How to volunteer while traveling abroad

I’m writing this post to answer the question happy gal and I had when we were planning our around the world trip: how can we volunteer for a short period while traveling abroad?

When happy gal and I were planning our trip, one of the things we wanted to do was dedicate between a week to a month on a volunteer project. happy gal’s a doctor and I’m an engineer turned business guy. We really wanted to offer our skill set to a non-profit. Unfortunately we could not find a project that would take us or that we wanted to be a part of.

Most projects/volunteer opportunities had their limitations:

• minimum volunteer time: 3 months
• requirements were low: high school graduate degree
• you must pay to volunteer
• timing was not right — they needed someone in July and we were going to be there in March

We were very disappointed and decided to skip the volunteer part of our trip all together.

We did not save 1,000 kids from hunger nor did we save the forest form illegal logging … we did not help an orphanage nor did we create water filters for villages. All of this would have been cool and beneficial, but alas, we were not able to find the ideal project.

To my surprise, we did end up doing volunteer work and created our own small project without even knowing it! Looking back at the past week, happy gal and I created a goal/vision, raised funds to execute this mission, made a difference in a person’s life, and were able to share the story with those who funded the mission and friends. Basically we created our own volunteer program.

In addition, we found a non-profit that helps students in the neighborhood with their reading and english skills. Everyday for 2 hours in the evening they allow tourists to come and speak with these students for practice. We were only able to help one day but we realized we made a tiny difference when a monk and a young local english teacher wrote down words they had learned with us like PROUD or DOLPHIN and quickly started using them in sentences.

The big project though was to help a young man with his education. We probably did not use our career skill sets (medicine, engineering, and business), nor did we create a detailed plan on how to execute the project or make it formal, but we were passionate and believed in him.

We learned about Mr. May’s story and within 10 minutes happy gal and I knew we had to help. Our passion has always been education and the importance of education for a person’s future.

There are many reasons people volunteer and different levels of volunteerism. You can volunteer for a day or for your entire life. You volunteer because of something you believe in or because you come from a group of people or an area that needs help. If you’re traveling and you want part of your travels to incorporate some volunteering time, we propose the following recipe:

• Define your passion – for us, it’s education
• Look for people/places that need help based on your passion: Mr. May, receptionist at our guesthouse had a drive but had limited resources
• If needed, find funding either from your own bank account, friends, or a local foundation: We asked our friends and provided some of our own funds
• Set time to execute – we stayed in Luang Prabang for 6 nights
• Share your experience to motivate others – video, blog post or a simple email

This is only one of many potential ways to volunteer. This recipe is ideal for those that are traveling and want volunteer to be part of the travels. It would be different if your trip is a volunteer trip and then you want to travel as part of the trip.