Today we are on the island of Langkawi, Malaysia, celebrating one month of our first volunteering experience. One month later, we present our views on Workaway volunteer programme, explain how we found the Workaway site, how it works and give you some tips to find the job that best fits your needs and aspirations.
How we unexpectedly found the Workaway site
After spending almost three months on the Portuguese island of Madeira, off the cost of Casablanca, we came to the conclusion that it did not have the characteristics we were looking for to implement our dream plan to set up what we call a Zen guest house. The main characteristic that was missing was warmth! We arrived in Madeira at the end of March and chose to stay in the village where we wanted to look for land, but soon discovered that it was too cold and although the community is lovely, there was not much going on, not to mention that we were under the clouds most of the time.
Once that was firmly decided, the initial homework was to list a number of countries that we thought would be worth exploring and then doing some research on some predefined criteria about each country.
We wanted to find a place that besides having what we consider good temperature all year long, was populated by friendly and humble people, lived in economic and social stability and with low cost of living for European standards. Ideally, it would be a place where we could get involved with a project to make a difference somehow.
Asia was the first general target. We started off with a list that included: Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia (Bali specifically), Malaysia, Costa Rica and even India. James spent a long time looking for information about how to get resident permits, conditions and requirements for opening a company, employing people, minimum amount of money required to be deposited in the country, how foreign-friendly the countries we selected were, cost of living, cost of land and housing and, very importantly, proneness to earthquakes and tsunamis and security in general.
All this research left us with Malaysia at the top of our list, as the first country to explore.
While I was busy tweaking this blog, James was researching and one day he came across a the Workaway website. This is a platform where people from all over the world post their job opportunities and individuals looking for volunteer work post their profiles to present themselves to potentially interested parties.
Is Workaway only for younger generations?
After exploring the website and the types of job offers, we decided that it would be a fun and a challenging experience to adventure into the volunteering world during our trip to Southeast Asia. We soon realized that these offers are mostly directed to people in their 20’s and 30′, but we are young at heart, fit and willing, so we decided to try our luck.
Our strategy was to look for job opportunities in areas that we could benefit from in some way, either by applying our expertise or, on a completely different perspective, where we could learn about something we are interested in, that could benefit our future projects. We were looking for opportunities ranging from yoga, permaculture, organic farming, recycling projects, and hospitality.
What to look for in a Workaway volunteer job
In our opinion, the Workaway experience should be more than an only work-for-free-in-return-for-free-room-and-board situation. It should truly be about cultural exchange while both parties are helping each other with their needs and aspirations. We are however aware that this maybe this is a very romantic view and sometimes far from reality. It seems like there are many job offers that are just looking for free labour and of course they cannot expect the required dedication from volunteers who end up just looking at the job as a means to free accommodation and food. On the other hand, we also understood by talking to “employers” that many of the volunteers don’t have a sense of responsibility and commitment and find it easy to leave or to not show up as soon as something goes wrong or they change their minds. After all, there are no contracts or payments involved, only a promise and the hope that both sides will keep their commitment.
Selecting the volunteer opportunity for you
Like most intermediary platforms nowadays, Workaway also allows (and encourages) that users leave their comments about their experience in a particular job, so that future interested users can read and make the best decision for themselves. When choosing job opportunities, it is fundamental to read what other people say about their past experience on that job, but it is also as important to understand who are the people writing the review (the volunteer). What do I mean by this? You need to look at the volunteer’s profile and understand their age, gender, nationality, interests and aspirations in order to make a fair judgement. This advice actually applies when analysing any types of reviews.
We hope that our views on Workaway volunteer programme help clarify what we consider to be the most important points to keep in mind when choosing a volunteer job. We highly recommend the Workaway experience, as it most likely will give you a very enriching life experience. However be clear about your intentions and be firm in your commitment.
