#vjf

Paper cut

Toe stubbed

Bruised funny bone

Fractured rib

No matter how empty my ribcage feels

Phantom heart

I am never swearing off love

What is life if not a monotonous alternation of love and loss

Hearts of velvet

Inevitably crushed

And then somehow

Magically

They begin to feel again

Love and loss is just muscle memory

When I got back to Germany from my exchange, having lived in the United States for a year, I knew that I wanted to get out more and see what the world had to offer. And although my exchange year wasn't an entirely positive experience, it did leave me wondering if the stereotypes that persist about certain cultures or countries are true. And if not - what could I do to change them?

I started my research about doing voluntary service in other countries whilst still living abroad; I quickly found out however, that most of the organizations require the people working with them to be 18 years of age or older. Which is why I had to wait until 2015 to start applying for voluntary service. The key word being "applying", because that's another thing I did not realize earlier: Most, if not all of these organizations require you to hand in an application and pay a substantial fee to be able to work for them.

This was hard for me to wrap my head around at first. I am willing to dedicate my free time to volunteer, which means that I won't get paid, and now I have to pay extra on top of that? How is this fair? As it turns out, there is a huge market for "white savior volunteering" or "voluntourism", as people call it. A chance for people to fly into some impoverished country, usually in rural Africa, stay at a five-star-hotel somewhere and take pictures with malnourished children; only to return after two weeks with a free t-shirt, telling everybody about their amazing trip and how good it felt to "make a difference". And for that, they are willing to spend about 3.000 dollars or more.

Same thing with, for example, sea turtle sanctuaries - now, I myself love wildlife and to be able to work in one of those sanctuaries would be a dream come true for me. But looking into one of the organizations running the sanctuaries, the entire thing sounded more like a beach vacation: Hotel stay, just 4 hours of work every day, with "opportunities to go diving, snorkeling, zip-lining, etc". These kinds of volunteering programs are so commercialized that I'm not even sure there's any actual work done there to help improve local infrastructure or actually help the children and animals in question.

To be honest, I was quite disheartened to read about all of these things. Maybe I'd been too naive from the start, thinking that as long as I didn't mind not getting paid, I'd be able to work anywhere. But as much as I wanted to do these programs, there was no way I could get the money for a trip like that - not to mention that I didn't want to further support organizations like this.

But here's where it gets better: I stumbled across a thing called "workcamps". Camps that are organized for the duration of 2-6 weeks in different countries, to support all kinds of local projects. Two organizations in Germany co-ordinating these workcamps are Service Civil International (www.sci-d.de) and Vereinigung junger Freiwilliger e.V. (www.vjf.de), which I want to encourage anyone thinking about volunteering to take a look at. In exchange for your work, you get free board and lodging - so all you have to pay is your travel expenses plus a small admin fee to the organization. And instead of some fancy hotel and catering, you usually get to stay with locals on site, together with other volunteers from different countries.

Between agriculture, history, languages, manual restoration, art, music, refugees, animal care and so many more, there is without a doubt a project topic that fits you. Depending on the project, you most likely get the weekends off to explore the area and get to know your fellow volunteers. And there is no better way to truly connect with people, to challenge your own bias and to learn about a country not as a tourist, but as a fellow human working together to create a better future.