Volunteering Abroad? Are you serious?

Volunteering Abroad?

 Think before you snap that selfie.

  When it comes to volunteering abroad, most of us often ask the following questions. 

• Why abroad?
• Why spending money?
• What attitude we keep?

  Before answering the questions above, it's necessary to premise the golden circle of social enterprise(SE), to be more specific, the SE in Taiwan. Here is the chart what the basic principle of SE looks like.

  General speaking, we hope we can combine the advantage of both traditional business and nonprofit sector like government public sector. That is to say, maximizing commercial nonprofits and meeting the sustainable are SE's priority in terms of why.

  However, here is the catch. How can we achieve that goal by starting a SE startup? The answer is probably impossible from most of Taiwan founder's experience since SEs are always small business. One of the reasons may be that SEs focus on social responsibility rather than profit. But, do not forget the word "enterprises" is included in the SE. Therefore, we still need to balance the responsibility and profit.

  What Taiwan SEs' types of company are as below.

So, why abroad?

  People always care about relationship, and volunteering abroad may help them to build the intense emotion with the citizen than in Taiwan since we're too familiar with our land in terms of desensitizing to concern overuse. Take my personal experience, for example, I attended twice volunteering abroad with ELIV. We went to Cambodia, cooperated with residents to build Bahay Kubo, the local traditional house. It turns out, we have the strong connection since we not only built the house but also the tie during the construction.  Hence, it may be a good choice for people to find a new way to travel around rather than a tourist.

Secondly, why spending money?

  There're many ways that you can contribute to the world. Donating money, being a volunteer, or being a full-time inventor. Then, let's talk about being a volunteer. To be more specific, volunteering abroad or "Voluntourism". We all need to spend money on tourism. On the other hand, it's reasonable that we expend on Voluntourism including flight, accommodation, meal, and administration fee for the company that organizes the trip. Moreover, we also need to pay the administration fee for the travel agency when it comes to group travel, don't we?

Last but not least, what attitude we keep?

  People often possess different opinions on what attitude we keep. Altruism, Atonement, or show off on social media? What we suggest is that just show people the real you but not too much. Voluntourism is like a double-edged knife in terms of advantages coexist with disadvantages. To sum up, some people will agree with you while the opposites will fight your behavior. Maybe we can just enjoy the trip like we always do during the tourism and Voluntourism, of course.