VOLUNTEER TO HELP CENTRAL ASIAN WOMEN
FROM THE COMFORT OF YOUR OWN HOME
Volunteer Position: The Alliance for International Women’s Rights is looking for an experienced ESL/EFL teacher with experience working in a developing country to serve as the volunteer coordinator for our Armchair ESL Program, which provides long-distance ESL classes for Afghan and Central Asian women leaders and future women leaders.
Overview of the Alliance for International Women’s Rights: The Alliance for International Women’s Rights is a completely volunteer-run, U.S. 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with a mission of supporting women leaders and future women leaders in the Central Asia region. We do this by creating connections between Central Asian women and skilled professionals in developed countries who can use their expertise to further women’s rights. The primary way in which we create these connections is through our long-distance volunteer initiative, the Armchair Volunteer Programs.
The Alliance’s Armchair Volunteer Programs take advantage of the Internet and new Internet-based communication technology to help open the world to women in developing countries through long-distance volunteer experts. These volunteers bring their experience and professional skills to help build local capacity for women’s rights organizations, women politicians, women educators, and girls who have the potential to become future women leaders. The exchanges that occur through this process helps to build bridges between worlds and improve understanding between what are often very different cultures. The Alliance has two Armchair Volunteer Programs: our Armchair ESL Program and our Armchair Development Program. We currently run these programs in Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Afghanistan. To read more about the Alliance, please visit our website: www.aiwr.org.
Overview of the Armchair ESL Program: The purpose of the Afghan Armchair ESL (“English as a Second Language”) Program is to increase the English capacity of Afghan and Central Asian women leaders and future women leaders by offering live, long-distance English classes. By improving their English language skills, these Central Asian women and girls can more easily reach out to the international community for information, ideas, advice, and funding, as well as share their experiences with the rest of the world.
The Armchair ESL Program matches Central Asian women and girls with experienced, volunteer English teachers from the U.S. and other Western, English speaking countries. Each student and teacher pair meet on-line twice a week, via Skype™, for live English classes, using both voice and instant messaging features. In addition to providing individualized English lessons to Central Asian women and girls, the classes provide both the students and teachers with a unique opportunity to directly meet and learn about each others’ cultures. This unique cultural exchange helps to build better understanding and stronger relationships between the Western world and countries such as Afghanistan, one person at a time.
The Alliance currently operates its Armchair ESL program in partnership with USAID’s Afghanistan Higher Education Project, UNIFEM (Afghanistan office), the Afghan Women’s Network, and Kazakhstan’s Feminist League.
Position Description
• The volunteer ESL coordinator will serve as the main liaison between our Central Asian coordinators and our volunteer ESL teachers, assisting with class scheduling, monitoring, answering questions, and troubleshooting. These responsibilities include the following tasks:
o Determining the students and teachers’ availability and matching up students and teachers according to their availability. This task requires the use of international time zone converters because our teachers are located in over twelve different time zones and each student and teacher are generally only available for several hours a day. Thus, scheduling can sometimes involve a good amount of patience and attention to detail.
o Coordinating the preparation of introductions by students and teachers and ensuring that the introductions are exchanged prior to the initial class.
o Ensuring that the student and teacher are both clear as to their start date and ensuring the successful start of each class.
o Answering e-mails from the class coordinators and the teachers as scheduling issues arise and working with both to resolve the issues (e.g. rescheduling or canceling classes for illness or vacations).
o Sending out student and teacher surveys at the end of each three-month session and helping incorporate the results of surveys into reports.
o All of our volunteer ESL teachers are responsible for preparing their own curriculum. However, the ESL coordinator should be prepared to help the ESL teachers share ideas and suggestions with each other and to provide general curriculum support as needed.
o Assisting with preparing ESL materials for our website.
• Generally, the above tasks are performed during the morning hours, in response to e-mails that have come in overnight from our Central Asian partners. However, the hours and times for the work is flexible, and can be performed in the very early morning, late morning, or, for non-pressing matters, at any time during the day.
• The ESL coordinator will work closely with the Executive Director and the Program Manager, keeping in contact via phone, e-mail and weekly conference calls.
• The position will involve approximately five to ten hours a week. Some weeks may be quite light, with just two hours required, but, at other times, such as during teacher recruiting or monitoring periods, the time commitment can reach over ten hours a week.
Requirements for Volunteer ESL Coordinator
• The volunteer coordinator should have a minimum of two years of ESL/EFL teaching experience.
• The volunteer coordinator should have experience living and working in a developing country for six months or more.
• The coordinator must be willing to commit to volunteering for approximately five to ten hours a week (some weeks may be quite light, with just two hours required, but occasionally, during teacher recruiting or monitoring periods, the time commitment can reach more than ten hours a week).
• The coordinator must be extremely self-motivated and reliable, as the Alliance uses “virtual offices” and the coordinator will perform all tasks from the coordinator’s home or office.
• Excellent English and writing skills are required.
• Excellent communication skills required: Because the position is a remote position and is so heavily dependent on e-mail and Skype, and a good part of the work involves dealing with people from other cultures, the coordinator must be able to use the written word to effectively communicate not only information, but also an appropriate tone of understanding, patience, support, cultural sensitivity and good humor.
• Must have a basic familiarity with computers and basic internet communication technology, such as Skype or other similar communication programs.
• The position will be performed from the ESL coordinator’s own home or office. The ESL coordinator will need high-speed internet and a reliable computer with Skype software (we only use the free, computer-to-computer software).
• Two professional references are required.
As with all of the Alliance’s positions, the ESL coordinator position is a volunteer position, which means the only compensation we can offer is the sense of reward that comes with knowing that you are making a direct and helpful impact on women in Central Asia. The Alliance is in the process of submitting grant proposals to seek salary coverage for the ESL coordinator position and we are hoping to be able to convert this position to a part-time, paid position within the next year. However, we cannot provide any guarantees that the position will become a paid position.
Contact Information:
If you are interested in applying for the volunteer position of ESL coordinator, please send a resume and a brief cover e-mail to Lisa Herb at lisaherb@aiwr.org.
