Are You Ready to Volunteer Abroad with Us?

Volunteering abroad is not for everybody. It can be a very stressful, difficult undertaking for even the most seasoned travelers, both psychologically, physically, and financially.

We do not accept everyone who applies to our programs. Our volunteers need to be creative, enthusiastic and resourceful self-starters.

We simply must be selective due to the nature of our host countries and programs, which – while safe – can be very difficult to handle because of the culture shock as well as the relatively unstructured nature of many of the programs.

Can you Handle the Culture Shock?

As much as we try to prepare our volunteers before they leave home for the inevitable culture shock of living and working in a non-western country, there is nothing that can entirely prepare you for your experience abroad. (Be very wary of any organization or individual who says they can).

Yes, we provide pretrip guides, phone calls, emails, and alumni contact before you leave home. But the only way to fully understand a country’s culture, people, landscape, and language is to get on the plane and experience it for yourself.

Below we have separate sections on the three main areas that our volunteers have to adjust to:

• Volunteer Program
• Host Family
• Daily Life in the Community

You may not often read this type of information from other volunteer organizations. Many of them prefer to paint an entirely rosy picture of the volunteer experience abroad. However, we prefer to be up-front about the challenges facing travelers when they volunteer abroad, since we do expect our volunteers to be a cut above the rest.

Volunteer Program

Our programs are not summer camps. You will not have every minute of every work day intricately planned for you. You must be a resourceful, self-starter who can handle situations where schedules are sometimes non-existent and resources are scarce.

For example:

• As a medical student volunteering at a clinic in a rural village in Kenya, you will help the local nurse treat patients with limited supplies and medicines.

• As a volunteer teacher in Ghana with a TEFL certificate but limited teaching experience, you will have to walk into a classroom of 50 grade four students everyday and help them learn English, using their own text book but also your own methods and materials.

• As a journalist intern working at a television station in Ecuador, you will have to speak fluent Spanish to goverment politicians at news conferences, in a country that sometimes has a volatile political environment.

• As an orphanage volunteer in India, you will be considered by the orphanage’s director and staff as an independent volunteer who can walk into their orphanage on day 1 and begin helping out immediately – with the children’s schooling, meals, arts & crafts, and playtime. As wonderful as they are for the children, the directors and staff do not have loads of time to hand-hold our volunteers and show them every type of activity and curriculum available for the children.

Host Family

In almost all of our programs, you will be living with a local host family. This will not only be a family you have never met before, but a family that comes from a cultural background entirely different from yours, with vastly different practices, attitudes, approaches to life, and language(s).

For example, many of our volunteers are university students, who enjoy a great degree of freedom in their daily lives, able to come and go at all hours of the day and night.

How will you react when your host family strongly prefers you to be home for the night by 7pm Monday-Friday, because that is the family’s usual practice (even for their children in their 20’s)? Will you:

• Adhere to the family’s request.
• Try to reach some sort of compromise with the family.
• Disregard the family’s request altogether.
• Call our Coordinator and tell them to switch your family immediately.

If you are not sure which answer you would choose, then you are not ready to volunteer with us.

Daily Life in the Community

Would you be able to handle these situations?

• Being approached by a group of beggar children in Bangalore, India.

• Being the only westerner among a village of 1,500 people in rural Kenya.

• Taking a 1-hour bus ride in Ecuador to reach the nearest Internet café.

• Riding from the airport in Mumbai with our Coordinator late at night and seeing thousands of homeless people sleeping on sidewalks, under bridges, and on trash heaps.

• Sightseeing in Ghana on the weekends, and having the bus passenger seated next to you ask intimate questions about your job, salary, romantic life, and family? (This is not unusual in most of our host countries)

• Being so homesick for family and friends that you would consider wasting all of the energy, effort, and thousands of dollars you spent on taking your trip, and just flying back home early.

Be a Cosmic Volunteer!

All of the issues discussed above, regarding the volunteer programs, host families, and daily life abroad, are critically important when you consider whether to volunteer abroad with Cosmic Volunteers.

Think about them, talk to your peers, family, school counselors, or work colleagues, and continue to research countries and volunteer organizations.

If you feel you are truly ready to be a "Cosmic Volunteer" and go abroad with us, we will be more than happy to talk to you about our programs and the entire volunteer experience.