| As an international community, VMM has offices in the USA (Wisconsin) and Europe (Ireland, with satellite offices in England and Scotland). The USA office sends missioners to Central America and the European office sends missioners primarily to Africa. Our missioners serve in ministry for two year terms, in collaboration with our Project Partners – grassroots NGOs, non-profit organizations, or with programs sponsored by religious congregations.
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VMM missioners enter into a special relationship with the people they serve, one which values and respects their dignity…a relationship that recognizes that God was present long before the missioner arrived. We work in humility side by side with the people. We build upon shared faith and experiences, an exchange of culture and ideas. It is a relationship in which the missioner is transformed by his or her experience and the love and compassion they exchange with the people they serve. A VMM missioner offers his or her skills in a variety of ministries: as an engineer, teacher, builder, farmer, health care worker, administrator, pastoral worker – always through the praxis of accompaniment – learning together, sharing faith, lives and resources.
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The Volunteer Missionary Movement (VMM) was founded in 1969 by Edwina Gateley, an English laywoman, in response to a need for lay people to become more deeply involved in the mission life of the Church. After spending three years in Uganda, where she opened a very successful school for young girls and worked as a teacher, she returned to England and began to recruit and train volunteer missionaries to work in education, healthcare and pastoral projects in eastern Africa. As VMM became more widely known, it was able to send volunteers to communities in need throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
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VMM’s United States office was opened in 1982 in the Chicago area, and subsequently was relocated to the current Greendale, Wisconsin location in 1990. VMM-USA is governed by a ten-member Board of Directors, in consultation with VMM-USA’s membership base, and also collaborates closely with the European office in Dublin, Ireland, with two satellite offices in Liverpool, England and Glasgow, Scotland – a true international lay volunteer organization with its origins in the Catholic social justice tradition.
Since 1982, more than 2,000 VMM volunteers have served in 26 countries on five continents, all living in the communities they serve. The roles of the volunteers include teachers, health care workers, accountants, pastoral associates, builders, engineers, agricultural experts and other technical workers. VMM concentrates its resources on a smaller number of countries in order to build community among its volunteers and be a more effective witness. Currently, VMM has over 60 missioners working in Africa, including Sudan, Zambia, Tanzania, Uganda, and South Africa, as well as in Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua in Central America.
The mission and vision of VMM emphasize our belief in the equality of all peoples, the obligation that we feel to the worldwide Church community, and the commitment of our staff, board, missionaries and volunteers to sustainable change through social justice efforts. VMM seeks to accompany the people we serve in faith and compassion, while providing our volunteer missionaries an invaluable opportunity for spiritual and personal development.
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The Volunteer Missionary Movement (VMM) is an international community of lay Christians who are catalysts for peace, social justice and human empowerment of the poor and marginalized as we work together in a divided world to inspire "the transformation of all things in Christ"
(Phil. 3:21; Eph. 1:10, 22, 2:21, 4:14)
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