Your opportunity to

discover...

go to and live in new environments and cultures

work...

develop ownership and understanding of your discovery

share...

your old life with new friends abroad, your new life with your family and friends at home, opening new doors for everyone.

 

igoMANGO is currently running the CeCoCo project in Central America to develop a network of Coastal Zone field centres to enhance local capacity for sustainable monitoring and local management of aquatic resources. The volunteer placements we have on offer in 2009 involve working within small mestizo communities in the tropical Pacific and Atlantic (Caribbean) coasts of Guatemala.

Click here for a tour of these projects.

Click here to look at the discussion pages that have developed over the last three years, guiding CecCoCo strategy.

Click here to read the CeCoCo project document.

Getting involved

1. Explore this website thoroughly to see if volunteering with MANGO dovetails with your attitude to life.
2. Look at costs. The simple model here will give you a basic idea of how much money you will need to raise to cover your planned adventures abroad.
3. Decide when you might like to go abroad, then register with us. We will send you a CD that will give you a lot more information about placements and fundraising.
4. When you are finally sure that MANGO is your chosen partner, confirm with us and we will start to work with you to get your fundraising and personal preparations under way.

Raising funds for your project

1. The first thing to be aware of is that there are a lot of people out there raising funds for good causes. You need to stand out. Your route to success will rest on five key factors.  
   This is a personal application. You can be very specific as to who you are, how you relate to the person/organisation you are asking for funds, and exactly how the money will be used.
2. You are not directly raising funding for your trip, you are raising funding for MANGO not-for-profit projects. You save up credit with us, and we pay out the money you raise to cover the various project costs once you are ready to go abroad. In this way you are not saying to sponsors ‘give me money for my trip’ but rather ‘I am both raising money for and working with this project’.
3. We insist that you provide information/feedback/interest in return for sponsorship ie you will ensure that the sponsorship is a two-way process. So you are promising that your contact with a sponsor will not be a one-off ‘grab and run’ situation, but you will give a talk, organise a quiz, send a diary back, come and visit again when you finish etc. Your project experience will be fascinating to a wide range of people, and a real resource in many circumstances (eg your experience can be used to demonstrate National Curriculum themes in schools).
4. You can stress that as part of the ‘asking’ process you are also helping to make the opportunity you have found available to a wider range of people. Its not so easy for less advantaged people to find and join up with projects such as MANGO. You can make it clear to your sponsors how, in supporting you, any publicity generated will be helping to make MANGO available to a wider sector of the population – one of our basic objectives.
5. We will try and organise you into a ‘local group’ if you want this, and will support you and supply you with helpful materials (eg for presentations, handouts, merchandising…). In this way you can feel confident, minimise your effort and maximise the financial reward.

A second and important message is USE SIMPLE CONNECTIONS YOU ALREADY HAVE TO HAND. Your family and friends. Their connections to local societies, pubs and businesses. Your school and old schools. The local church (whether you are a member or not). Local Trusts (we can tell you how to search). Each contact you touch you should be 1) asking for money, 2) asking what you can give in return and 3) asking for further links to other potential sponsors. Your strongest selling point is that you are a local person going to do something fascinating and positive in the world which will be of interest to local people.

Your involvement with MANGO gives you the opportunity to discover a new world, to work with (and own and go back to) your discovery, and to share your discovery with others, opening many eyes alongside your own. Raising the funding for your involvement is an integral part of this process… Don’t see it as a necessary but unwelcome precursor to going abroad but as a fun chance to get involved in your project RIGHT NOW!