Volunteering During Your Career Break

Spending time as an international volunteer is not only the territory of the gap year student.  In 2012, it was estimated by Santander Bank that over 4 million people were taking career breaks in the UK alone.  International volunteering combines well with travel and is one of the most popular ways for those taking career breaks to spend their time.
 
In 2013, I was one of them, having decided to take 11 months away from my job in the UK.  Making that decision was the easy part.  On reflection, when I began the planning stage, I was only vaguely aware that people were volunteering for causes all over the world – building, teaching, providing medical assistance, to name a few common initiatives.  I did not have a clear understanding of my motivation, my objectives nor did I understand how the volunteer industry works.  I only knew that I craved an ‘otherness’, a complete departure from life in the UK and from the tourist driven industry in the French Alps, where I would work for five months in a ski chalet. All I did know was that after France, I was travelling to Asia.  Working as a volunteer in a foreign country allows you beneath its skin; it will seep into you as you live beside the local population and become involved in the things that concern them.  Intuitively, it seemed the right option for me, so I applied to work with Volunteer Initiative Nepal (VIN).
 
Career breaks and the choice to spend them – in whole or in part – as a volunteer can be triggered by a range of desires.  You might be responding to redundancy or you might simply need an extended break from the ‘day job’; you might want to share the skills you have worked hard to acquire or you might want to learn new ones to help to make a career change; you might want to become immersed in a different culture or you might simply want to dip your toe and use your holiday from work to take a mini career break of just a few weeks.  But as I discovered, long or short, whatever you hope to experience, with the raft of causes and opportunities across the globe, there will be something to meet your needs.  For example, VIN offer anything from three week volunteer trekking or touring experiences to longer term projects in areas ranging from community work with women and children to journalism, public health and traffic management.
 
While my experience evolved from instinct, my retrospective advice would be to decide what you want and do your research ( choosing the right volunteer organisation).  Your time is precious.  It is your duty to ensure you spend it in a place you really want to be, in a country and location about which you have no illusions and with an organisation whose objectives you understand and for whom you are genuinely motivated to work.
 
Taking a career break is all about a period of absence from your job.  However, you will likely end up with a lot more skills to take back to it.  You may even develop some that set you on the path to a new one.  You have to interview for an organisation, arrange your travel and take that step onto the plane that will deliver you to a strange country; you are focused and organised.  You will unlikely be living in a hotel, you will be living in a community and its unfamiliar language and customs; you will learn to adapt.  Communication will be one of your major challenges, within the community, with other international volunteers, your chosen organisation and your immediate team; effective communication is a crucial skill where ever you work and there is no doubt that an international volunteer placement will make you better at it.  The best results for you, your organisation and the people and causes they support, will be achieved when you realise that success is about team work; the ability to work as an effective part of a team will be respected by any employer.
 
Before I arrived in Kathmandu for my volunteer placement I could not have anticipated everything I would gain from it.  By the end of the placement I came to understand that working as a volunteer is a form of exchange.  I helped to support the work of VIN in rural communities and I gave my writing skills to help rewrite their website.  In return I became part of a Nepali family, each day learning a little more about their lives, language, customs and culture; I learnt to communicate with my family, the people in my community and those I worked with at VIN; and through reading the daily newspaper and my research for the website I learnt about the complex cultural, economic and political struggles that Nepal’s people face.
 
If I have any regret about my volunteer placement, it is that one month was too short.  The time I spent offered a rich, immediate and long lasting experience that I will be with me for the rest of my life and which I hope to build on for the future.
 
By Joanne Gibson
United Kingdom
VIN Returned Volunteer