Author: WUSC McGill

Volunteering Opportunities

Though we have closed our offices globally, we continue to work together remotely. If you are interested in volunteering with us, we still want to hear from you! Your work building capacity towards more resilient and inclusive economies is needed now more than ever.

We are continuing to recruit for open volunteer positions, though departures are on hold. We will not place volunteers overseas until we are fully confident that it is safe to do so.

Volunteers are at the heart of our international development efforts.

Whether a Canadian looking to have a positive impact overseas or an individual driving change in their own community, our volunteers are advancing development efforts in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

WUSC is harnessing the expertise of Canadian volunteers to enhance program delivery in a variety of countries. These are unique short-, medium-, and long-term opportunities to contribute directly to WUSC’s broader work in education, employment and empowerment around the world.

https://wusc.ca/volunteer/

WUSC McGill’s Response to COVID-19

WUSC places the health and safety of its personnel, and of the communities with which it works, as its priority. WUSC is monitoring the global outbreak of COVID-19 and is closely following advice from public health officials globally, nationally, and locally.

Our newly formed local community recognizes the challenge, yet we remain dedicated to providing the same support that has been provided in the past. Please feel free to reach out as you have in the past.

WUSC McGill is currently taking the following precautions in response to the health and travel concerns related to COVID-19:

  • We have postponed any new in-person volunteer training
  • We have temporarily closed our office and have asked our newly formed student committee to work from home to encourage social distancing and promote good community practice.

We will continue to monitor the situation and will update this post with new information as it emerges.

For questions about WUSC’s response to COVID-19, please email wusc@wusc.ca.

For questions about our local response to COVID-19 please email wusc.mcgill@ssmu.ca

What is WUSC?

World University Service of Canada (WUSC) is a non-profit international development organization that works to improve education, employment, and empowerment opportunities for youth around the world. Through the Student Refugee Program (SRP), WUSC delivers a unique youth-to-youth refugee settlement program that combines sponsorship with post-secondary education, and puts Canadian institutions and students at the heart of the funding and support structure. WUSC has sponsored over 1,700 students to date.

WUSC is a Canadian national Sponsorship Agreement Holder, meaning they are an organization that has signed an agreement with the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada to resettle refugees from abroad through the private sponsorship of refugees. WUSC sponsoring groups are primarily college or university student volunteers who have staff and faculty support. Approximately 80 Canadian campuses sponsor, with a minimum of 5 volunteers per sponsoring group. WUSC has been sponsoring student refugees through other immigration mechanisms since the 1950s as has been a Sponsorship Agreement Holder since 1978.

Student groups act as the official sponsors in our model of refugee sponsorship, and are responsible for all aspects of the sponsorship, from securing the necessary funding (via Memoranda of Understanding with the administration which commit to waiver agreements, and student levies that are collected following WUSC-led referendums), to providing the social and integration support to the incoming refugee students each year.

We welcome you to explore how WUSC McGill operates on campus. With the support of a SSMU fee each student provides, we are currently able to sponsor and resettle 3 refugee students to the McGill community a year.