Needs For V.S.A. Workers Outlined

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31975, 30 April 1969, Page 14

Needs For V.S.A. Workers Outlined

The greatest need for future Volunteer Service Abroad workers from New Zealand would be for those with middle-level skills—mechanics, technicians, engineers, agricultural workers and advisers. Miss K. Clark, the selection and training officer for V.S.A. told the annual meeting of the Christchurch branch last evening.

“The field of adult work overseas is becoming more and more diversified,” she said. “Teachers will always be needed, but there is an increasing demand for those in the technical trade.”

One of the biggest problems, however, was that most technical workers had careers and employers in New Zealand. It was important, therefore, that publicity be given to seeking the support of management and that all branches build up associations with management

In the past most V.S.A. workers with technical skills had already been independent financially. This was not right.

Miss Clark, who has recently returned after a fourweek tour of inspection of volunteers in the Pacific, said that the area of expansion in the number of volunteers sent from New Zealand had nearly reached the ceiling. New Zealand, however, was still one of the countries with the highest ratio of volunteers to population. Persons who did not have skill! sufficient for a volun-

teer export programme should use these skills for a volunteer domestic programme.

Miss Clark said that on her recent tour she had been particularly impressed with the effort volunteers were making, often in difficult conditions. The excitement envisaged by people in New Zealand often boiled down to very mundane and practical things with periods of boredom, tedium and plain slogging. Because of this, she was more than ever convinced that the V.S.A. selection programme was the only way to run the organisation. At present the selection rate was one in two for adult volunteers and one in six for school leavers.

The flexibility and adaptability of school leaver volunteers impressed her, said Miss Clark. The work for these people was changing with the inclusion of more specified teaching. A specified training course in oral English was already running in Tonga and another specified course was planned in Fiji. Officers elected were: Chairman, Brigadier T. C. Campbell: secretary, Mr A. P. F. Browne; assistant secretary, Mr D. Mitchell; treasurer, Mr O. Coup; publicity officer, Mr M. Abbott; committee, Messrs C. F. S. Caldwell, H. J. Walker, L. J. Coughlan, A. I. R. Jamieson, K. Coe, A. M. Jamieson, I. Wooster, D. S. Gibson and Miss M. Eales.

Sub-Branch Of V.S.A. The formation at the University of Canterbury of a sub-branch of the Christchurch branch of the Volunteer Service Abroad was approved at the annual meeting of the branch last evening. The sub-branch would be responsible to the Christchurch branch and the branch will decide a suitable form of relationship. The secretary of the branch (Mr A. P. F. Browne) said that the main advantage would be the grant which the sub-branch would receive if it were to affiliate with the Student Union. It would run with the aims of the Christchurch branch to raise money, to recruit volunteers and to promote interest in the scheme.