Afraid of your big travels? Start with volunteering!

Volunteer work opportunities have been booming in the past decades. From short-term options to long-term, from nearby to far away and from expensive to free. This range of choices can sometimes make it difficult to decide on where to begin searching and what to do in the end. In my future blog posts I will write more about this. Today, however, I will focus on the benefits of starting at a volunteer project when you want to travel in a country. 

When I was 18, I decided to travel to Borneo, Malaysia. It would be the first trip on my own and I didn't know where to start. There were so many places to visit and so many things to do. However, what worried me most was having no idea what I was getting myself into. I had never been to Asia. Of course, I had done a little bit of research since I decided where I wanted to go, but to say that I knew what I should be expecting would be a big exaggeration. I was getting more and more nervous and doubted my decision to go, but I already told everyone and saved money for six months to pay for it all so canceling wasn't really an option for me. This got me thinking. What could I do to relieve some of the pressure and to have some control? After browsing for a while on the internet, I knew what I wanted to do, and it actually totally suited my dream of going to Borneo; I was going to volunteer in the rainforest with a local community, in an area with orangutans. I found this opportunity through a Dutch organisation called Activity International (https://activityinternational.nl/) where, at the time, the offered the opportunity to work at a local eco-tourism and forest restoration project. While I will get into the details of the price in a later blog, I do want to mention that prices at this organisation are high and that, if I understood correctly, about half of the money went to the Dutch organisation and half to the locals, which in my opinion is not fair. 

When I finally arranged everything (paying, flight tickets, document signing etc), I felt much more secure about going to Malaysia. Even though I was still worried, now I knew that someone would be at the small airport of Sandakan to pick me up and drive me to a community where I would have a place to stay. I won't go into the details of my stay there, but I will tell you what the advantages are of planning such a volunteering period before the start of your real travels. 

By doing this you are often provided with simple things which otherwise might worry you beforehand, such as airport transfers, food, accommodation, someone who speaks the language. This provides you with the opportunity to relax a bit and focus on other, more fun things. When you arrive at the volunteer place, you will probably experience a big culture shock (the severity of it depending on where you go and on how much you've traveled before of course). However, you might expect it to be bigger when going to a country and being all by yourself from day 1. When I got to the volunteer project, I was received with open arms and met the other volunteers. I experienced a severe culture shock for the first two weeks, but having the other volunteers around me really helped. Together we talked about the work, the culture and we just had fun. This gave me the opportunity to share my first experiences with other people and to feel like I always had support. 

Next to feeling a sense of security before and during the volunteering, there were also other advantages. One of the biggest being, in my opinion, getting to truely know the culture. Of course, this again depends on the type of project you join, but in my case I truly felt like part of the community. I had to follow their rules (no shoulders or knees showing) and I had to learn their language a little bit. While it sometimes was intense, I got to know the culture in a way that I wouldn't have if I just went travelling. While volunteering at a local community project you immerse yourself in their way of living. By doing this, my worries about travelling and cultural ajustment in Malaysia disappeared. 

Another great advantage of volunteering at local communities is that they have the best knowledge on their country. I got some great advice on where to go, what to do and how to travel. They told me about places I hadn't heard of before and one of the people from the community even invited me to join another project in the jungle for a couple of days, which gave me an awesome opportunity I would otherwise have never had. 

Lastly, you can make friends for life. It's a great way to meet all kinds of people, from all over the world. This is great if you want to visit their countries since they will again provide you with the best recommendations, but it can also result in free places to stay and interesting friends. 

Well, I would recommend volunteering to get to know the country, the people and to adjust properly to a new lifestyle. They can benefit from your financial contributions as well. However, I do want to press the importance of finding a good, sustainable and fair volunteer project. SInce nowadays volunteer programmes can become a kind of business which is not always in the interest of nature or culture. This, I will discuss in a future blog post as well. Hopefully I helped you a bit in taking a decision on whether to volunteer or not, or just provided you with some information. If there are any remaining questions or comments, don't hesitate to respond!

Cheers, 
Hannah