Volunteer

QBL seeks to keep its costs low so as to provide resources to our projects. One of our strengths has been the volunteers that have supported us. QBL always needs more volunteer help, especially people who can speak Spanish and have specialized engineering, agricultural or medical skills or experience in development projects. If you have the time, ability and desire to help, please let us know.

Unfornately, we do not have the resources to provide for traveling expenses or stipends for volunteers. Our trustees and board members pay their own fares to Bolivia. We also seek to staff our projects with Bolivian nationals who are much more familiar with the culture. For this reason, we do not have any openings for 'gap year' students who have recently graduated from college and are looking for overseas experience. We may however, sometimes consider people with engineering, agricultural or medical skills who are good Spanish speakers.

QBL often needs help doing English-Spanish/Spanish-English translations of different documents, such as projects, meeting minutes and policies. Because of email, it is very easy for us to work with anyone anywhere.

Our fundraising activities range from simple but important activities such as folding letters for mailings to giving presentations and writing grant applications. Some of the activities, such as folding letters, require you to live in Southern California if you're in the US. For those of you in the UK just let us know where you live and we will contact you. Those interested in giving presentations or writing appeals can live anywhere, although it is usually helpful to have visited Bolivia or to know QBL's work. We also need help keeping our website updated.

The Project Team is QBL's central committee that reviews projects that the Bolivian office proposes. The PT then presents them to the UK and US boards of QBL to be approved. The Project Team requires greater involvement and we usually seek people who speak Spanish, have experience with development work or have technical skills relevant to our work and can visit Bolivia once every two or three years. While most of the time we will discuss the merits of projects that are presented, other responsibilities might include summarizing projects for the Boards, writing reports after visiting projects, working with our project database and discussing strategy and implementation.