Case studies

Since 1994 commercial companies in Uganda have been engaged in organic agriculture. This was accompanied by a wider movement in the agriculture sector aimed at developing sustainable agriculture as a means of improving people’s livelihoods. Many NGOs and the government promoted this approach to agriculture as it helped improve food security and provide income.

An advocacy campaign began in Mozambique when it was clear that national volunteering would benefit from legal backing to protect both volunteers and employers from being exploited and contribute to greater effectiveness and efficiency of volunteerism.

The work of the VSO HIV/AIDS team in Bangladesh has been consistently hampered by the attitude of law enforcers in the country. It was a struggle for staff and volunteers to support various high risk and vulnerable groups such as drug users, sex workers (street, hotel and residence based), men who have sex with men (MSM), transgender persons and truck drivers.

In theory, migrant children, even if unregistered, can enter the Thai state education system. However, in reality it was apparent there were many constraints on migrant children entering Thai schools, such as lack of awareness of migrant children’s right to enrol in Thai schools and, on the other hand, a lack of willingness of Thai schools to enrol the children.

The 33,000 residents of Chazanga, Zambia, had to walk about 12 kilometres to go to the nearest HIV testing clinic. This often meant that people did not go to the clinic to be tested. However, testing is a crucial part of any HIV transmission reduction strategy, so a nearby clinic was essential.

Banmali Kalsai is a 28-year-old active citizen from Budhipadar, India, a remote tribal dominated area in Orissa state. From a poor family of seven people dependent on their father’s daily labourer’s wage, in his youth Banamali overcame barriers of caste and disability to attend and graduate from school.

Efforts to improve school attendance rates in poor areas of Ghana had always been hampered by the demands on parents to pay fees such as school maintenance costs. The country faced the problem of children dropping out of school when their families could not afford to pay the fees.

In 1997 VSO Namibia started investigating the exclusion of disabled and marginalised children in schools. In the words of Mrs Prinsloo, Regional School Counsellor in Namibia, the findings showed that, "inclusive education was nearly non-existent". The findings also showed that many teachers in rural schools were not aware of the benefits of inclusive education, and even thought the inclusion of disabled children in their schools was a cost saving attempt by the authorities.

Of the 37 million people across the globe who are blind, over 15 million are from India. Over the years there have been an increasing number of calls from individuals who have experienced some form of discrimination as a result of their impairment. VSO partner Score Foundation has a strong background providing advice and information to blind and visually impaired individuals (VIs).

The primary challenge was to educate girls on HIV/AIDS on order to halt the spread of the disease amongst young women. The secondary challenge was to change traditional gender roles in the community which often prevent girls from taking part in organised sport, particularly football. 

In Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), as little as three years ago, volunteering was officially ‘illegal’ under the law and host organisations would feel unsure in engaging volunteers. In the past, volunteering was not directly regulated by any state or entity law, and the absence of protective legislation meant that volunteers were open to misuse, such as not being covered by health insurance at their placement.

Indigenous people in Bangladesh have long been discriminated against and made vulnerable in their own homes by ‘land grabbers’. VSO designed a strategy to develop partnerships with relevant national and international organisations and government institutions which could then address the causes of discrimination against indigenous peoples.