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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.
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.
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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.
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