International Student Volunteers

An International Student Volunteer in Thailand

Image source: Lifetimeadventure.tumblr.com

Students are some of our most important volunteers. These are young people, excited to learn and to grow, often having their very first experiences overseas. College is a time of transformation, when children become adults. It’s a time when we learn about ourselves: how we learn, who we want to be, and what matters most. When I think back to what I was like before college, I remember feeling scared, like I didn’t have the stuff to be bold and outgoing. I relied heavily on my parents. I wanted desperately to be independent but didn’t know what that meant, or how to achieve it. College helped me to mature, but travel was what really challenged me to think deeply about life choices and to ask myself a very important question: how was I going to save the world?

Fighting Climate Change, One Volunteer at a Time

A Field of Actic Ice Melt

Image source: Nature.org

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a biology student. I volunteer with a wildlife conservation organization in my area and spend a lot of time with biologists in the field. A few weeks ago I was chatting with a career biologist—a man who has spent the past thirty years working with endangered species. Somehow the topic of climate change came up, and I was flabbergasted to discover that he doesn’t believe in it, as if it weren’t the overwhelming scientific consensus. It illustrated something I’ve long understood: that a person’s political views (he is a staunch conservative) can dramatically affect his opinions, even when he should know better. None of us wants climate change to be real. We all want to cling to a memory of a time when we weren’t so profoundly afraid for our planet.