The Case for Volunteering Abroad

Volunteering abroad supercharges the path to adventure, growth and impact. For some, helping others overseas for a long or short period of time is the most meaningful and enjoyable experience they’ve had.

The year I spent volunteering as a teacher in Budapest, Hungary ranks as the best year of my life. Many others you’ll talk with will say the same thing: setting aside time to help solve people’s problems in a foreign land will transform your life.

Almost Everyone Can Volunteer

People who work overseas in developing countries as a career truly are superstars who deserve our respect. For this post, I am targeting those intrigued by the possibility of volunteering abroad but don’t see it as their long-term calling in life. First, I’ll talk about the personal benefits of volunteering. Then, I’ll talk about the communities we work with and the impact of sustainable volunteerism. I hope to encourage people who are willing to invest at least a week and ideally an entire year (or more!) in a good cause overseas. The longer you spend abroad, the more you will be personally challenged and changed, and your opportunities to make a positive impact will only increase.

My own goal—and what I recommend to most everyone—is to commit to volunteering for an extended period at least three times in life: (1) When you’re “young” in your twenties and thirties; (2) When you have kids or to take a sabbatical in the middle of your career; and (3) When you’ve “retired” from your primary career.

Does Volunteering Abroad do More Harm than Good?

An important preliminary issue to address is whether the overall effect volunteering overseas is a negative one for the people and communities we’re trying to help. Many say that volunteering is a way for naive do-gooders to feel good about themselves and then leave a mess behind them when they leave.

When not done well, organizations can keep communities from ongoing development and sustainability—by placing volunteers rather than providing resources to locals—or can destroy the economy at the village level. One popular example of this is classrooms in developing countries full of donated computers with cobwebs on them because no one knows how to use them. These are critical issues and we should choose wisely—with the macro view in mind—when we sign up with a particular organization.

Done Well, Volunteering and Charity are Good and Essential

It’s certainly true that volunteers need to be involved in projects that actually help other countries over the long run. But for all the setbacks and downsides of international charity work, the smart people who fund and oversee these efforts—like Bill Gates with his foundation or Hillary Rodham Clinton with the U.S. State Department—they see the powerful positive overall impact. I like my Mac way better than Windows, but I trust Bill Gates to be doing the right thing with his massive effort involving charitable work. In addition, I trust Warren Buffet, who is giving much of his money to Bill Gates to do this too!

Would it be better that a local doctor repaired a woman’s fistula than a westerner? Yes. Would it have been better for a local Hungarian to teach students than a foreigner like me? Yes, but then they wouldn’t have experienced my superb American accent and I wouldn’t have experienced their culture. In sum, when it’s done well, charity work provides essential benefits that a developing country would not otherwise receive.

What Makes Volunteering Abroad so Powerful?

The best year of my life so far has been the year abroad as a volunteer. I have many friends who say the same thing and my sister just returned from her third extended volunteer trip. This time, she spent a year in Spain and prior to this she spent a year in Honduras and a summer in Guatemala. So why is volunteering abroad such a great experience? Personally, this year overseas enabled me—and helped me—to live out my deepest values by cutting out the stuff that distracts me every day.

The Magic Formula and Key Ingredient

Here was the magic formula that made this year so great, and I bet this will resonate with you too:

Genuine desire to help others + need for adventure + fear to overcome + very limited income + radical simplicity in my material possessions + new country & culture + intense learning + work that makes a difference + new friendships with locals and volunteers + travel & exploration + freedom from money & consumption + simple pleasures of food, music, reading, talking, writing, walking + gratitude for what you do have in the western world + gone for at least a year + changed habits and priorities = Best Year of Your Life.

My experience is that the most important element in this magical formula—the key ingredient—is taking action to directly help others with serious challenges. What is often missing in our regular jobs is the ability to directly and simply help people with needs much bigger than our own. This concentrated experience of doing so for a year was life-changing.

Surprisingly Great for Your Career

Also, keep in mind that serving overseas actually can be great for your career long-term, whatever that is. You certainly are not doing this to be a martyr. It’s a triple win: you help others, it’s great for your personal growth, and it can truly energize your job opportunities. For me, working in Hungary for a year was instrumental for getting hired at a big international company. Multiple executives mentioned after I was hired that, “you’re young but we liked you largely because of your international experience. In fact, I wish I had that overseas exposure myself.”

Very simply, nearly everyone greatly respects when someone spends time abroad—especially when it’s done not merely to travel, but to work to solve a significant problem in a developing country.

Also, taking time to volunteer often allows people to switch their work focus or their entire career should you choose to do so. In fact, when I was 33, for fun I decided to apply for a job with the Clandestine division of the CIA. I got four levels into the interview process and then pulled out after my wife and I looked carefully at what we wanted out of life. But simply getting these interview opportunities was mainly possible because of my overseas experience. Yes, volunteering abroad is great for your career!

Volunteering Promotes Joy and Satisfaction

The key to living well in general—and certainly for having the best experience of your life—is to act upon your deepest values. You will have the most joy when you are pursuing what you value the most.

It is nearly impossible to be happy and do fulfilling work if you’re not acting in a way that is in harmony with what you value most in life. It is therefore critical that each of us clearly identify what we want out of life and what we value. Because when you live out your deepest values—your big “why”—you will be most satisfied and happy in life. Especially when adversity hits (which it will).

An unfortunate quality about human beings is that we can be distracted very easily into living in a way that is out of step with what we actually value. A key reason for this is that we are manipulated by powerful messages that change our behavior to make money for the people behind those messages. The end result is that we aren’t fully satisfied with how we’re living and what we’re doing.

In addition, Westerners—and Americans in particular—often don’t realize the “golden handcuffs” we wear in regards to debt and lifestyle maintenance. An Indian friend of mine told me about some Indian parents who lived in what they described as a “Five-Star prison” in a Texas McMansion. They couldn’t drive and there was no public transportation or human contact during the day. Sadly, even if we can drive and pick up some coffee in a drive-through, we can get used to our five-star prisons.

However, volunteering abroad exposes the five-star prison as unnecessary and undesirable in order to live a truly rich life.

Focus on Your Deepest Values

To help you confirm what you value the most—and see it in black and white—I highly recommend that you compose a dying declaration.

A “dying declaration” is a legal term that means if a person uttered some words while he was dying, then this can be admitted into a court of law and won’t be considered hearsay. For over 800 years, British and American courts have recognized that when people say something when they’re dying, it is incredibly reliable and trustworthy.

So a very accurate way of zeroing in on what each of us value the most in life would be to record what each of us would say if we were convinced we were about to die. However, most of us will thankfully need to use our imagination. So, imagine you were stuck in the snow, knew you were freezing to death and wouldn’t make it out alive, an have the chance just to write one letter to the person you care about the most in this world.

Besides expressing your love, what else would you say? I believe what you’d say reflects your deepest values AND is the key to figuring out what you want to do with the rest of your life, including whether you should volunteer overseas for a period of time.

An Actual Dying Declaration

What is very helpful is that we have a gripping and moving letter that a British explorer named Robert Falcon Scott wrote to his wife and young son when he was trapped in the snow (70 degrees below zero) coming back from the South Pole. He knew he wouldn’t make it out. What is most insightful—and motivating—about this letter is the fact he didn’t have regrets doing what he loved to do and valued the most, even though he died doing it. Here are three excerpts from the letter:

“I think the best chance has gone. We have decided not to kill ourselves but to fight it to the last…”

“I do not not regret this journey, which has shown that Englishmen can endure hardships, help one another, and meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past.”

[Then about his three-year-old son:] “…I am anxious for you and the boy’s future—make the boy interested in natural history if you can, it is better than games… I know you will keep him out in the open air.”

He didn’t say, “Ah bummer—I really messed up and don’t let our boy repeat my mistakes. Just encourage him to get an office job and live a safe life indoors.” He expresses the exact opposite! Overall, what shows through his example is that he lived out his values: his dying declaration clearly matched up with what he valued in life and he was able to die without regrets.

I encourage you to confirm your deepest values by trying to simulate a “dying declaration.” What would you tell people you care about? What advice would you give? Then go and live that out.

Evolutionary Science Shows Volunteering Makes us Satisfied and Happy

Evolutionary science is showing that if we aren’t actively helping each other, then we won’t be that satisfied. It’s an exciting time to see the application of evolutionary theory to all kinds of issues today. We’re figuring out that we’re better off living as we were designed to live—as we have evolved to live. Our food is a perfect example. It’s shocking how confused Western people have become regarding food. We’re finding our way back by looking at the what we evolved to eat—the natural food we should be eating. Evolution also provides insights into raising kids, exercise, and conducting business, among many other things.

And understanding evolution also lays out a path for making choices that will lead to the highest level of satisfaction for how we interact with others. In short, human beings have been designed to help each other out. In the same way that our bodies look healthy and are healthy when we eat and exercise the way we evolved to, our minds and our spirits will be most fulfilled when we live in the way we evolved to live: to take care of each other and help those in greatest need.

Not convinced? An excellent book I’d recommend is The Moral Sense by James Q. Wilson, a former Harvard professor. He makes a very compelling case that people are moral creatures because we evolved to be that way. A very quick and simplified summary of the origin of morality is that one hunter going after a bear is not going to have as much success as four hunters who collaborate, keep their word, and are trustworthy and brave. Over a long period of time, these desirable moral qualities have become both a part of human nature and of human culture worldwide.

And so just as people who eat Cheetos and soft drinks all day long are going to have bodies that are distorted and never reach their potential, the same is true of people who live selfishly and don’t live in a way they were designed to: helping others.

Volunteering Helps Us Fulfill Our Highest Potential

The reason it is so satisfying to serve others is because in so doing human beings are fulfilling their highest potential—like the horse running or the bird flying. Here’s the pattern and big picture: a group of five hunters collaborating is better off than one. When two villages collaborate and help each other, they’re all better off than as separate villages. Indeed, entire nations are better off when we all collaborate and help each other. So you could call this a common core value of all people or you can simply call it human nature.

OK, yes, but what about all the evil stuff people do to each other? It’s true that people and villages and nations have been doing horrible things to each other for thousands of years. We all know that people don’t regularly choose what is good. In fact, we frequently choose selfish or evil things. But no one—besides sociopaths—actually gets satisfaction from being evil. People are only truly satisfied when we do good and help each other.

Helping Others Can’t be Beat

Also, consider good revenge movies. Tarantino is a master at these and I like them for what they are. On one level, it’s kind of satisfying to watch the underdogs shoot up Nazis or kill slave traders. But we all recognize a better approach that is more powerful, inspiring, moral and truly human: overcoming evil with good. That’s why the Civil Rights movement and Gandhi are rightly celebrated today. Instead of getting revenge, they changed the system and helped millions of people live a better life.

Most people around the world aren’t rapists or serial killers or genocidal maniacs—instead we’re just passively focused on selfish consumption. It’s very similar to the easy path forward with our diet and exercise. The easy, default way of life for westerners is to eat processed junk and lay around. This is kind of enjoyable at first but definitely not truly satisfying long-term. In fact, we have evolution to “blame” for this. Sugar was so rare—and resting was so rare—back in the cave days, that our bodies will seize the opportunity for both when we can get it.

Similarly, the reason people are so often dissatisfied with their work is because it’s like the modern diet: not the way it’s supposed to be. We should be eating healthy and helping others directly because it really is “our pleasure” to do good things for others. When we devote a substantial amount of time to helping others it is like going on an all-natural super healthy diet for the soul. We feel great, like we’re getting back into shape. When we have a service deficit in our lives from doing work that’s not helping others as much as we’d like, volunteering overseas will get you back in equilibrium.

To sum up this evolutionary argument: helping others is not a value for some and not for others; it is a common value at the foundation of human nature. It is what makes us human. This is not something a person can say is “my value.” Instead, it is “our value.”It’s also easy to get sidetracked with fights that don’t actually help people or the planet for that matter. We should choose Martin Luther King’s approach over Tarantino’s approach to securing justice and happiness. Similarly, just as it is very easy to get out of shape, eat junk food and lay around, it is very easy to live a consumption-focused, selfish life where you passively let other people make money off of you by following the crowd. Many people fall into the trap of not doing anything meaningful – and truly satisfying – to help others.

Indeed, the most satisfying, exciting, and fulfilling way to live is to be actively others-centered. Volunteering overseas can quickly get you living in a way that is most enjoyable and meaningful. Then, as a changed person, you can bring back your new perspective and lifestyle to your long-term career.

An Inspiring Example

I’d like to share the example of Patrick Chang, who is a remarkable person who shows how to focus intensely on living out our shared, most important value: helping those in need. The distractions that most of us have to deal with were cleared away for him. He could see clearly that the most joy and meaning in his life would result from helping others.

Patrick was a classmate of mine in junior high and high school in California. He was an excellent athlete—a swimmer training for three hours a day and aiming perhaps for the Olympics. He was a very nice guy and a great student. Sadly, in 8th grade he had a terrible accident and he broke his neck in a swimming pool. He became a quadriplegic and was able to use his hands in a limited way to guide his wheelchair.

What was amazing about Patrick was that all the way through high school he had a peace, maturity, depth and friendliness to him that far exceeded his age. He was smart and he poured himself into his studies. I’d ask him for help with chemistry.

He got into Stanford and when he became a freshman there his father gave him control of a $200k trust fund. Patrick was very interested in economics and investing and his father knew the money would be in good hands. Patrick told his dad, in essence: “This may be surprising but I’ve read about thousands of disabled boys and girls in China who are nowhere near as privileged as I am. I got into Stanford and I’ll be able to get loans and pay them back. These disabled kids have no options whatsoever. So I’d like to set up a scholarship fund with my $200k and I’ve calculated that simply by giving the interest to these students I will be able to help 100 of them go to college every year.”

Patrick set up the fund and young people in China have been benefiting ever since. He’s helped about 2,000 college students thus far. Patrick got his Ph.D. in economics and he didn’t stop with finding creative ways to help others after setting up the scholarship fund. He asked himself: “Besides my money, what else can I give?” Well, he has an excellent voice and also speaks Mandarin. So he created the “PEN” network (Patrick English Network) that helps underprivileged Chinese kids learn English—and he was able to eventually visit China and meet the students he helped. As you can imagine, he was received like a rockstar.

The big lesson from Patrick’s example is that due to the circumstances of his accident, all of the stuff that typically distracts the regular person was stripped away. Patrick chose not to simply feel sorry for himself, but chose a life of joy and meaning by devoting himself to doing what he values most—what we all truly value the most—but think about doing later on “when we will give back.”

Instead of “giving back,” Patrick gave up front. He’s made the most of his opportunities to meaningfully help others. The result is that he received all kinds of wonderful rewards as he gave: joy and satisfaction that the lives of hundreds of people are better off because of his own life.

Not all of us on the planet are destined to volunteer overseas. However, if we have the interest and the ability to do so, we can make a powerful positive impact and have an amazing experience.

After focusing extensively on “why” to do it, I’d like to transition now to sharing the expert views of a seasoned international volunteer.

Sarah Stone—our director and chief editor—created an extensive directory of volunteer abroad programs and resources (read her advice on volunteering abroad here) while working as an intern (and later a full-time employee) for the Peace Corps, which is an excellent option for many people. However, if you’re unable to commit to two years, you’re not an American citizen, or you’re not old enough, or otherwise not qualified to join, you need to pursue other options. The good news is that there is a huge universe of opportunities that are available.

Why is it Worth Taking the Time to Volunteer Abroad?

You should commit to serving abroad because it has a positive impact in at least four different ways:

1. Benefits the Volunteer. You get to experience the satisfaction that comes from helping others. You learn about a new culture, make friends from other countries, and you see the world. You also are able to travel as much as your time and resources allow for.

2. Benefits the Organization. Whether it’s a local or international nonprofit, an NGO, or a company, you are able to help fulfill the organization’s mission. Staff typically are the most expensive part of an organization’s budget, and you can help accelerate their impact. The ultimate goal for many sustainable volunteer organizations is that volunteers can eventually be replaced with local staff.

3. Benefits the Community. When volunteers arrive, they inject money into the local economy. In addition to revenue, volunteers help the organization fulfill its mission, which benefits the community overall.

4. Benefits the Service Recipients. All quality, reputable volunteer organizations were founded to meet a specific need in people’s lives. Your efforts as a volunteer will improve the lives of people where you are living and working.

Why do Most Volunteer Abroad Organizations Require a Fee?

A good distinction to make is that we often are not paying to volunteer—we’re paying for support, training, housing, food, and often the tools needed to do the job. Since the people we’re helping can’t pay us themselves, we need to come up with the money somewhere else. This of course depends on the organization you work with.

Why do Costs Differ Amongst Volunteer Organizations?

Quite often the more expensive fees are charged by placement organizations. Overall there are two types of volunteer organizations: placement and host.

Host groups are the local organizations that accept volunteers to work directly with them. Placement organizations partner with the host groups to market their worthy cause and help find people to come volunteer.

Sarah Volunteers Regularly Overseas—We Should Too

Sarah truly loves serving abroad and makes it a regular practice. She has been doing about two volunteer trips each year, and just a month ago she spent a week volunteering with some friends in Jamaica. She’s found that putting the focus on other people as she travels with others makes for a rich and memorable experience.

Occupational and Professional Volunteering

Most people have specific skills and training that form the basis for their long-term career—whether you’re an actuary, marketing manager, or a doctor. A fantastic approach to volunteering abroad is to put the skills that you use every day in your regular occupation to good use in a developing country.

For example, when Sarah and and her company that grew from the directory she built in college started sending travelers overseas, they had opportunities for medical students or seasoned medical professionals in Nicaragua. The volunteers worked within Nicaraguan hospitals and, depending on one’s skill and experience, could work directly with a specific local physician and help with certain procedures. Similarly, some American medical students participating in this program had the responsibility of taking the vitals of patients who were being admitted to the hospital.

Professional volunteers have to watch out, however, because they might like the service opportunity so much that they may not return. The head of Mercy Ships, for example, is a physician who went abroad to volunteer for a short period but is still traveling decades later!

Does Sarah think you can find work volunteering abroad as an accountant, for example? She says: “absolutely!” She thinks the most likely scenario is that your skills would be put to use by an organization abroad that needs help with balancing their books.

In addition, there are opportunities available—typically long-term commitments of a year or more—to effectively become an employee of a host government or an organization. This approach usually allows you to have all your living expenses taken care of through a monthly stipend. Such an arrangement is often described as a “volunteer job” or “professional volunteer.” On paper, you won’t get rich doing this, but it most likely would be the richest experience of your life to date.

Sarah’s Final Advice for New Volunteers

Do lots of research to ensure you are exposed to many of the options that are available. Certain programs will be a better fit for you than others, and you’ll be a better fit for some organizations over others. However, it’s also the case that you won’t be able to know for sure what will be the absolute “best” option. You’re trying something new in a new country—so, by definition, you won’t have complete certainty about everything. But doing research (and a GOOD amount of it) can help.

As Sarah made clear in her case study in volunteering abroad, there are more options to volunteer abroad than you could have ever imagined. You will be able to narrow down the thousands of possibilities by looking at key criteria like time, money, location, and type of work.

How Much Time do You Want to Spend Volunteering?

I personally recommend spending an entire year in a volunteer program—and this can be an academic year if you’re teaching abroad. A full year allows you to get completely immersed in a new country and culture, and also is a clear-cut way to handle your time off.  It’s a “clean break” to take a full year for career purposes or for your resume. But if you can’t do a full year of volunteering abroad, I still recommend that you volunteer for a shorter period, and ideally take a year off to travel. You can volunteer for one week up to several months, all the way up to several years.

How Much Money Will You Need?

Don’t let money get in the way. First, keep in mind that it’s much less expensive to live outside of western countries in regards to rent, food, and health care. Second, there are many fundraising options available if you can’t self-fund your trip. Third, we highly recommend that you pursue employment abroad opportunities where you are regularly paid an amount by the host country that will cover your food, housing, and living expenses while you’re working overseas.

For the majority of volunteer opportunities, you are required to pay a fee to the organization that is sending you abroad. It sounds a bit like a scam—or at least inefficient bureaucratic overhead. However, I think a number of organizations that help you volunteer are earning their money and providing valuable services. For example, I would basically not have been able to teach overseas if my organization had not sought out opportunities for American teachers in Hungary. They provided training, guidance, advice and support and a team of other built-in friends and colleagues who were also heading overseas.

Also, if there are issues like not getting paid, then they immediately take action to help. I had to come up with an extra four thousand dollars for the year, but it was well worth it. Keep in mind that some organizations are better than others and the best organizations don’t necessarily charge the most. So do lots of research and talk to people!

Where Do You Want to Go?

I had studied the effects of communism on Eastern Europe and was very intrigued about this and wanted to help too. You should target a country or a region that you care about. Explore the options online—I’ve listed out some excellent websites below that allow you to search by type of work, length of time you want to volunteer, by region, or by country. By the way, a big reason I had such an amazing time in Hungary is because I was interested and curious in learning more about the country and the people. Some of the others in my group were not as interested in learning more and building friendships with the locals and, as a result, didn’t have as good a time. It’s truly possible to be bored anywhere in life.

Also, perspective is very important. A friend of mine from college is a veterinarian—Doctor Steve Smith. He specializes in large animals, and does important work here in the U.S. But it all depends on how you look at it to see whether what he does is actually enjoyable and prestigious or not. A big part of his job job is sticking his hand (in a glove) up cows’ behinds to check for problems. He enjoys his job—it’s an essential one—and he’s a doctor after all. He has the right perspective and he’s truly interested in his work and understands the science behind it.

The Professional or Occupational Option

I highly recommend taking the same approach I did: use your professional skills and training overseas. It’s a very satisfying and effective way to structure your volunteer experience to ensure you are making a difference. Although many people might want to do manual labor for a change, if you’re a medical doctor, it makes sense that you would use the full extent of your training to help people’s health problems. Also, by getting paid—at least a basic stipend to live on—this also ensures that the foreign government or organization puts you to work and is incentivized to get the most out of you.

In addition, working as a professional overseas is great for your career if you want to continue with what you’re already doing. Moreover, the more challenging the country, the better the opportunity in terms of responsibility overseas. I could have taught law to law students in Russia or China as a 26-year-old. I opted instead to teach business law to undergrads at the Budapest college of Economics. Similar to the pros and cons that come from working for a nonprofit, the pay is very very low but your title is very impressive. It would not be extremely difficult to be a “Professor” or “Managing Director” in the Sudan, for example.

Teach English

This is a fantastic option. If you have the interest and basic aptitude, most of us would be able to teach English at the high school level. My friends Barry and Laurie did this in Hungary. He took a year off of law school because his girlfriend was going abroad and he just jumped right back into his legal studies after the year was over. Barry and I were roommates in Budapest and he had a wonderful, challenging year just like I did.

The Japan Exchange and Teaching Program, or JET program, is an excellent option that my friend Kim did for four years. She’s now fluent in Japanese. In fact, I interviewed her for Frayed Passport here!

Work on organic farms

Consider doing agricultural work. Scott Clyburn went to New Zealand for eight months and volunteered with World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, or WWOOF for short. He had a great time working, traveling, and living with host families, and we detailed his trip here on Frayed Passport as well. But be aware, this is physically demanding work and very different from cushy office or computer work that many of us do.

Other Types of Volunteering Abroad Opportunities

Shannon Varis is a photographer who has volunteered across the globe. I interviewed her about a trip to Morocco last year, and she travelled with her parents around the world multiple times to teach students photography. In the spring of 2012 she did this in Romania at an orphanage; she actually no longer needs an organization to arrange volunteer trips.

Author and entrepreneur Chris Guillebeau served overseas with Mercy Ships for four years and had a life-changing experience. The founder of Charity:Water also spent time on Mercy Ships as a photographer and was so impacted that he went on to build this very successful non-profit to help Africans suffering from water-related diseases. A friend of mine named Kristin Ericsson also spent six months on Mercy ships and loved it—she worked in the HR department and enjoyed her role.

Do What My Sister Laurel has Done—She’s a Volunteering Superstar

My sister has had three different, and very rewarding, volunteer experiences. This is why she keeps volunteering!

First, she volunteered at an orphanage in Guatemala for three months during the summer [editor’s note: we don’t recommend orphanage volunteer programs as legitimate experiences, but are keeping this line in for storytelling]. Second, she worked for a private elementary school in Honduras for a year. Most recently, she spent half of 2011 and 2012 volunteering in Spain and got certified as a TEFL instructor.

Keep in mind that, just like Laurel did, you can volunteer in richer, first-world countries if you’re not sure about starting in a developing country. However, even in wealthy, developed nations there are many needy spots and this doesn’t by any means guarantee an “easier” experience than in countries with a lower GDP.

In Spain, Laurel participated in an excellent program called Vaughan Town. In return for free room and board at beautiful Spanish villa, she was the conversation partner for two weeks to Spanish businesspeople and students. She had a wonderful experience and recommends starting a long-term trip to Spain with Vaughan Town because you’ll be able to make friends with lots of great Spaniards. In fact, some of her new friends invited her to be their roommate at their flat in Madrid, which is where she lived for a number of months and greatly improved her Spanish. The opportunities to have rich, novel experiences with another culture have made this one of the best years of her life.

Other Simple, Practical Recommendations

Short-term volunteering doesn’t present any enormous hurdles—simply plan for it as you would any one- to three-week trip. However, when people consider the steps required for long-term volunteering and travel, this is when it can appear daunting. I think Tim Ferris’ advice in the Four Hour Work Week about considering “what’s the worst thing that can happen” is very helpful in this context. The exciting thing is that you have more options than you realize. Consider these simple ideas:

Pursue a sabbatical. If you have a job you want to keep long-term, but you’d like to spend a year volunteering and traveling abroad, approach your boss about it. Discuss the ways that the trip would benefit you and also, potentially, the company. Many people are able to take a formal or informal sabbatical and return invigorated and an even greater asset to their company or organization. Read our guide to taking a sabbatical here.

Quit your job. Or, you can simply quit your job. My sister is an elementary school teacher and she has done this twice to volunteer—once for a year in Honduras and then for a year in Spain. She used savings for her last trip and did fundraising for her initial one. It was obviously well worth it for her because she volunteered abroad twice for an extended period!

Rent your house or apartment. Renting or subletting your place is not as hard as you think. Or, if you don’t need rental income in your absence, you could have a house sitter stay and take care of things. Read our guide to putting your home on Airbnb here.

Minimize your stuff. Many people use a trip abroad as a great chance to simplify their lives and pare down their possessions. You won’t worry about your things back home if you don’t have a bunch of them.

Have Kids? Bring them with you. I taught for a year in Hungary with a man who was an engineer from Minnesota. He quit his job and brought out his 9-year-old daughter and all three of his 4-year-old triplets! Spending time abroad is a fantastic educational and life experience for kids.

As my favorite musician Regina Spektor says, “Today we’re younger than we’re ever gonna be.”

Featured image via Pixabay.