Volunteer Vacation: What is It?

A volunteer vacation is pretty much what it sounds like. It combines both travelling and volunteering into one trip. While travelling abroad would probably be ideal, I think travelling out of state, your home town or maybe going so far as a including a staycation where you stay in the same area but not your primary residence can still qualify as a volunteer vacation if you are volunteering during your time away from home. This type of trip not only provides an opportunity to immerse yourself into a local community simply by visiting and exploring it, but also allows giving back and serving the community you are travelling to at the same time.

Thanks to my company, Cisco Systems, Inc., who offers paid time off for their employees to volunteer that is separate from regular paid time off (PTO), I have had the pleasure of completing two volunteer vacations and I am hooked! In 2019, my company partnered with Habitat for Humanity (an organization whom I had volunteered with a few times before) to build houses in Guatemala. In 2021, I opted to volunteer at The Sanctuary of Best Friends Animal Society in Utah providing support to animals onsite.

When deciding on a volunteer vacation, here are some points I think should be kept in mind:

• Safety: Especially if travelling abroad, please take into consideration any issues that may be prominent in a particular region at the time of travel, whether it be environmental such as hurricanes or societal like political unrest.
  • Travelling alone as a woman, I also took being female travelling solo into consideration to ensure I was not putting myself into a precarious situation unnecessarily. Unfortunately, the fact of the matter is, there are some countries that are safer than others in this regard.
• Ethical Organization: Thoroughly research and vet the organizations you are considering to work with and ensure understanding of their goals and methods to achieving those.
  • I chose organizations where their goals were in alignment with my own and I was comfortable with what I knew regarding their methods of operations.
• Health: Select opportunities that align with your skills and physical/emotional/mental capabilities since some activities can be extremely draining.
  • I knew my first volunteer vacation would involve intense labor in high heat and humidity that would push me physically. I made sure to be extremely careful to monitor myself, capabilities and limitations as it would not do any good to me, the organization or the community I was helping if I were to injure myself.
  • I was not concerned with the physical labor associated with my second volunteer vacation, but I was slightly with the potential emotional aspect of it! I have such a soft heart and have a tendency to become quite emotional when it comes to animals.

While this is not the type of vacation where you lay on the beach and completely relax, and in fact, it can be a very tiring trip, a volunteer vacation is something I highly recommend to others simply because of how rewarding and rejuvenating it can be. Some of you may wonder what I mean by that and I’d like to share some of the benefits that I gained during my own personal experiences:

• Unique Vacation
  • With regular vacations, itineraries are often built around typical tourist spots that almost everyone else visiting will experience. With volunteer vacations, it is quite easy to experience the area as a local. Don’t be shy to ask locals who are involved with the volunteer opportunity to give you suggestions on where to eat, what places to see and things to do. If you are lucky, they may even take you out themselves!
  • In Guatemala, I attempted to make tortillas in a local person’s home, where I also had the distinct pleasure of eating a mango plucked straight from a tree in their backyard. In that same trip, I mixed cement by hand with a shovel, not using pre-mixed bags, but actually mixing, sand, gravel and water separately with the guidance of a local foreman. I am not sure I would have ever had those experiences on a normal vacation to Guatemala on my own.
• Meeting New People
  • When volunteering, despite being an introvert, I was much more inclined to talk to others, since I was working side by side with them for hours a day, day after day. Even though I’ve been on my fair share of tours with other tourists, I rarely made a point to talk to my fellow travelers. Connecting with new people, especially the locals was such a wonderful enlightening experience because I learned more about them and their lives.
• Developing Relationships
  • While most certainly a more rare occurrence, on my second trip, I came across a couple who was celebrating a marriage anniversary at the first place they met – both volunteering for the same organization. They had gotten married on site as well.
• Networking and Teamwork
  • In my first trip, I already knew and worked with one of the other volunteers from my company. Volunteering and literally experiencing blood, sweat and tears together only further strengthened our professional relationship and enabled our work interactions after that trip to be even more productive because of the bond we built teaming together for a greater cause outside of our day to day company jobs.
• Meaningful, Impactful and Rewarding
  • There is no way I can, with any real accuracy, describe the look of pure gratitude in the eyes of the ones you are being of service to. What I can say is when I looked into the eyes of the mother, who’s home I helped build in Guatemala, as she was thanking me with tears in her eyes, and the animals in Utah who met my gaze with what I interpreted as overwhelming appreciation for my undivided attention and caring, is that my heart was broken, healed and swelled with immense love and gratitude all at the same time. All that for something so simple as being in service for them over a short period of time. This impact rejuvenated my soul, reignited my appreciation for the little things in life that I was taking for granted and re-energized my positive outlook on life.

I hope you will consider doing a volunteer vacation when you get a chance because I think it will change your life! I know it has changed mine.

If you have done a volunteer vacation before, I would love to hear about it and take it into consideration as a potential trip for myself in the future. If you would like to know more about my experiences, keep an eye out for future blog posts where I plan on providing further details regarding my last trip to Utah. And, of course, I’d be more than happy to talk to you directly as well!