Oxfam’s Development Effectiveness Team (DET) is demonstrating that volunteers truly are the backbone of our organisation.

Four out of seven of the DET members are former volunteers, proving that volunteers provide high quality and invaluable work for Oxfam.

Anna Donaldson, Rob Tedge, Kim Ho, and most recently, Jenna Tuckett all started out on a voluntary basis, and made the most of their opportunity to get involved at Oxfam. Tim Morris, the new Management Support Officer for the Program Quality Unit also started off volunteering in the DE team.

Jenna, who joined the DE team in a permanent role last month, started as an intern at Oxfam to gain credit towards her Masters Degree at the University of Melbourne. Four months into her internship, as an administrative assistant to Kim, she was given the position of Management Support Officer.

Jenna believes her time as an intern allowed her to gain experience that couldn’t be learnt at university, especially in communications.

“I learnt how an organisation works, I had no experience before I started working here… Writing reports in a development institution for a development institution is very different to writing essays for lecturers.” said Jenna.

Jenna was attracted to Oxfam because of its strong record in advocacy and development.

“Oxfam’s work with human rights is the reason I wanted to be involved in the organisation.”

Jenna highly recommends volunteering at Oxfam to other people wanting to get their foot in the door at a development organisation, or to those wanting to gain professional experience.

Written by Marlene Millott, volunteer.