Cover Image: How to Be an Amazing Volunteer Overseas

How to Be an Amazing Volunteer Overseas

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Member Reviews

The book starts with an interesting, thought-provoking foreward by Nobel Laureate - Professor Muhammad Yunus and then Susan E. Gibson writes about what she wants to tell people about volunteering overseas and why she has written this book in the first place. Throughout, she clearly knows what she is talking about and had so much experience to share.

She wrote it, at least in part because so many people want to volunteer overseas, especially students, but she also writes how other adults also have this desire. She herself has worked in many countries and has volunteered overseas too. It states in the book there are also TED Talks and You Tube videos on this, so readers of the book may also wish to take a look at these to back up the knowledge gained from the book further.

The book was written during the Pandemic of Covid-19 and she talks a bit about the changing world, which is useful.

The book also gets readers to learn about volunteering abroad and also prompts prospective volunteers to really question what motivates them and if they really, truly want to do this abroad or not. It ensures people don't take this decision lightly. It encourages people to volunteer locally first so they can get a feel for what it is actually like to do that and what the impact on your life and other people's lives actually is. It also goes into how certain useful skills can be learnt as you need to learn before you're in a position to be able to actually help, even in a volunteer post.

The book is full of really useful advice and what to watch out for so you don't end up somewhere that is unethical and will take advantage on the tourist just wanting to help. It also talks about goals when volunteering and about expectations and what skills are useful to share and what to do if you're limited in your skill set ie what sorts of programmes may be open to you.

There are useful tips in how to plan your trip abroad and what you need to do in advance of arrival to your destination and how to adapt when you arrive into a new country, often with a different culture, different food etc and personal safety. The book perhaps could have gone further into personal safety aspects, but it's a pretty good snapshot. There is also good parts about when you're actually at work, forming relationships with different people etc.

By the end there is also advice in how to reconnect with people who were left behind at home and to re-establish a new routine back at home.

It's pretty comprehensive and gives some good and useful advice that people considering going abroad can take forward with them to wherever they end up volunteering. There is also a good checklist at the back, which people may well like to use for when they do go travelling, along with a summary of the book and a glossary.

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"How to Be an Amazing Volunteer Overseas" is a travelogue, a book of etiquette, and a challenge to readers to do some good in the world.

Canadian Susan Gibson looks back over 30 years spent with non-governmental organizations. She started out as a volunteer and learned enough valuable lessons to earn positions in international development and microfinance.

To be a good volunteer, she learned, is to look for ways to fit in. To recognize a need and meet it. To value another country's culture and celebrate it. To give more than you get.

She relates the lessons she learned with excerpts from letters she wrote her mother, who supported Gibson's desire to volunteer abroad. She offers lists of organizations that accept volunteers, how to find a place to live, how to adapt to a completely different way of life. Notably. she emphasizes good manners and respect for others.

Recent graduates and others considering making a change as well as those in search of a good read will find this time well spent.

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