Krista Foundation helps volunteers strategize post-assignment career

Can you really afford to volunteer for an extended period of time? Will it give you all the relevant skills you need for a career in social justice and international development? Extended service programs certainly offer their participants a wealth of unique overseas opportunities, but their main job is to send volunteers out to serve the less fortunate. These organizations do not always have the resources to give their volunteers a leg up into graduate school, a technical skill for a paid job, or even a well-rounded debriefing session to help them deal with the homecoming and reintegration process upon completing an assignment. The Krista Foundation for Global Citizenship is keenly aware of these issues. The work of this Seattle-based organization shows how even a small nonprofit can contribute to global development and diplomacy. Operating on less than $300,000, the Krista Foundation selects a cohort of 15 volunteers for existing projects every year. In addition to offering a supplementary mentoring program, the foundation provides a small but strategic grant. The goal is to help volunteers expand their field knowledge and commitment to a life of service beyond their current project and into whatever career path they choose. The $1,000 Service and Leadership Development Grant serves as an incentive for volunteers to network or develop an extra skill. It can pay for an online preparatory course or conference that gets a volunteer connected to the right academic and field professionals, even while working in a remote global region. “Since a lot of service organizations don’t divert their funds, this gives volunteers a chance to invest themselves in a plan to become a better service leader,” said Krista Foundation board member Aaron Ausland during a phone interview. Candidates must be Christians in their 20s who are from the western United States. They must be nominated by a community leader — a professor, a pastor, or an activist, for instance — and already be signed up with a one- to three-year volunteer program of a reputable service organization. The foundation cited AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America, Presbyterian USA Mission, World Concern, Mennonite Central Committee, Peace Corps, Jesuit Volunteer Corps and Doctors Without Borders as examples of such an organization. While the Krista Foundation has a pretty set pool of community leaders looking around for prospective candidates, individuals who fit the criteria may go to any community leader who knows them well and ask to be nominated as “Krista Colleagues.” Nominees are then chosen on the basis of their commitment to social outreach, the diversity of their prospective career path (from academia to business), and their proven skills in community leadership. Foundation leaders seek to help volunteers tailor their extracurricular experience to enhance their longer-term commitment to service. As such, funds may not contribute directly to the volunteer’s overall expenses. However, there are cases where the sending nongovernmental organizations benefit from the volunteer bonus. If an NGO does not accept outside support or a volunteer wants to focus solely on the program, the grant can be used for brief training shortly after assignment completion and before moving on to a job or graduate school. “Good intentions aren’t enough,” noted Ausland, adding that too often, volunteers are not given the support and direction they need to make long-term life and career choices. “We should be investing in the capacity of young volunteers to do good work — but to do it well, to do it with professionalism and accountability, with knowledge of best practice,” he added. Ausland was also a Krista Colleague. He used his Krista Foundation grant to pay for attending a three-week Microfinance Institute international conference in New Hampshire in 2000. At that time, he was volunteering with the humanitarian and development organization Mennonite Central Committee to help its partner agency, World Concern, establish a microenterprise program for women in Bolivia. His conference attendance was not necessary for the success of the project, which had already been under way. But the foundation knew it would enhance Ausland’s work and future in the field. Indeed it did. The conference allowed Ausland to network with microfinance representatives from 45 countries, many of whom offered him new tools to expand his project’s work. For instance, he learned about Microfin, a modeling and financial projections tool that could help Mennonite Central Committee and World Concern predict the direction and growth of their program as it moved beyond its initial stage. That ultimately created more donor confidence and expanded the initiative, now the only focus of World Concern in Bolivia. “It really gave me some new tools and helped to validate my work, to see that we were on the right track with what we were doing,” Ausland said. That experience also helped him get into the Harvard Kennedy School’s Master in Public Administration in International Development program and into his current job as associate director of independent research for World Vision International in Los Angeles. Former Krista Colleague Kirk Harris was grateful for the funding he received, noting that “no single part of the foundation exists in isolation.” Harris recently returned to the United States after serving as an Mennonite Central Committee volunteer in the administrative offices of the Kenya-based Program for Christian-Muslim Relations in Africa, or PROCUMURA. He too used his grant to attend a conference. His consisted of observing workshops aimed at HIV and AIDS prevention and awareness in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Part of the program included discussions on how religious texts could be used to understand virtues of compassion and tolerance when dealing with those infected and affected by this disease. Harris has a particular interest in how faith-based organizations can bridge theological differences and play an instrumental role in post-conflict peace building and recovery. The trip to West Africa “gave me a chance to see it play out in the field,” he said. Harris is now volunteering with the United Nations Liaison Office of Mennonite Central Committee in New York, which helps connect the organization’s international programs and partners — mostly small, grassroots humanitarian organizations — with international policymakers. During a Krista Colleague conference in May, he attended a workshop about how to make graduate school — his next plan of action — relevant to a career in service. “That was a helpful experience where I was able to meet with people who have been part of the graduate programs I’m interested in,” he said. Harris is trying to decide between a doctorate that would lead him to teach international development and public policy, or a master’s in those subjects that get him into applied work in development and diplomacy. Harris “thought his options were limited to researching in a university, teaching other students or working for an NGO,” said Ausland, who encouraged Harris to think about working as a government consultant and advised him not to skip out on the necessary nuts-and-bolts coursework. “To do that, you’re going to have to do your quantitative analysis — the tool kit of policy evaluation. Statistics, macroeconomic models of growth, data collection, numbers crunching, not just theorizing about the right thing to do.” There’s no shortage of professionals who want to join forces with the Krista Foundation. In fact, in recent years the foundation has placed a heavy emphasis on networking and mentoring, noting that many volunteers return from their assignments without a like-minded support system. “The biggest work of the Krista Foundation is not the grant, but the debriefing and then obtaining the vocational understanding for the next stage,” said Linda Hunt, a retired university professor who, with her husband Jim, started the foundation in 1999 in honor of their daughter Krista, a dedicated volunteer who died a year earlier in a bus accident in Bolivia. “Serving in places of deep suffering inevitably leaves young adults with major questions and struggles, and they really value being in a community where others understand. Older Krista Colleagues become valuable mentors as they try to figure out the next direction of their lives.” Every year, the foundation organizes conferences with current and former colleagues, and invites guest speakers who are top professionals in the world of service and development. It is also hoping to expand publication of the quarterly Global Citizen Journal, which serves as a forum for colleagues who want to share their reflections from the field. The journal is now being distributed to the service learning programs of several higher learning institutions in Washington state, including Gonzaga University, Whitworth University, Seattle University and Eastern Washington University. The foundation has also received several requests for training on reintegration workshops for returning volunteers. Read more career advice articles.