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?

Help Tammy Help Haiti

Help Tammy Help Haiti

Image source: Samaritanmag.com

The more I learn about voluntouring and the people who do it, the more I seem to stumble on stories of lives diverted in dramatically new directions, and always for the better. Take, for example, the story of Tammy Babcock, a security supervisor at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario. Babcock was just like us, our friends, or our neighbors—a professional young woman leading a quiet, comfortable life. And like many of the stories I’ve read lately, a single event turned all that around.