In recent years there has been an increase in the popularity of volunteering abroad. Young people in particular have increasingly looked to spend their summer holidays, or part of it, volunteering on a challenging and rewarding overseas placement.
While the benefits of volunteering can be invaluable, certain side effects of short term volunteering have emerged. Many companies have started to create volunteer programs of just a few weeks, tailored to “fit in” with young person’s schedules, rather than aiming to provide benefit to the local communities and a valuable experience to the volunteer.

There are a few important things to keep in mind and evaluate before choosing to volunteer abroad. Firstly volunteering abroad should not primarily be about enhancing your CV and snapping a few memorable pictures to show your friends back home. The aim should be to achieve a life changing experience for both volunteer and the local communities. Whilst you will gain the additional benefits of new skills and an opportunity to immerse yourself in the local culture, your actions will have a real impact and effect on the host community and it is important that this impact is wholly positive.

This is often something that is taken for granted by many volunteers. For example would be volunteers, should check that the organisation work with their host communities to ensure the local work force are not just being displaced by the volunteers. In this sense, short term volunteers can potentially be detrimental to local people and the local economy.

Therefore, before you choose a volunteer placement, your first aim should be to make sure that the project brings real benefits to the community. A volunteer placement of few weeks will not dramatically improve your skills and it will be more likely to affect the local community in an adverse way. It is also questionable whether you will have the time to truly get accustomed to the local culture or to gain skills such as learning a new language. A few weeks are unlikely to be enough time to implement a well thought out project, let alone enough time to see any of the benefits. You may find your experience disappointing, apart from a few pictures to display your friends with a bunch of faces rather than the names, stories and personalities of individuals.
Making a real impact on the community will require you first getting to know them. Only by becoming part of that community you will be able to make a real impact. While many choose attractive destinations for their volunteer placement more attention should be placed on the kind of the benefits you can provide.

It is understandable that many young people, who are deciding about their gap year, pick attractive destinations where they can travel and enjoy their time abroad. However, they should understand the benefits that fulfilling a long term placement may bring them.

When volunteers live somewhere for a long period of time, they become a real part of the community. They can meet the people, who will become their friends for life as well as people, who can be important for their future careers. The longer the volunteers decide to stay at one place, the better the local people can really get to know them.

Learning a foreign language is another important asset of spending a longer time abroad. Those who spend their gap year overseas, get a real opportunity to learn another language. The longer they live in the community, and interact with the local population, the more immersed they become in the language and so the local culture.

Spending your gap year volunteering is ultimately about helping people, meeting people, learning about people and another culture. Not about seeing as much as you can in a short period of time or filling a gap in your summer holidays. It is about the experience and the outcome, more than the destination.

Therefore, volunteers should bear in mind that when they decide to spend their gap year abroad it is not only about choosing the right destination and the type of work that they would like to do. It is about a life changing experience and what will be best for those the look to help.

By Roberta Geraci.
Roberta works for international youth development charity, Lattitude Global Volunteering (www.lattitude.org.uk), an organisation specialising in gap year and overseas volunteering opportunities. Started in 1972, Lattitude has 40 years experience and to date has sent over 40,000 volunteers worldwide.