1 About This Guide This is your guide to volunteering abroad...and doing it now! Whether this is your first trip, or you are an experienced traveler, the following pages will surely help you plan your next volunteer adventure. Our team at Build Abroad has thoughtfully crafted this guide based off of our own experiences and the experiences of our volunteers. We have also reached out to some of the most well known travel and volunteering experts in the world to help you formulate a realistic plan to turn your travel dreams into reality. If you have any reservations about volunteering abroad, that’s completely normal. Any experience worth having is often exciting, and can be a little frightening. The good news is you have already taken the first step...you have downloaded this guide and are on your way to planning your trip! About Build Abroad Build Abroad builds and repairs communities around the world through socially responsible construction volunteering. We feel that construction volunteering is the best way to serve a community. Construction projects provide a physical impact in a community that will last for years. There will always be a need for building projects throughout the world, which is why we have chosen to connect volunteers with these opportunities. You can learn more about us at buildabroad.org. 2 Contents Travel with a Purpose 4 How to Start 12 Choosing Your Program(s) 14 Choosing Your Destinations(s) 23 Fundraising Tips 26 What to Expect In-Country 28 The Short Term Volunteer 31 The Impact 34 Why Now? 38 The Travel Experts 40 Resources 57 About the Author 58 3 Travel with a Purpose So you’re thinking about taking the leap. Cutting the cords and throwing wind to your sails. But why? Yes, everyone should experience the benefits and personal learnings of international travel, but understanding your purpose and the outcome you want to have will help you make the most of your experience no matter what or where it is. In this section we outline some of the psychological, practical, personal and impactful reasons that should motivate your desires to travel and see the world while changing it for good. Form a new world view Most of us have grown up experiencing the same cultural norms our entire lives. Sure, people move, they travel for vacation; maybe you have even experienced extended travel through someone’s job being moved to a new uncharted area. But generally speaking, our cultural day-to-day surroundings have remained the same. We believe certain things to be true, to be right, and to be normal. But all cultures are not alike. They change in extraordinary ways, from language, to motivations, actions, diets, aspirations, and beliefs about the way the world should work. Traveling abroad gives you a window into different worlds, and when looking with an open mind one can start to understand and manage the differences between people. Here’s an example. A simple grasshopper is considered a pest in the U.S., a pet in China, and an appetizer in Northern Thailand. If there is this much variation just over a grasshopper’s role in our lives, can we even imagine how larger differences like human actions, gestures, and speech influence our perceptions of other people whom we are trying to understand? So when we see something on the news about a different country’s policies or meet a new expatriate down the street from Vietnam, how can we connect with them without bringing our own world view and 4 judgments with us that say they are wrong or different for doing things a different way. If you travel, you begin to build cultural intelligence just by meeting people and talking to them. By living in their culture you can understand why they act the way they do, and better understand what part of your thinking is the cultural lens you’ve grown up with, and what is really universal to all people. Once you can separate things you know to be true as just one culture’s lens from your way of thinking, you can open yourself to thinking about different countries and people in new ways. You can begin to understand them and be more accepting and open-minded. Be a fish out of water. When you don’t have your own culture and society to back your beliefs you learn that there are multiple ways of thinking, and all of them can be right. It is being able to think in multiple dimensions, considering where other people came from; that you can really change the way you think and therefore understand the world you live in. Gain greater empathy for other people Travel has a strong connection to the heart. If you’re naturally inclined to care about people, traveling will be one of the most fulfilling experiences of your life. This reaction is called empathy. It’s seeing and experiencing another way of life for yourself that puts you in another person’s shoes, and allows you to both feel what 5 they go through every day and also compare it to your own experiences. It’s difficult not to feel something when you see homes with three walls in Belize, or children wearing rags in the streets of India. Traveling is the only way to realize first hand what you have compared to those who don’t. It puts the issues in front of your eyes where you can’t change the channel. It forces you to realize real issues in the world and may ignite a fire within your heart to act on those issues. Most people who start businesses with an international development focus started with an experience of extreme disparity, which broke their heart and inspired them to fix the issues they saw. Take the founder of Charity Water. In his 20’s he spent his life as a club promoter in New York City. After a trip abroad, something triggered him to switch career paths and start one of the most well known charities in the world. Whether you become deeply passionate about education, poverty or any social issue is just as important as becoming aware of greater issues in the world. This mindset can not only help you address your own issues, but can also help you to understand different cultures, and maybe even want to help. Empathy doesn’t have to only be about experiencing people in extreme poverty. Living with a host family gives you an understanding of what is important to them. You may find similarities in your problems, such as finding time to exercise or visiting with relatives. 6 Gain new skills Your purpose for international travel can also be a more practical one. Travel provides many opportunities to learn new skills. Take advantage of your trip to learn a language or work on a specific craft like photography. The sky is the limit! Travel to become a global citizen Take a look around your classroom or your office space. Chances are you or one of your close friends is working with or interacting with someone from a different country. More and more this is the way the world is heading. Because of technology, affordable travel, and multinational businesses, people are scattered all around the world. International schools are popping up everywhere to educate people from different backgrounds together. Multi-week or month business trips to other countries are replacing long-term assignments. Interacting with diverse people and in diverse environments is the future, and travel is the key to unlocking your potential to navigate the new world. When you travel you meet people from many different places and learn how to communicate with them. You will learn a lot of patience in navigating language barriers and city transit maps. You can’t imagine the pride you will feel in successfully navigating another country’s transportation system with no previous knowledge of the language. Traveling gives you the confidence and the bootstrapping skills to figure things out for yourself, to be comfortable with ambiguity and being lost, and to react to situations calmly and appropriately. These skills, tolerance, patience, and confidence working in multi-national teams or environments makes you a global citizen. You become an asset by knowing how to navigate challenging and possibly uncomfortable situations. You learn how to communicate effectively with people and understand what methods work best for them even if they seem illogical to someone from your own culture. You can handle any situation, whether it relates to culture or not, because these skills are transferable to all areas of life. 7 Train linguistically and culturally for future jobs The fastest and most effective way to learn a language is to be immersed in it. If you want to learn Spanish, travel to a Spanish speaking country and live among it. It’s amazing what you will pick up just by listening and forcing yourself not to use English. Learning a language is one of the most valuable assets you can have today. The problem with learning another country’s language in your own country is that it’s been modified. Although your Spanish education may be grammatically sound, you may come to realize the way you were taught is not actually how people speak. The speed of the language may also differ from how it is actually spoken. However, by listening to locals and asking questions you will begin to pick up the language in a way that is much more natural and effective. This is a linguistic education that can only come from traveling outside of your native country.