Tell us a little about Greenheart Travel and your role at the company.
Jill: My name is Jill Robinson and I’m the social media manager for Greenheart Travel. I have the wonderful opportunity to interact with our travel community online, as well as work with our participant bloggers. Living vicariously through our travelers’ experiences is an amazing job perk. It keeps me in the mindset that travel always offers something eye opening and new, no matter how many times you have been abroad. It also gives me tons of daydreaming material for my next travel escape!
How did you get involved in the volunteer industry?
Jill: When I graduated with my degree in journalism, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to travel so I scraped together money for a plane ticket, ditched the internship and hopped on a one-way flight to Scotland. It was the best decision I made. I worked abroad in Scotland and England and traveled until I ran out of money and then came home.
I was fortunate to join Greenheart Travel after moving to Chicago and realizing that I needed to somehow combine writing and traveling. What makes this job even better is the opportunity to really make a difference in so many host communities across the globe, and I’m so grateful that I am able to come into a job everyday knowing that I fully believe in an organization that I work for.
What makes Greenheart Travel unique?
Jill: Greenheart Travel is unique in many ways, but I can honestly say that I have never worked for an organization that truly cares about the travel experience as much as this team. We are a close group and we know our participants by their first names, we share their blogs around the office and cheer them on during their “aha” moments on the programs. Everyone on the Greenheart Travel team has traveled, volunteered, worked or taught English abroad and the passion for these types of experiences hasn’t diminished for any of us.
Greenheart Travel is also unique in the aspect that we feel travel is more than just boarding the plane and landing in the country destination. Our programs believe in full immersion, because the only way to gain a new perspective is to dive right in to a new culture. Our participants are traveling and volunteering to make a difference, but we also hope that our volunteers will come back with a new perspective as well. We also offer a chance for participants to do more than explore the country they are volunteering, teaching or studying through our Greenheart Grant and Greenheart Club programs. We want to promote volunteer service experiences in their host communities that engage our participants where they are most passionate.
In your experience, what characteristics make a good international volunteer?
Jill: A good international volunteer is one that is passionate, empathetic and positive. Traveling and volunteering abroad is an eye-opening experience on so many levels. Volunteers that arrive at the site with an equal desire to learn as they are to help will be better at understanding the needs of the community. We had a recent participant in Costa Rica sum it up wonderfully that many times the processes and day-to-day tasks can sometimes be unfamiliar, but volunteers need to take on the mentality that “It’s not wrong, just different.” International volunteers that are curious, good listeners and observers and passionate about the culture and project they are working with will do great. It also helps to have a great sense of humor and go with the flow attitude when those showers are cold and you are trying to communicate in a language that is unfamiliar.
How do you ensure your programs are sustainable and mutually beneficial for you, the community, and the volunteers?
Jill: We are very selective in who we partner with regarding our global volunteer projects. Greenheart Travel only works with local grassroots NGO’s who need the partnership of dedicated volunteers to sustain their project efforts. These projects are selected according to the actual impact of the project on the local community, which they are a very important part of. Many of these communities lack basic services and our partners are passionate about meeting these needs. Our mission is to change lives, advance careers and create leaders, and these three values must be part of all of our volunteer projects.
For our volunteers, the majority of the fee they pay (over 60%) goes directly to the projects themselves and a percentage of every program fee from our volunteers goes to our carbon offset program as well in Masaailand Kenya. Regular check-ins with both volunteers and partners ensure our projects are continuing to help local communities and help them sustain themselves for years to come.