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Don’t let your skills atrophy or go to waste on a career break. You may have swapped the office for the open road, but you can combine your time away, skills and expertise to do good by volunteering or working in community and charity projects in your chosen destination. What is more, volunteering and charity work is great work experience and looks good on your CV, especially if it’s relevant to your profession or a cause that’s close to your heart.
Whether volunteering in a formal organisation, or offering to help out in a local community, consider what skills you have that you can offer. It could be language skills, teaching, medical aid or legal advice.
For many charities, the best help you can give them is to raise funds and awareness for their cause. Volunteering your time for any given charity is not always an option – especially if specialist knowledge or skills are required. Consider how much further your money could go by giving it to trained experts, versus them using the funds to train you up.
With a little research you’ll find lots of projects you can get involved in. Here are some of the most popular organisations and a great place to begin your search.
World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF)
WWOOF (http://wwoof.net) connects volunteers with organic farmers and growers in over fifty countries worldwide. As a volunteer (or WWOOFer) you will live alongside your host helping with daily tasks and experiencing life as a farmer. No prior farming experience is required. You’ll be expected to do around four to six hours of work per day in return for a day’s accommodation and food.
Once a member, you can search for opportunities by country, then contact a host farm to arrange your stay and discuss the type of volunteer work you’ll be expected to do. You’ll negotiate the length of your stay with your host prior to arrival – which could be anything from two days to six months, though the average placement tends to be around two to three weeks.
Some of the tasks you might be allocated are milking cows and feeding the animals; weeding, pruning or sowing seed; helping with the harvest; learning how to create mud bricks or build straw houses; preparing compost, cutting wood, growing vegetables, beekeeping, wine, bread and cheese making, and much more besides.
Before booking your first stay, think about the kind of experience you want to gain, including what skills you have to offer and what interests you most? Can you speak the language and is this necessary to get by?
Consider how long you want to work for and take your time to pick the right host – get to know them as much as you can before booking to ensure there’s a rapport there and a mutual understanding of what’s expected of you – you don’t want to be tasked with milking the cows if you’re not an ‘animal person’! Don’t expect luxury accommodation or underestimate the hard work involved – farming requires a certain degree of physical fitness so try a shorter stay before committing to a long stint as a WWOOFer.
Lastly, as a volunteer, remember the work comes first so it’s important that you don’t let your host down. Go with an open mind, be prepared to get your hands dirty and have fun!
Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL)
If you have a native or near-native level of English, you could teach English to help fund your travels.
TEFL.org.uk (www.tefl.org.uk) believe that if you can speak English, you have the potential to teach it and no prior teaching experience is required. They offer a wide variety of online and classroom-based courses, covering the basics to more advanced and specialist modules to get you up to speed.
Once qualified, browse their website for teaching jobs including full-time, part-time and freelance opportunities in primary and secondary schools, universities, business schools, translation companies and summer schools. You will find residential options, and some even provide your flight, food and lodgings in addition to a salary.
If your English teaching qualification is not from TEFL.org.uk, check out the job opportunities on TEFL.com (www.tefl.com) and Dave’s ESL Café (www.eslcafe.com)
Workaway
Workaway (www.workaway.info) believe that volunteering opportunities abroad need not be expensive (nor do they mean that you have to clean toilets day in day out – unless you want to, of course!)
Ideal for budget travellers, language students or culture vultures, Workaway help find work placements and volunteering opportunities in over 170 countries worldwide. In exchange for a few hours work per day they will provide your meals and accommodation and you’ll also be able to learn about the local lifestyle and community. It’s a great way to give back to the community and stretch out your travel money.
From NGOs and schools, to farm stays and local families, the range of work and duties is broad and placements can be from as short as two weeks to much longer durations – simply negotiate the finer details with your host before you begin. As with WWOOFing, take the time to pick and get to know your host – there are so many options out there, so search for a good fit and rapport before committing and don’t let them down.
You can register with Workaway from as little as USD $29 per year. Find out more about the available opportunities at www.workaway.info.
Conservation projects
Conservation projects working with animals such as orangutans in Borneo, elephants in Thailand or turtles in the Galapagos are popular and programmes are widespread, so do some research before you go to find the right one for you. A simple Google search should get the ball rolling, or you could ask locally when you arrive.
Choose your charity wisely; commit to help them and always carry out the work you have agreed to do for them. Your efforts go a long way to help a cause or community who rely on the efforts of volunteers, so don’t let them down.
Travel responsibly and support local conservation, cultural and environmental projects wherever you go. Do your bit to understand the threats to the local environment or wildlife and avoid signing up for any tours that exploit or threaten the flora, fauna or culture.
I spent some time with elephants in Northern Thailand and it was important to me that I chose an organisation that didn’t exploit, endanger or harm the animals. I did some research to understand the current threats to elephants and their environment, and how best to support them.
If tourists are better educated on how they can impact animal well-being, they can demand improved conditions for the animals and eliminate the demand for the exploitation of these beautiful giants. It astonishes me that in this day and age people still want to see animals doing tricks in circuses or ride on their backs when it hurts them…
Pack For A Purpose
Pack For A Purpose is a great little initiative which enables charity projects to benefit from excess capacity in your luggage.
Before you travel, check Pack For A Purpose (www.packforapurpose.org ) to see what community projects are being run in the area you’re visiting, then fill any space in your bag with supplies and provisions required by the project.
Not decided where to go yet? Select the initiative you’d like to support (health, child welfare, education, animal welfare or socio-economic development) to see what projects are being run worldwide.
Once you’ve chosen your project, review the list of supplies needed and decide what you’d like to donate. The supplies requested are varied – pens and pencils, books, art supplies, first aid kits, gardening tools, baby milk formula, animal supplies, clothes and shoes… Perhaps it’s something you have at home already and no longer need; it could be donations from your workplace, or low cost items you’d like to buy to support a project close to your heart.
Once you’ve arrived in your destination, simply drop off the provisions at an accommodation or tour company that supports the project, and they will deliver them to the project on your behalf.
Lend With Care
Another good way to help and support good causes in developing countries is to invest your money in Lend With Care (www.lendwithcare.org), where you can loan an entrepreneur in the developing world a small sum of money, which they pay back to you when they’ve made the money back from their business. You can choose your entrepreneur based on their profile, or filter by location, business activity or gender. Loans start from as little as £15 and you can invest in as many or as few business ventures as you like.
You don’t have to visit the country or region to be able to help and can even invest in a project from the comfort of your own home. However, it’s also a great way to support a region that you have visited and continue to invest in it after you have moved on.
Your loan, however small, makes a huge difference to local entrepreneurs and getting your money repaid to you once they have the business success to pay it back gives you a warm glow inside.
Download Free Asda Colleague Handbook Career Break Secrets Pdf
Excerpt taken from The Travel Secret (How to plan your big trip and see the world) by Sarah Kerrigan. For more details and to purchase, visit www.admin.land/travel-secret.