Volunteering during the Big Trip

I’m really enjoying the book The Rough Guide First-Time Around the World. It’s really informative and helpful – and it’s geared specifically to budget travellers. The book is confirming our plan that we can indeed do this trip for around $10k each, as long as we’re willing to compromise and go with the flow (easier said than done for me, but I know I can do it).

Originally I was kind of indifferent about doing volunteering while we were away (I definitely don’t want to work for money), but the more I think about it, the more I would really like to do a 1-3 month volunteer mission somewhere. We’ll have to research this a lot more, but BF is right – it’s something we should do while we’re away. I’d like to work with other people, teaching or something like that – rather than work with wildlife. And I’d like it to be in SE Asia – preferably China. Although I wouldn’t mind Cambodia or Laos or Vietnam either.

For example, I blogged about that 3-month volunteer teaching assignment in rural China a few days ago. That would be awesome. BF thinks that a lot of our friends/family might want to donate money to us to help pay for the approx. $1,000-1,500 cost for the 3-month volunteer assignment. I don’t know how I feel about that, but I guess it’s something we should consider. I just feel weird asking people to donate money essentially to fund our trip. Yes, it will be going towards a volunteering mission, but it just seems like if someone asked me to donate money to help them travel to Africa for volunteering (for example), I’d rather donate directly to the charity they’re working with, rather than fund their personal trip – which, yes is for volunteering purposes, but let’s face it, is also for pleasure travel too.