Some of the first things that you will need to look at are what you would like to receive from the experience, what you can potentially offer the local community, and how much time you are willing to commit to the experience. It does take time to really learn about a local community and its culture, but more and more people are looking for short-term ways to volunteer when travelling. These volunteers might only have a couple days or a few weeks, as opposed to months. Some criticize short-term volunteering as an experience that only benefits the volunteer and not the community. Yes, many people do volunteer to feel good about themselves, and they enjoy sharing their travel experiences with friends in today’s social media world, but from what I have seen, short-term volunteer experiences can still produce positive long term outcomes in the individual, local community, and even in the hometown of the visitor, as the following examples illustrate:
In Nicaragua, foreign volunteers spent a few days building a home alongside local builders resulting in a family having shelter. In another area, a teacher that came for a short-term volunteer experience decided to devote her next year’s two-month summer vacation in the same community to teach English. I personally watched a young boy witness poverty for the first time during a day-visit to volunteer in a village with his family. He whispered to his mom with tears in his eyes, “This house is as big as my room.” That day, the boy played with the children that lived in the house and they quickly became friends. Every year, the family returned to visit that same village and, even though the kids didn’t speak the same language, they played together like they played with their friends from home.