When you are traveling you can often get sucked into a world that revolves all around you and your experiences. But fair enough, right? It’s YOUR world adventure. Where are you going next? Are you having fun? Are you seeing the world? Are you having a life changing experience? Can you afford to eat out tonight? Have you charged your camera?
These are all valid questions to ask yourself, another one is: how can I do some good for the country I am visiting? OK so I realise Australia isn’t exactly a third world country and we do all right, but in every place you go there will be opportunities to volunteer that will be too good to miss. For fun or for your inner aide, either way, it’s another experience to add to your travel collection.
Volunteering is an important experience for lots of reasons. Many different establishments and organisations require volunteers to help them survive, especially if it’s a charity or not-for-profit company, basically you are there to do good, to help when people need it most.
In these situations you are donating your time and manual labour to the community, to help people a little worse off than yourself, feed the homeless, support charities to raise money, help victims of natural disaster or other life threatening circumstances. This kind of volunteering can be beneficial for you too, its rewarding to know you have helped, even in a small way to better someone else’s situation.
However if that is not your thing, as we know it’s not for everybody, there are the other kinds of volunteering that may be a bit more suited to you. Why not try giving your time to go behind the scenes at festivals and street parties, marathons, children’s festivals, fashion parades or city events where you still help out but its all for the fun of it! Run around like a crazy person helping on this and that, here or there, meeting new people and mates and having a well earned drink at the end of the day. You may even receive a tote bag full of goodies for your time. Thank you sponsors!
It’s also one of the best ways to meet people. Throw yourself into an environment of a bunch of good people working for the same cause and you are bound to have a good time. Sometimes it can be hard work but very, very rewarding and may even answer some of your world adventure questions.
Check out some of our volunteer jobs on the Backpacker Job Board and start applying!
