In collaboration with Women's Empowerment Coalition (WECO)
Rethinking What It Means to Volunteer Abroad
Strategy · Writing · Communications · 2025 - 2026
This project started with a single blog post. Jenny Clark, co-founder of the Women's Empowerment Coalition (WECO), had written an article on voluntourism back in 2018 — smart, honest, and still relevant, but ready to meet a new moment.
What followed was less a writing project and more a process of reflection — sitting with Jenny's thinking, returning to recorded conversations, listening again for what had deepened or shifted. WECO has spent years learning alongside the communities they work with, and this was a chance to surface what that experience has taught them: about who they are, what they believe, and how to share it with the people they most hope to reach.
WECO connects volunteers and donors to community-led organizations advancing women's empowerment across Kenya, Peru, India, Cambodia, and Costa Rica. Their model moves at the pace the community needs — built on listening, co-design, and the belief that volunteers arrive to support work the community has already shaped for itself.
“Not making the volunteer experience the project. The project is the project.”
Three resources emerged from that process — not for separate audiences so much as different entry points into the same thinking. Depending on who you are and what you're looking for, one may be exactly what you need.
“I learn something from every client I work with. This one reminded me that some work asks you to slow down — not as a preference, but because the people and places involved deserve the time it takes to get it right. If these resources find their way into your thinking or your work in any way, drop me a line — I’d genuinely love to know.”