Every month we’ll be posting an entry from a guest contributor who has some advice, resources, information and/or inspiration they want to share. This month’s guest contributor is Bessie Crum. Bessie has been traveling for a few years in search of finding the best way to live life. She and her husband recently backpacked through Latin America for a year, stopping to volunteer along the way. She’s currently an English teacher in South Korea, dreaming of her next travel destination. She blogs about her travels at www.onourownpath.com.
“Never waste a volunteer’s time.”
As a Volunteer Coordinator in Chicago for a few years, that was always my mantra. I’d be planning three-hour events down to the minute, and my goal was always to be engaging a volunteer in our mission and keeping them working. Overall, volunteers in the States wanted to dive in and save the world in the three hours they had. When I took off for Latin America, I found things somewhat different.
Like I expected, I found organizations run by passionate hard-working people and volunteers wanting to make a difference, but overall, there were just more challenges to overcome. When I signed on as a volunteer and a Volunteer Coordinator in El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America, things just took more time. Maybe it was a bus strike, rainstorm, or who knows what, little tasks could be complicated. We had a harder time getting volunteers, not to mention getting volunteers to make a commitment.
There were days I volunteered that I felt underutilized and frustrated that I couldn’t create programs or make more of an impact like I had back home. I’d dreamed big and wanted to help them make changes, but it wasn’t meant to be.
Try as I did to be realistic and grounded about working in another country, I still struggled to balance my skills with their needs.
My lessons that I took from volunteering:
1) I had to adopt a new mantra. “They’ll use me how they need me, and I just need to be patient.” And I had to accept it.
2) I had to be comfortable being a follower and less a leader. With a short term commitment, I wasn’t the best person to drive changes that I wouldn’t be able to see though.
3) I’m not actually helping as a volunteer if I’m not doing the things they really need from me. A volunteer can actually make more work for an organization.
In hindsight, I can see that I was making a difference. Even if it wasn’t in the ways I thought best, it was in the ways they needed me.
Latest posts by Guest
- More on Chile - March 8th, 2010
- From One Farm to Another: WWOOFing in Mexico - March 5th, 2010
- Can English Really Open Doors? - March 4th, 2010
- Intern Spotlight: Opening Doors in Chile - February 18th, 2010
- What the Locals Say: Taking the Plunge - February 17th, 2010
- Postcard From the Road: WWOOFing It - February 5th, 2010
- Seeing the World in New Ways - February 3rd, 2010
- Postcard From the Road: Rain, Landslides and Flooding Around Cusco - February 1st, 2010
- New Appreciation for an Old Concept: The Case for Philanthropy - January 8th, 2010
- Volunteer Spotlight: Facing Paco in Buenos Aires - December 16th, 2009
Hi,
I’m an intern at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York. We are currently compiling a list of Latin America-focused blogs and websites, and would like to add your site to the list.
If you would like to be added to the list, please send me your email address and contact name to m.ansari.intern@clintonglobalinitiative.org.
Thank you,
Muneeb Ansari
Intern – Communications Department
Clinton Global Initiative
William J Clinton Foundation