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What We Do - A Guide For Potential Volunteers

We invite you to look at the various services that we offer and to consider whether you might be able to help us by being involved in one or two of them. If you see something that you think particularly suits your gifts and temperament, click on the link that says, "Offer Help". This will take you to a page where you can download an application form. Simply fill in your personal details, check the boxes on the second page for those service(s) that you would like to offer and sign the form to indicate formal confirmation of your support for what we do. Many thanks!

Click on any button for more details.

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Practical Skills and Services

We have vacancies for drivers assist with transport to and from airports in the London area. (See the next item below for details.) We are also on the lookout for people who enjoy shopping! Increasingly, we are helping people to do this online (see IT Internet Use) but sometimes it is still easier to go and buy what someone needs from local shops and then arrange for it to be shipped out to them. This applies particularly to items such as magazines or comics, and to books that may no longer be available from mainstream suppliers but can still be found in second-hand book shops and the like. So, even shopping can be done "as unto the Lord"!

Another practical help is the ability to make copies of CDs and DVDs. Some of this is used in our Archiving Service but there are other, miscellaneous requests for this service as well.

Airport Transportation

Travel to and from airports in the UK is generally both tiring and expensive. Many long-distance overseas flights necessitate the use of the London airports in particular and this can take a significant toll on missionaries and their families. We are always looking for drivers (especially in the London area) who can pick up missionaries and take them to or from Heathrow, Luton and Gatwick airports.

This is very interesting work, and you will meet all kinds of people just coming from the field or heading back. You will need a reasonably sized car which can take both people and baggage. The missionaries are asked to pay for this service so your petrol expenses will be covered. Please let us know:

• Which airports are within your range?
• What size of vehicle do you have?
• How many passengers with luggage could you carry?
• When would you be available (and when would you not be available)?
• Are you able to help with early morning flights, at evenings or at weekends?

Financial Support

You may think that you do not have many practical skills but that you do have the spiritual gift of generosity. Perhaps you would like to enable others to serve by providing financial support. Money is NOT high on our agenda: service is. But, if giving money (rather than time or skill) is your way of serving the Lord and extending His Kingdom, then we would certainly like to hear from you. You can even start straight away by making a donation online. Click here for more details.

Letters and Magazines

Missionaries working overseas often need help with the production and distribution of their news and prayer letters. If you have access to good, clean photocopying facilities, can keep a computer address list up-to-date, make labels, and don't mind folding, stuffing, sticking and stamping, please contact us. It will help us to know:

• Have you had any experience of office work?
• Have you produced mailing labels before?
• Could you maintain a mailing list of perhaps 200 names?
• Do you have access to a good photocopier?
• Can you ensure a quick turnaround and get the letters out quickly?

Please note that the missionaries will refund the costs of the copying, envelopes and stamps.

Missionaries are also human and they like to read, especially when there may be no local TV and little local information. If you already take a magazine regularly or your kids have a comic, don't throw it away when you are finished with it. Send it to a missionary.

Perhaps you would be willing to buy a subscription and send it overseas? The missionaries there would be delighted. Please let us know what magazines or comics you would like to send and we will try and match you up with a missionary who has the same interests. Some of our volunteers offer to buy and send out a magazine they don't normally take themselves but which the missionaries are requesting. This service is VERY much appreciated overseas.

Please note that you will be responsible for sending out magazines at your own expense.

Library Research

Often missionaries need their own copies of books that are hard to find. We have a team of people that search for these books in second-hand and antiquarian bookstores, as well as internet bookstores. The missionaries will pay for the books and for shipping them out to the field, so you won't be out of pocket.

As well as needing copies of whole books, many missionaries need access to books and technical articles that are only available from large university or national libraries. These articles are often about the people, group or language in the place where the missionaries are working. We get regular requests for articles about anthropology, theology, missiology, specific languages or ethnic groups and medical articles.

If you have personal access to a good university library or are a librarian yourself, you may be able to help missionaries get the technical articles they need. This will help to give them a better understanding of the local situation and help them to communicate the Christian message better. If you have access to a large university collection, we would like to hear from you and, specifically, to know the following:

• the name of the library and your ability to access it;
• details of any specialist collections owned by the libary.

This is voluntary work to help missionaries overseas and there is no payment involved.

Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design

If you have artistic skills, particularly in the use of computer aided graphics and desktop publishing, we'd like to hear from you. If people are going to read the Bible in their own language, then first they must learn HOW to read. So literacy is an essential part of Bible translation work. They go hand in hand. Hence, there is a need for reading books to be properly designed and laid out with appropriate line drawings and illustrations.

We produce booklets on community health and development, practical skills, child care and many other topics. These booklets are produced in multi-language, international editions. The software packages we use are MS Publisher and MS Word. These are fairly simple software tools, chosen because they are readily available in developing countries where the materials will be used.

We especially need people who have experience in applying paragraph styles and formatting Microsoft Word documents. Usually the documents we are working with are quite long. They may even be up to a book's size in length. So you will need to apply the paragraph styles consistently in order to get a professional appearance. We also have an occasional need to scan and run "optical character recognition" software, plus accurate proof reading to correct OCR errors.

Drawing and Illustration

Do you have skills as an illustrator? We are looking for people who can help to produce line drawings to illustrate an important series of "How To Do It" booklets for new readers. The illustrations need to be crisp, decisive and realistic. They can be based on photographs. If you would like to help with this important work, using your artistic gifts to help people round the world, please contact us soon.

Films and Videos

The relentless development of information technology has resulted in areas that were once only the province of professionals (or wealthy amateurs) being opened up to just about anyone with a mobile telephone. Of the making of many films there is no end but, inevitably, as the quantity rises, so the quality falls. We are looking for people with the necessary equipment, experience and creativity to produce high quality publicity and training materials, both for us and for many of our clients.

As well as "moving pictures", we are interested in anyone who is skilled at taking still photographs. If you have relevant experience of any aspect of film-making or photography (including script writing, sound production or film editing, we would be delighted to hear from you.

Professional Skills

There are several areas in which certain academic and professional skills can be of enormous benefit to those working abroad. For example, we run a service known as "Remote Accounting" whereby we manage financial accounts for groups and organisations working abroad in places where it may be difficult to arrange for proper audit measures.

Some of those we support are working at the cutting edge of development or research (in things like linguistics and anthropology) and would benefit from support in the preparation of academic papers and articles, particularly with things like proof-reading.

In addition to the specific areas mentioned in this index, if you have general qualifications or skills that you think might contribute to academic research and development abroad, please let us know.

Archiving Skills

We are working on a project called "Bible For The Future" that aims to preserve copies of computer files of the whole of Scripture for future generations. Currently, much of this data is being lost, either because of technological obsolescence, damage to media or simple physical loss. We are compiling this important collection to enable Christians in the future to benefit from the huge amount of Bible translation work that has already been done.

We need a few people to help with file conversions, data checking and copying, Unicode conversions, scanning and cleaning graphic and OCR files and the digitisation of audio and video files. If you have an archiving background and good computer skills, or if you just have good computer skills, a careful way of working and a desire to see the Bible preserved, then please contact us.

Translation of Documents

Could you be a Translator for a Missionary?

• Are you a fluent speaker of Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Indonesian, French, Spanish, Italian or German?
• Are you a native speaker of a major world language other than English? We get many requests to translate articles and texts both from major world languages into English and vice versa.

We are looking for a number of people who are able to translate documents from major languages into English, and from English into the major languages. We always ask for the translation to be done by a native speaker of the target language. So, for example, if we want translation from English into German, we would look for a German speaker. We have a constant need for native French speakers who can translate documents from English into French. We break long documents down into smaller sections so no one gets asked to do too much.

This is voluntary work to help missionaries overseas and there is no payment involved.

If you are able to help with this, we will want to know:

• What is your first language or mother tongue?
• What other languages do you know and how well do you know them?
• Have you had any study experience in these languages?
• What is your level of education (high school, college degree or post graduate)?
• What translation experience do you have, if any?
• Do you know of any other people who might be interested in helping. We particularly need native French speakers.

Teaching English

We have a number of members who have qualifications to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL). Although this service is still being developed, we are aware of widespread needs in Africa and across Eastern Europe and are exploring possible ways of enabling our qualified teachers to work from home in the UK but train people abroad.

Theological Checking

Our series of EasyEnglish Bible commentaries is proving extremely successful. Last year about 100,000 commentaries were downloaded from our web site by people in over 140 countries.

We have a team of EasyEnglish writers and translators but we do need to ensure that the commentaries and Scripture translations that they produce in EasyEnglish are theologically accurate. So, we are looking for people who can help with this theological checking. You will need a theological background, and an appreciation of the difficulties of translating using a word list of only a few thousand English words; a list that doesn't include the theological jargon words. So, if you have a desire to see the great theological truths expressed in ways that common people can understand, you may like to help us!

Audio Typing

In many places around the world, it is not possible to use many of the technical services that we take for granted back home in the UK. However, many mission workers have found it useful to use a dictation machine to record spoken languages and interviews with language helpers. An important service we provide is to have these recordings transcribed. They come to us in various forms but we are usually able to provide our volunteer typists with CDs or Windows audio files from which they can work.

Communication Skills

Most of the skills that we are looking for here are for use within our own organisation. Our members are scattered all over the British Isles and keeping in touch is one of the most difficult problems we face. So we are looking for anyone who has experience or skill at talking with people over the telephone. We like to make personal contact as soon as possible with those who express an interest in joining us but we also like to maintain regular contact with our team leaders (or coordinators) through a number of "Liaison Assistants".

We are also on the lookout for people who are comfortable with public speaking or with writing and editing articles for general publication in order to help us in promoting WA-UK and its various services more widely.

Finally, we are looking to develop more audio-visual publicity materials so anyone with experience or knowledge of producing films, or recording and editing soundtracks would be most welcome.

Writing EasyEnglish

EasyEnglish is a special form of English that has been developed exclusively by Wycliffe Associates (UK). We have designed specialised writing techniques using limited vocabulary and grammatical forms. We use these to produce easy-to-understand reading materials for people whose first language is not English. We are producing Bible commentaries and studies suitable for church pastors who may have had little academic training. If you can write simply and clearly, and can express biblical ideas in simple language, you are just the person we are looking for!

We need similar skills in our service for Functional Literacy as well. Before people can read the Bible they have to learn to read. So we are helping to produce a series of simple reading booklets to help adults who want to learn the basics. The booklets we produce are very practical. They deal with topics like basic health and hygiene, how to make items with local materials, basic repairs and animal husbandry. These booklets are called "Shell Books". This is because they contain all the text and all the pictures in a desktop published format. This makes it easy for a mission worker to simply translate the text into the local language and then "pour it in" to the ready-made DTP file. (Click here for more information on these books.)

For both these services, we need help in selecting and transforming existing materials into a simpler form. So, if you have an ability to shorten and simplify written materials, and have a clear writing style, we would like to hear from you. We will need to know:

• What experience do you have of writing in English?
• What experience do you have of communicating ideas in simple terms for ordinary people to understand?
• What is your level and knowledge of English grammar?

IT Development

If you are an experienced programmer, able to produce programs for use in Windows, and you have determination to see a project through to completion in line with the client specifications, please contact us. We are particularly interested in those who have knowledge or experience of working with database applications. This is voluntary and unpaid work but you may like to use your programming skills in the Lord's service.

IT (Internet Use)

The internet is now a major resource for information and, increasingly, we are supporting specialised websites that offer practical help for Christian workers overseas. We now manage several of our own sites but also get occasional requests to design and build websites for various missionary agencies. So, we are looking for people with well-developed skills in designing or managing web pages. Please let us know the kind of work you have done, and let us have the URLs for sites that you have helped to develop.

Some missionaries still have limited access to the internet. This means that we get occasional requests to find miscellaneous information about all sorts of things. It may be a case of shopping for specialised equipment or tracking down rare books or sources of information. We don't get requests for this type of help every week but we need a team of researchers who can go into action when help is needed. So, if you are a fan of the internet, and if you have a persistent approach that will work hard to find information, please contact us.

IT (Support)

Many missionaries working overseas do not have much help available locally when they have computer problems. So Wycliffe Associates has set up a system whereby missionaries can send an email asking for help. The main package that we support is MS-Office and, if you offer to help by giving advice with this, we'll need to know which parts of it (Word, Access, Excel, or PowerPoint) you know particularly well.

We also aim to support all versions of Windows starting with ver 3.1 and including 95 and 98, NT, XP and now Vista. Desktop Publishing packages and networks cause particular problems and we've had queries on many other hardware configurations and software applications.

If you volunteer, we will assign you to the appropriate mailing list for the topics with which you are familiar. You will then receive the emails that come in and can respond to any that you think you can answer. In order to arrange this, we ask you to let us know:

• Are you an experienced user of any software packages and, if so, which ones?
• Do you have any professional computer training or qualifications?
• Do you have expert knowledge in any particular area of computing?
• Do you have any experience in training or troubleshooting?

Again, please note that this is voluntary work to help missionaries overseas and there is no payment involved.

Keyboarding (WEBBS)

The "World Electronic Bible & Book Service" (WEBBS) is the principal service that we provide. It involves converting printed text to digital format by "keyboarding" it (that is, typing it into a computer file). Most of the keyboarding work that we do involves typing out Scripture, although sometimes we do get asked to type other material. Generally, the documents that we work on are out of print and need typing onto a computer so that they can be prepared for re-printing. What's more, most of the material is not in English. However, you do not need to know any foreign languages. For every letter in the original language that is not on your keyboard, we ask you to type in a substitute character. For example, instead of typing an accented character like this: "é", you would type this: "/e".

If you volunteer to help with this work, you will need to have your own personal computer at home and be reasonably familiar with how to use it. We will normally send you about four chapters of the Bible at a time. We aim to achieve high accuracy in this work so we have developed special checking techniques that normally enable us to produce a very accurate version with virtually no mistakes. We have also developed some specialised software to assist with the typing of special characters. We need a fairly quick turn-around of work, usually within a month at the most so, if you find yourself unable to complete the work within the normal timescale on any occasion, we simply ask that you return it to us so that it can be assigned to another keyboarder.

For a video presentation on keyboarding, please click on the link below. The file should load directly into most modern browsers, provided that you have chosen to accept such files.

So, we will ask you to let us know:

• How accurate are you as a typist?
• How fast can you type?
• Will you be able to do a preliminary proof-reading and correction of your own work?

Please note that this is voluntary work to help missionaries overseas and there is no payment involved.

Office Skills

All of our administrative functions are now distributed amongst our volunteers but, although they don't work together in a standard office, they still need to have all the skills associated with administering a large organisation. These include basic procedures for dealing with correspondence and telephone enquiries, and handling financial transactions. As well as producing newsletters for mission workers based overseas, we generate a good deal of literature for our own members. So, we need people who can produce mail lists and labels, take minutes and notes at meetings, send out letters, leaflets and other material and ensure that we run smoothly and efficiently. We generally expect people to use their own IT equipment from home but assist people to acquire any expensive items (such as photocopiers) that they might need.

Organisational Skills

Whilst most of our efforts are directed towards external services for "clients" around the world, we are always on the lookout for those with specialist skills for our internal organisation. Our members work in their homes all around the UK and cannot easily come together for meetings or face-to-face discussions. So, we rely heavily on our team leaders (or "coordinators"), "liaison assistants" and those on our management committee to ensure that people are able to keep in touch, know what's going on and get help and support as and when they need it.

If you have particular experience with fund-raising, recruitment, assessing grant applications, writing policy statements or job descriptions, or organising conferences, do please let us know.

Leading A Team

If you have any experience of working with volunteers; if you have a friendly, encouraging nature and if you are prepared to serve team of people, please contact us. Working with volunteers is different from the world of business. You have to get the best from your team without using the carrot of bonuses and without using the stick of giving them a hard time. But it can be very rewarding. We don't always have this kind of opportunity, but if you would like to be considered as a coordinator when the time comes, please let us know.

Small Projects

Each year, WA-UK provides about a dozen grants of up to £500 each for small projects. In this way, we seek to give help and encouragement to translators, language consultants and literacy workers in particular. The grants may be spent on training, the replacement of vital equipment or anything that promotes new and imaginative ways of making God's written word accessible to people in their heart language.

Applicants for these grants are asked to submit a formal request, setting out what they require and why. The applications are considered by a small committee of our volunteers to ensure that they conform with the purposes set out in our trust deed. We are happy to consider applications from any Christian mission organisation working outside the UK.

Hospitality and Accommodation

Would you like to join our network of people in Britain who are willing to let missionaries stay for short periods with them? Sometimes this is just an overnight stop; sometimes it is for a few days. We also have volunteers who have holiday accommodation and are willing to let missionaries use this, either free or at cost. Please tell us:

• How many adults and children can you accommodate?
• How many nights' stay can you offer?
• Will there be a cost to the missionary? If so, what is this likely to be?
• Are there times of the year when this would (or would not) be available?
• Do you have any professional qualifications for children's work?

This can be a real blessing and help to the people who will stay with you. Normally overnight stays would be offered free. If you need to cover some expenses, please let us know.

Prayer Support

We depend on people around the world holding up our ministry before God in prayer. If you have a prayer ministry and would be prepared to support us in this way, please let us know. We will send you our prayer bulletin that is circulated from time to time by email or is available directly from the members' section on our website.

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• What It Takes
• All About WA
• Statement of Faith

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