In this blog, we hear from Isha, who studied Economic History with Economics and graduated in the class of 2023. She was also an Student Volunteer Ambassador. Upon graduating, Isha has embarked upon two major volunteering trips in Fiji and Brazil where she spent a month in each place volunteering within the local communities. She tells us more about her journey of finding opportunitites to volunteer abroad.
My name is Isha and I have recently graduated from LSE. Before immersing myself in the corporate world, I decided to take some time for myself to explore the world. Volunteering has always been a big passion of mine but with the intensity of studying at LSE, I struggled to properly commit to any regular volunteer work. However, I knew that upon graduating, I really wanted to invest some time into volunteering whilst also travelling- so this is exactly what I did! My post-graduation volunteering trips have taken me to Fiji where I completed a 4 week ‘Youth Empowerment’ project in a remote village and to rural Brazil where I was a swimming teacher for children. I will be writing a series of blogs on my experience volunteering abroad which will broadly follow the themes of: ethical volunteering, applying for funding, honest reflections on the reality of solo volunteer trips and about my specific experience volunteering in each country. Before I delve deeper into these topics, I’ve listed a few tips to help you start searching for your ideal volunteer abroad experience.
How to start to look for volunteering opportunities:
- It’s hard to know what type of volunteering opportunities are even available in the first place, your big volunteer abroad pages that come up when you first search for volunteering opportunities (i.e. Volunteer HQ or Go Overseas) is a good place to start just to get a feel for the type of volunteering you can get involved in.
- Once you’ve got a feel for the type of volunteering you’d like to do, then start narrowing down your search to the specific projects you’d like to be involved in and the countries you’d be interested in volunteering in. If you have a specific passion, then search for volunteering opportunities in that field- for me it was swimming; I searched for volunteering opportunities to teach people to swim and again you are directed to the big charities first but keep scrolling through the search results. It may sound really obvious but don’t limit yourself to the first page of google results when searching for these opportunities- usually smaller community-based volunteer sites do not have the marketing budget to appear first!
- A really big advantage we have as LSE students is CareerHub that advertise some excellent volunteer abroad opportunities. Simply log in as usual and filter your job search to ‘Volunteer Abroad’ and many global opportunities selected by the experts at the LSE volunteer centre will appear.
- Following on from this- speak to the LSE Volunteer Centre– you can book 1-to-1 appointments with them to discuss your volunteering journey. This was one of the most crucial things for me when deciding to volunteer abroad- volunteering abroad can be a daunting endeavour to take on so speaking to people who have been through it can help guide your decision about where to go and what to look out for. Talking to the LSE volunteer centre helped me find opportunities that best fitted what I sought to achieve from volunteering abroad.
While volunteering abroad is intended for you to leave an impact on a community or group of people, it is often overlooked how much you personally benefit and learn from such an experience. This is one of the biggest things I have come to appreciate having volunteered abroad. I have learnt so much from both of my trips, both trips taught me the value of different things and both trips allowed me to grow in a way that I didn’t even realise was possible. Most importantly, I came back from these trips knowing that the work I had carried out really did have a lasting impact on the community I served. I wish you all the best of luck in your volunteering journeys and I hope this blog series will help you with this!
If Isha has inspired you to volunteer, check out one of our other ongoing opportunities or book a one-to-one with David Coles, the Volunteer Centre Manager if you have more questions. And why not follow us on Twitter, and Instagram to stay up-to-date with our events and opportunities and read our blog for more volunteering tips and stories.
