Leadership and Service

Volunteers For Peace is partnering with various NGO, community organizations, and individuals in Burlington for this unique project. Volunteers will spend part of each day serving in the local community. These activities will include maintenance on hiking trails by Lake Champlain, work on community gardens, preparation of classrooms at the school, harvesting fruit and vegetables for donations to feeding programs, supporting the local park department, and more. In addition to service activities there will be educational and cultural exchange activities each day. These can be focused to your needs but we propose the following: • Meeting with the Mayor of Burlington to learn more about youth, crime, and other issues of interest. • Meeting with the local police department. They have offered to do a training or have a program for you but would like to know what focus you are most interested in. They do have a Junior Police Academy group and it might be nice for you to get together with them. Follow the link above to learn more about the projects they are running in the community. • Tour of Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Center and learn more about the programs they run. • Community event with staff and residents of Dismas of Vermont. VFP has international volunteers serving in this program that provides housing and community for former prisoners. VFP works with many non-profit organizations in the area and can arrange other educational visits with organizations such as the refugee resettlement program, youth engagement project, local teens, gardening projects and more. There are also several colleges and universities in the area if you would like to visit those.