Our Top 3 Tips for Choosing the perfect Overseas Volunteering Challenge
by juliette capomolla
So, you want to volunteer abroad, but you don’t know what you want to do. You’ve got so many burning questions, but you don’t know where to start. Where should I go? What do I want to do? How much is it all going to cost me? If this sounds like you, then you’ve lucked out! Today, we are going to answer these three burning questions and make choosing your volunteer challenge a WHOLE lot easier.
We offer more than 25 different volunteer trips, so we understand why the choice might be difficult! The good thing is that this means we have a program for everyone. No matter what you want from this experience, you will be able to find an experience that suits your skills and interests!
1. Destination, Destination, Destination
The first thing to do is to think about where you want to go! This is one of the most exciting things to plan because you can choose to volunteer in one of our six amazing and beautiful countries. You can go to either Cambodia, India, Nepal, Peru, Tanzania or Thailand. All of these destinations offer something different, whether that be the landscape, the climate, the attractions or the challenges our partner communities face.
One big factor for many of our volunteers is the travel they want to do on top of their volunteering. Whether you want to discover India in-depth after your challenge, or add on our extension trip to Machu Picchu, choosing your destination is a big deal! So if you do want to extend your volunteer trip, where would you like to go? In Peru you could hike to Machu Picchu and see these amazing Incan ruins or be astounded by the Amazon rainforest's natural beauty. In Tanzania, the extension trip involves a jaw-dropping five-day safari to see the African wildlife in their natural habitat. Or in Nepal, you can take the Poon Hill trek to the Annapurna Ranges. If you’re interested in doing one of these incredible extension trips, then you can choose your destination based on that.
Alternatively, if you wanted a different sort of adventure, you could choose to go to Peru or Tanzania to travel on one of our Adventure Challenges. We offer either the trek to Machu Picchu or climbing the incredible Mount Kilimanjaro to our volunteer as a built in component of the volunteering program. Often, these are activities that lead our volunteers to choose these destinations, and that is why we offer a safe and seamless way to embark on this amazing journey! If that’s you, check out these Adventure Challenges here.
Every volunteer challenge that we run (except for our Schoolies with Impact trips), our volunteers book their own flights. This means that you're free to make your own travel arrangements both before and/or after your challenge. Do you want to uncover India, visit the Taj Mahal and see a Bollywood movie in Jaipur? Asking yourself these sorts of questions is an easy way to decipher where and why you might choose a destination!
After all, these countries have so much to offer and you may as well take full advantage of it!
2. #goals
Many of our volunteers have goals that they want to achieve by going on our challenges. These could be career experience, language skills, helping fight climate change, or purely and simply helping others. Whatever it may be, we are so excited that we can help fulfil those with you by volunteering abroad.
We offer a variety of volunteering programs:
For some people, they are studying education at university and want to gain practical experience by going on our education challenges. Or, you could be a budding doctor and choose to travel on our health challenge to gain some hands-on practice that will be useful in the future. These are also good ways to build up your resume and provide something unique that employers will not see often enough!
Alternatively, you might have language skills that you want to put into action. Or maybe you want to experience the culture and language in person. Either way, all of our destinations are based in countries whose primary language is not English. This can be a fun experience for those who may have learnt Spanish or Hindi in school to practice the language!
And what if you have no idea what your goal is? Well, we recommend you embark on one of our community development or adventure challenges. These are the most versatile and well-rounded challenges which are not focused one sole thing. You have the opportunity to dabble in a few different activities whilst volunteering, and so they are the best for the undecided!
3. Budget
Budget is a major concern for many of our volunteers, especially because most of you are students! We totally get that, so we want to be straight forward and share the range of costs for our trips. Our Schoolies with Impact program is differently priced because it includes the flights within the price. But, if you do not want to do that trip, or you want to know your other options, here they are.
Most of our other challenges are priced within AU$2,050 and AU$2,850. Our internships and Kilimanjaro Adventure challenge are all between AU$3000 and AU$4000 because of the additional length of these and the cost of trekking Mt Kilimanjaro!
Another consideration is that with all of our challenges, you book your own flights. Because of this, the budget is also really dependent on where you choose to go. You are going to need a larger budget to go to Peru or Tanzania as the flights are generally more expensive to these places from Australia. Whereas if you travel to Cambodia, Nepal, Thailand or India, the flights are much cheaper and you can often get really good deals!
What we want you to keep in mind is that no matter what volunteer challenge you choose, or what destination you go to, none of our trips will disappoint you. All of our trips offer a fulfilling, educational, inspiring and exciting once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You'll get to test yourself, make new friends and get a whole bunch of new skills along the way!
So, what do you do now? Head over to our challenge page ASAP! We have a simple filter tool for you to narrow down your options based on these considerations. It’s time to make some decisions and get booking. We can’t wait to see you on one of our volunteer challenges soon!