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Travellers who are bored with traditional tourism are increasingly turning to volunteer work, to give back to the places they visit, make connections with local people, and get more deeply immersed in local culture. Volunteers are working all around the world, teaching English to schoolchildren, helping endangered sea turtles, building houses, designing websites for weaving cooperatives, developing new agricultural products, vaccinating rural families, and taking photos.

By working alongside local people, you will have experiences that traditional tourists never get to have. For example, at Trama Textiles, a women’s weaving cooperative in Guatemala, our volunteers can learn to weave using ancient Mayan techniques or visit remote communities and make tortillas by hand with the women. While volunteering can be an amazing personal experience, you should also be mindful of how you can best serve local communities on their own terms.

How to find a volunteer programme

You might think that in order to volunteer abroad you need to pay to go through one of the volunteer placement organisations, but actually it’s easy to arrange your own volunteer project. You can start by searching some of the major databases of volunteer opportunities, including www.idealist.org, www.workaway.info, www.goabroad.com,  www.volunteersouthamerica.net. Many databases are free to browse and can help you locate a volunteer programme that fits your interests. You can look for programmes by country, by the type of work involved, or by the length of your stay. The next step is to contact them, figure out if they are accepting volunteers, and get more information about the programme.

How to Pick the right volunteer programme

Be clear about what you want before applying to a volunteer programme. Make sure that you meet the organisation’s minimum requirements in terms of time commitment, skills or certifications, and language ability. Think about the skills that you have to offer an organisation. You shouldn’t overestimate your own abilities, but you might be surprised by the sheer variety of different types of volunteer work that you can find; no matter what you studied or what you do for a living, there’s probably an organisation that needs help with exactly that. Even if it’s just a hobby, like amateur photography, blogging, or hula hooping, you might be able to contribute in unexpected ways.

You should also evaluate the programme before committing to work with it. You’ll get an impression of the volunteer programme based on how it is presented online. Does it seem organised? Is it clear how the organisation uses its volunteers? Does the organisation have a volunteer coordinator or someone else who facilitates volunteer projects? If you write to them for information, do they respond quickly? The best and most effective programmes will have a dedicated administrator and an organised list of volunteer tasks. You don’t want to travel halfway around the world to sit around and do nothing.

What to expect

Try to be realistic about how much you will be able to accomplish in your project. You may not speak the local language perfectly, and you may not understand exactly how to go about your work in a new environment. From our perspective as a volunteer hosting organisation, one of the biggest drawbacks of working with volunteers is their tendency to take on too much work and leave their projects half-finished when they go.

You should also try to keep an open mind and be culturally sensitive. At Trama Textiles, we appreciate it when volunteers come into the project with a clear idea of what they can get done, and we are happy to listen to their ideas for new projects. Volunteers inspire us with their energy and creativity. However, sometimes we have other priorities, and we need volunteers to respect that. One volunteer wanted to create a new computerised accounting system for Trama, but when she talked to the president and vice president of the cooperative, it emerged that what we really needed was someone to do our biannual inventory.

If you are thinking about volunteering abroad, you should go for it! Volunteering gives you an opportunity to get to know a place at a different level. It can be the experience of a lifetime.

TRAMA Textiles
3a Calle 10-56, Zona 1
Quetzaltenango, Guatemala
tramatextiles.org

About the author

Oonagh ShielContent Manager at Cheapflights whose travel life can be best summed up as BC (before children) and PC (post children). We only travel during the school holidays so short-haul trips and staycations are our specialities!

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