Volunteering gives a lot of learning opportunities.
While being a volunteer in a foreign country, you learn (and practice) new languages. International environment can give you a great chance to improve your English skills of any level. Work with local community requires some knowledge of Romanian, which I have been trying to learn since the day I arrived in the country. However, independent learning is not enough and you can get provided with the language course, taught by professionals. Previous week we even had our very first classes. Moreover, constantly being around my Armenian teammate Arus enriched my everyday vocabulary with some words in Armenian.
Another thing you can learn during the volunteering period is practical skills. Here we work a lot on marketing and promotion, therefore enhancing our digital skills in different programs for creating visual content. Besides, we learned how to work with some heavy tools, in order to fix our youth center.
Volunteering is also full of flexibility and creativity. You can learn how to manage your time, how to create a schedule and adjust it in a few day, how to make a plan for your activities and adapt because something does not go according to the plan. You can learn how to dance, how to take pictures and videos, how to write blogs and many other things. Furthermore, you can learn how to teach others and how to learn while you are teaching.
Volunteering also means dealing with different kids of people. Everyone has their own desires, wishes, lifestyle, character and perception of the reality. You will need patience, empathy, solidarity, great investment of time and efforts, in order to achieve communication goals you set for yourself.
Volunteering gives an opportunity to learn how to deal with your own feelings and expectations. Sometimes you feel great and successful, sometimes you go through the wave of disappointment. You learn how to live with it and how to move on, trying to pursue important things.
Volunteering is experience.
Katsia