centre, to habitat restoration or invasive species eradication. The Oiled Seabird Rehabilitation Facility has been developed and stocked to respond to a tier 1 oil spill scenario (i.e. up to 20 oiled birds). The facility includes an indoor washing room, indoor housing, kitchen, freezer room and an outdoor pool and enclosure.

Staff oversee a volunteer programme and provide training to people in the community who help at this facility. The charity cares for oiled and injured seabirds, mostly penguins, which are often found and reported by members of the public. The intensive programme of rehabilitation involves cleaning off the oil, feeding and husbandry until they are ready for release.

Friends of the British Overseas Territories (FOTBOT)

We couldn’t mark IVD without noting our own fantastic team of volunteers. FOTBOT, founded in 2013, has been entirely run by volunteers since its inception.

Our current team of 30 management committee members work around the clock to promote, support and increase awareness of the UK Overseas Territories, and are responsible for all the charity’s operations including our events, research, communications, and engagement.

We’d like to thank all our volunteers - past and present - for their selfless dedication to FOTBOT and the Overseas Territories.

Volunteers washing a penguin in the Oiled Seabird Rehabilitation Facility

Falklands Conservation also have a number of other projects they are currently working on; New Island Restoration, Whale projects, Seabird Monitoring, Habitat Restoration, Peat Wheatlands Project, Seabird KBA and Conservation Action.

More information can be found here.