5.11 FOLLOW UP: WHAT HAPPENS AFTER VOLUNTEERING?

Cross-cultural volunteering will open your eyes, your mind, your perspectives about the world and the mechanisms that rule it. It will encourage you to become an actor of change in your local community. This process can take many forms (become active in a local project, become an activist, change your way of life, your behaviours…) For this reason, even before starting your experience, it is important to know what are the possibilities when you will come back. 

To make this trip not only a one shot, it’s important to put some balises to help through your experience to be more a founding and constructive project for your future. Think about the practical knowledge that you will learn but also think about how to process the emotional travel you will have also done. 

Preparing your comeback, it’s the best way to manage to share a bit of your experience and to give it a taste to others to follow your steps. A good way to make it can be through witnessing your experience. It’s not mandatory but it might help you : fotos, travel diary, videos, .. 

How to do it ? Try to think about these questions: 

• What do I remember of the preparation for this experience? 
• What has it changed for me? (more aware about inequalities in travel, documentations necessary, … ) 
• What did I really appreciate during the preparation of this experience? What did I liked less?
• How has this experience  changed my way of seeing the world? Life, the others, myself? 
• What have I learned about the people I met? 
• What have I learned about the new culture I lived in? 
• What has it changed in me? 
• What could have been done differently? 
• What have I missed?

Share your thoughts in the comments!