Find A Reason To Volunteer Abroad | Volunteer Visions Blog

Oct

18

6 Reasons To Volunteer Abroad

≡ Category: Lists, News Articles | ≅

1.Your Help Is Needed.

§ Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
§ 30,000 children die each day due to poverty.
§ Over 1.1 billion people have inadequate access to water.
§ In 2006, 4.3 million people were infected with HIV and 2.9 million more died of AIDS.
§ Over 100 million elementary school-age children cannot go to school.

You have seen numbers like these a thousand times.

As Joseph Stalin said,

“One death is tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

The ability to put a number on global suffering and poverty is a modern phenomenon that the human mind cannot comprehend. We must move past Darwinian limitations of comprehension and focus on individual stories. The best way to understand is to see firsthand. This means more than a Paypal donation, it means giving your time, helping to build rather than just clicking a mouse. Simply throwing money at the many problems is not making anything better and it is time we accepted this.

2. You Can Learn A Language.
There is no better way to learn language than to immerse yourself in it, living in the community and working with the people born there. Yes, English is the standard language of business, but it is not the only one. The Asian and Latin American economies are emerging markets and as economic markets continue to globalize, those who can communicate will be the cultural intermediaries, bringing diplomacy and fueling international trade. Being able to speak someone else’s language lets you understand them in a way that is impossible through pantomime and broken sentences. While this problem is considerably greater in North America, even trilingual Europeans would benefit from learning another language.

3. You Can Make New Friends.
There are more than 6 billion people you have never met, what are you waiting for? The type of people who travel in foreign countries volunteering have usually seen and done more with their lives and thus are more interesting than your average person. Becoming friends with locals will give you better understanding of what the people actually want, rather than what you believe they need.

4. You Can Travel Cheaply.

Living with a host family who prepares your meals is vastly less expensive than the hotel and restaurant alternatives. Volunteer programs with Volunteer Visions begin at $249 a week, less than $20 a day! Even more importantly, that money goes directly to the family, bringing revenue that will be recycled into the local community.

5. You Can Rediscover Yourself.

Just graduated and looking for a job? Bored? Lonely? Depressed? Happy? It doesn’t matter where you are in life. Take time off and travel to anything that is new and foreign. It is easy to lose touch with reality in a closed society of virtual worlds and suburban sprawl. You can exist for the daily thrill of television or live and work for some greater goal. We can be utterly and completely normal and take each piece of news at face value or we can decide for ourselves the way things are. The choice is yours.

6. You Can Make A Difference.

All of those depressing facts I listed at the beginning? They can change. Not all at once. Not without hard work, failures and time. But don’t think about the large scale. If you volunteer abroad, you will make a difference. Build an aqueduct, educate a village about HIV and the world will be on its way to worldwide change. And that is what matters.