VSO works through volunteers to fight poverty in developing countries. VSO doesn't send money to developing countries, it sends people, volunteers whose wide range of skills, knowledge, professional experience and sheer enthusiasm make lasting and far reaching change in the world's poorest communities. Els and Dan are fundraising in support of all VSO funded projects, which benefit around 2 million people every year.  A VSO volunteer's most important workplace objectives are training and knowledge transfer; VSO volunteers aim to make themselves redundant by passing on their professional skills and knowledge to colleagues.  By donating to VSO you are not helping to pay for just one volunteer's placement in a developing country, you are supporting all of VSO’s vital work, enabling it to continue to change the world through the power of volunteering.

Els and Dan were both VSO volunteers in Guyana from 2001 to 2003, and Els has since volunteered in Guyana again and in other developing countries.  Having seen, first hand, the impact that volunteers make, both at work and in the communities where they live during their placements, Els and Dan are more motivated than ever to support VSO and the work of its committed volunteers and staff from all over the world. Please sponsor Team Els and Dan to run the Waimes Half Marathon, and help support the vital work of VSO volunteers in some of the poorest communities in the world.
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For those interested in the photographs, most of them show where Els and Dan worked while volunteering abroad.  Els is an audiologist and worked at the Georgetown Public Hospital in Guyana from 2001 to 2003, treating patients and training local medical professionals to become audiological practitioners.  At the same time, Dan spent two years as a computer science lecturer at the University of Guyana (UG),  and then went on to spend two more years in Guyana as an educational IT infrastructure specialist at the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD), part of the Ministry of Education.  Els returned to Guyana with VSO in 2008 for three months and then spent three months volunteering in Namibia in 2011. In 2014 she volunteered in Kenya with a charity called Eardrop that specialises in audiological training in East Africa, and has volunteered annually with Eardrop since then.