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Nexus Abroad

Learn more about the Nectar Home Volunteer Program in Ghana by clicking on the link in the panel on the right.

Project Overview

Nexus Abroad is an international development project that assists community organisations in developing countries to become financially independent. The goal is to implement an ethical and socially appropriate governance structure to enable partner organisations to achieve their own mission of empowering local communities. Since 2008, the team completed its first project by engaging with Nectar Home, an orphanage in rural Ghana, which provides food and shelter for children orphaned by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. More recent efforts have seen the team moving to India and South East Asia for developmental work.

In December of 2008, two SIFE students made the first trip to Ghana to help the community implement a local public transport business. At the start of 2011 in January, four students embarked upon a second trip, with the aim of establishing a board of advisors to oversee the overall strategic direction of the orphanage, and to begin preliminary planning for a volunteer program.

Prior to that in 2010, Nexus Abroad raised capital to create volunteer accommodation on the Nectar Home site and consequently sent over their first group of volunteers to Ghana at the start of 2011. By hosting volunteers on site, Nexus Abroad has ensured that all Volunteer Program fees will flow directly to the orphanage. A crucial outcome for Nexus Abroad was also to instill a board of governors, whom held their inaugural meeting with the presence of SIFE members in order to develop future plans for the orphanage.

At the beginning of 2012 Nexus Abroad will be sending over its second group of commercial volunteers to Nectar Home. This is happening in conjunction with a second engagement, which is being set up with the Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP) Dhad, whom will be receiving its first group of volunteers nearing the end of the year. Looking forward, Nexus hopes to employ similar models in South-East Asia, thereby creating a network of global social organisations.

Nexus Abroad demonstrates the University of Melbourne SIFE’s commitment to driving social change through empowering those in disadvantaged communities and acknowledges our responsibility, as global citizens, to strive for a more sustainable and just world.