What led you to volunteer abroad with Volunteering Solutions in Honduras?
Stephanie: For awhile, I had been interested in participating in a volunteer abroad program to work with young children. I had never before traveled outside of the United States and I thought this would be a great way to gain travel experience while helping out children in need. I researched many different programs before deciding on Volunteering Solutions.
Many of the programs were not affordable for me, and some of them only offered certain dates that you could travel which were during a time when I was still attending school. Volunteering Solutions turned out to be the best program for me. One of my roommates from college was also interested in the same program and we were looking to travel together to the same place to work with children in an orphanage.
Volunteering Solutions best met our needs because this program allowed us to choose the dates we wanted to go and also allowed us to travel together. We looked at many different locations and decided on Honduras because this is somewhere we had both wanted to travel and knew we would probably never get the chance to go to on our own. I had been a volunteer in the past in my town, working with children of different ages and I wanted to do the same thing but in a different country. This was my perfect opportunity to do so!
Describe your day to day activities as a volunteer.
Stephanie: For my travel abroad program to Honduras through Volunteering Solutions, I was only able to travel for one week. Unfortunately I was in the middle of graduate school at the time and only had one week free before the next semester of classes started. I wish I had went for much longer!
For anyone who plans to volunteer abroad, I highly recommend traveling for at LEAST two weeks because one week is not nearly enough time with the children. During the week of my trip, I stayed with another volunteer at a young woman's apartment. The apartment was very nice and very spacious. I shared a room with the other volunteer and the young woman was extremely welcoming and friendly.
There was another volunteer staying in an apartment in the same building so each morning around 7:30am, the three of us would meet outside the front door and walk down the street to the orphanage. The first day we arrived, we were given a tour of the orphanage and the city of La Ceiba, Honduras so we knew how to get to the orphanage each morning. It was only about a 5-7 minute walk down the street.
We would arrive a little before 8:00am each morning and help the children and staff with breakfast. I would help the staff members pass out breakfast cereal to each child and then sit with the children to help them eat. Some of them were very little and needed assistance. After breakfast I would go into a classroom (each volunteer chose a classroom to stay in for the week). Each day I would spend from approximately 9:00am until 12:00pm in the classroom helping the children with whatever they were working on: letter formation, writing their names, coloring/drawing pictures, and more.
Around 12:30 the children from each classroom would all go down for nap time and the volunteers would go home for the day. The only downside of this daily schedule was that we didn't get to spend more time with the children each day. I would have liked to stay there for a few more hours and helped out after the kids woke up. Once we left, we had the rest of each day free to explore or do activities. I was able to do many fun things in the city of La Ceiba such as hiking, bike riding, go to the beach, swimming, shopping, go to the park, and more.
What made this volunteer abroad experience unique and special?
Stephanie: This volunteering abroad experience was very unique and special to me. This was my first time ever leaving the United States and it was amazing!! I met wonderful people: other volunteers as well as residents of Honduras. During my entire stay, I felt very safe and comfortable.
I appreciated the fact that our program director took all of us volunteers on a tour of the city the first day, and also brought us to the bank and helped us exchange our money for Lempira (the currency in Honduras). It was also a great way to learn about the city and see places that I might want to further explore in my free time.This program was wonderful because the leaders of the program made sure the volunteers were well taken care of. I was picked up from the airport upon arrival, and driven to the ferry when it was time for me to leave at the end of the week.
I was also driven to my home stay on the first day and introduced to the young woman with whom I would be staying. This volunteer abroad program was a truly amazing experience and opened my eyes to a whole different culture. Ever since I have gotten home from my trip I have been researching to find out where I should volunteer next!!
Tell me about one person you met.
Stephanie: One person I met who greatly impacted my trip in a positive way was Lorena. She was the young woman with whom I was staying during the week of my trip. This was the first time she had ever opened her home to a volunteer and she actually allowed two of us to stay with her. Lorena spoke no English and I spoke no Spanish so you can imagine it was a little bit difficult to communicate.
The other volunteer spoke Italian which is very similar to Spanish is some ways which made it a little bit easier to communicate. Luckily, Lorena's apartment had wifi so we were able to log on to the internet and use Google Translate to help us communicate! Lorena also lived next door to her nieces who were teenagers and they spoke some English and were able to help us communicate as well.
Even though we had a tough time communicating in the beginning, Lorena was wonderful. She was very warm and friendly, always smiling and offering us anything we might need. As the week went on, we were able to better communicate and understand one another. Lorena took us to meet her family and introduced us to her extended family members.
She also took us exploring during our free time and brought us wherever we needed to go (grocery store, market, souvenir shop, etc). She took us out to meet her friends as well. She was an absolutely amazing host. Lorena is one of the main reasons this trip was such a wonderful experience.I always felt safe being with her and in her home and she was wonderful about showing me around and teaching me about her culture.
I found out that we are alike in many ways. We were both very sad when the week came to an end and we had to say our goodbyes. The great thing is that we found each other on Facebook and have kept in touch since my trip! She also said that it was such a great experience for her and she is looking forward to possibly opening her home to more volunteers in the future. She is truly an amazing person and I am so glad I got the chance to meet her.
Ten years from now, what’s the one thing you think you’ll remember from the trip?
Stephanie: Ten years from now, I will remember many things from this trip. I will never forget how amazing the children in the orphanage were. They were all so wonderful and loving and happy for people to be there helping them each day. Each one of them that I met truly touched my heart and my life is better having met them and gotten to spend a week with them.
I will never forget how welcoming and friendly all of the people I met were. Not only the woman I stayed with, but the city of La Ceiba, Honduras as a whole was filled with wonderful people who were kind, genuine, and always ready to lend a helping hand. I will always remember the memories I made with the people of Honduras, the children, and the other volunteers in the program.
I will remember going bike riding with Lorena's family at 5:00am through the mountain, going to Lorena's uncle's house to meet her family and spend the day at the beach getting to know each other, playing dodgeball on the playground with the children in the orphanage, feeding breakfast to the little children each morning of the program, and all of the other wonderful experiences I had in Honduras. Ten years from now, I don't think I could forget anything about this wonderful, amazing, experience I had volunteering abroad in Honduras.