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Why your skills are still needed even in retirement

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The day you move overseas to retire, is the day, for most 60-plus expats, to finally focus on yourself and enjoy well-earned free time. It’s also a time when many expats use their work and life skills to help others. Read on to find out how EU residents can become involved in local and international projects.

Why your skills are still needed, even in retirement

Despite the challenges of retiring overseas, many expats in the so-called ‘Third Age’ (defined by the University of Third Age as, “not by a particular age but by a period in life in which full time employment has ceased”) find time to volunteer their time and skills to help local and international charities.

On a local scale, for example, the Women’s International Club (WIC) in the Languedoc region of France, holds a huge, annual sale of secondhand clothing and bric-a-brac. The proceeds of the sale go to local charities desperately in need of funding. The multi-national women in the group use their skills from their previous lives to design promotional materials, promote the sale throughout their local region, organise selling groups, value items (some of the donated goods are auctioned) and manage all the money that is raised. These retired expats, some 90 years plus, harness their old and news skills and transfer them over to volunteer to help on new challenges!

You can find opportunities to volunteer locally through the ‘Community Life’ section of your local Angloinfo website’s ‘Directory’.

On an international scale, retired expats are also in demand. Back in December 2016, International Volunteer Day threw a spotlight on all the thousands of volunteers around the world. That had us, the World Blog editors, wondering how expats, particularly retired expats in Europe, could get involved on the international volunteering stage.

We discovered the EU Aid Volunteers initiative, which matches EU-based volunteers with humanitarian aid projects.

The mission of EU Aid Volunteers is: “to help save lives in crises, emergencies and disasters”. However, it’s important to note that volunteers do not get involved in emergency response actions in areas of armed conflict.

Why your skills are still needed, even in retirement

Who can apply? An EU Aid Volunteer must be over 18 years of age and be a citizen of an EU Member State or long-term EU resident. Volunteers come from a wide range of backgrounds, from newcomers to experts and are trained and tested prior to being sent out “in the field”.

The EU Aid Volunteer organisers say, “Candidates can be senior experts with over 5 years of relevant professional experience, who want to help out with their acquired knowledge.”
Most importantly, for this topic, there’s no upper age limit.

What do EU Aid Volunteers do? Volunteers may work on projects that last from one month to 18 months, mostly in third world countries outside the EU, so travel and time away from home may be required, but some projects are within the EU, particularly those focusing on training other volunteers who then go overseas. There are activities in logistics and transport, coordination, project management, finances and administration, and communication.

Chris Van Duuren, a Dutch citizen, recently completed a short-term deployment with the Netherlands Red Cross to Kosovo.

“Chris and the team of EU Aid Volunteers worked closely with local fire fighters, hospital staff, police, Red Cross, government authorities and community service leaders. Together, a multi-agency disaster management response exercise to flooding was designed, to test and strengthen existing emergency response procedures. Chris and his team delivered training in vital skills required by front-line responders in an emergency (first aid, roof top rescues, identification of safety hazards, multi-agency cooperation).”

How do you become a volunteer? EU Aid Volunteers says new vacancies on the programme are expected early in 2017. Their advice is to learn about the programme if you’re interested and keep checking the EU Aid Volunteer website,  download a factsheet about it here, and follow them on social media: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

EU Aid Volunteers sent to humanitarian aid projects will receive training, accommodation and travel costs covered, and may have the possibility to undertake additional training in a European humanitarian organisation before starting on a project.

We hope you found this information interesting and useful. If you did please share it with other expats on your favourite social media network:


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