Benefits of Volunteering Abroad

The benefits of volunteering abroad are varied and seemingly endless! Hopefully your volunteer trip abroad will not be a one-time thing. Rather, an ongoing journey of understanding and reaching out to help others throughout your lifetime, whether at home or abroad.

Here are just some of the benefits of volunteering abroad:

1. Help others

It should not be all about you. It’s about helping others, first and foremost. If this isn’t number one on your list of reasons to volunteer abroad, it’s best if you find another organization. Better yet, perhaps hold off on your trip until you’re sure you’re doing it for the right reasons.

2. Learn about another country

You won’t be a tourist with our programs. Through your volunteer work and living with a host family, you will get a true insider’s view of the customs, belief systems, family dynamics, and life circumstances faced by those in another culture.

3. Appreciate what you have

Don’t feel like your rich at home? Try living in a rural village in Africa that doesn’t have electricity or running water.

4. Be in the present

Open up your eyes and ears – all your senses – so you can be fully present and engaged with with life in the local community. Leave the ear buds at home – so you can watch out for that cow in the streets of Delhi!

5. Independence and self-confidence

This is the one of the most common things our volunteers, especially teens, tell us they got out of the trip.

6. Learn new skills

Learning new approaches and techniques in fields like teaching, home construction and wildlife conservation. If you’re motivated enough, you could even learn a new language like Swahili or Hindi.

7. Local economy

Your program fee helps provide a living for our local coordinators and host families. It also provides for donations to the organizations where our volunteers work like orphanages, schools and clinics. You’re also paying for flights, doing local shopping, and perhaps even donating extra money (most of our volunteers so) – all of that benefits real people and economies across the globe.

8. Resumes & School Applications

We leave this one for last, because it’s the one we’re least interested in. Not that we don’t want you to have the great credential of a volunteering trip abroad. We just don’t recommend that boosting your chances of getting into your reach school be a top priority for you in our programs (see Number 1 above!).