We are concerned about empowering people, increasing their capacity to do that which they have determined is important for their future. It is in this context that volunteers become a valuable resource for the communities served. Nor do we tell local people how they ought to do any of these things. If asked, we respectfully explain how we might accomplish something in our homeland, and allow the local people to decide if there is any aspect of our process they wish to employ. Global Volunteers does only what local people ask us to do.
Local people embody their cultural, social and economic issues.
They know their needs and their priorities. They are the ones who realize the barriers to, as well as the possibilities of, their development. It is they who must articulate their needs and identify the barriers which prevent those needs from being met. They must develop the plans to release those barriers and be mobilized to implement those plans. This is a nearly universal, but all too often misunderstood, principal.