LIVE IT UP!

Volunteering - The Real Working Holiday Experience

Volunteering always sounds like something the ‘Australian of the year’ type of person will do, because they have so much time on their hands to show just what giving is truly about. Why is it that we feel it’s so much harder to choose to volunteer overseas than to work overseas? The unknown is often feared, but for backpackers especially, it’s an opportunity to experience the REAL world.

While travelling around destinations such as South East Asia, South Africa or South America, it’s fairly easy to get caught up in the everyday backpacking life, meeting new friends, eating and drinking the local delicacies and finding the most cost effective way to get from A to B, after all, this is what makes backpacking so much fun. But many backpackers leave without ever really experiencing that true, local experience they spend their travels searching for.

Volunteering in these destinations give you the chance to get up close and personal with the culture you are visiting and suddenly the backpacker experience isn’t just about the people you meet, travel and eat with, but about the lives you affect in the local community.

 

The common motivation for working hard in Oz, saving all our money and hitting the travelling road is more than just being a backpacker, it is to immerse ourselves in a completely different culture and gain valuable life experience. For many young Australians this means setting up base in London or Vancouver and settling into an everyday routine similar to the one you had at home, but for those lucky few who opt to volunteer instead, the experience gained is incomparable.

 

Whether your placed as a teachers assistance in South Africa, conservation in Costa Rica or construction in Peru, volunteering will provide you with an unforgettable experience and with the increasingly tough job market here in Australia and overseas, many employers look at volunteering experience very highly.

 

Travel and volunteer, it is a completely different experience. You’re travelling out of your comfort zone to help people who really appreciate it and you will gain the knowledge and reap all the benefits to further your career and skills!

 

Oh and why not check out http://www.iep.org.au/volunteer/volunteer.aspfor some awesome volunteering options around the world. 

Happy Travels!

Fran.

  

 

World AIDS Day-Making a Real Difference

As World AIDS Day passed on Monday (1 Dec 08) there was quite a focus in the media on the positive political changes that are taking place in South Africa that mean more people will be educated on HIV and AIDS from how to prevent contracting the disease to how to easily treatment could be accessed.

After years of political denial that HIV causes AIDS and a lack of preventative strategies that led to a 1000 South Africans dying of the disease daily, real changes might finally make a dent in this massive problem that ruins so many lives.

IEP has been involved for many years in providing Australian and New Zealand volunteers to South Africa with the option to help in the medical field with HIV education and treatment.

Co-inciding with the recent World AIDS Day, we heard some really positive feedback from our South African partner recently about the AIDS program they run. Focussing largely on infected mothers and children, the orgranisation they work with runs two HIV/AIDS hospices, two pre-schools, life skills training and a senior school of hope - with all the assistance in awareness and treatment they offer they have seen their mortality rate drop incredibly from 80% to 2%!

With continued and improved work in this field throughout South Africa with more people jumping on board, the situation in South Africa will hopefully rapidly improve.

There is something incredibly satisfying about being involved in such good work and with more awareness of what can be done and how one can help, the cycle will continue and life for millions of people affected by HIV/AIDS will be improved.

Keeping it Real on the Road

The Unknown. It's what many of us travel for. To push the boundaries of our comfort zones and to have experiences completely foreign to what we are used to.

In my job at IEP I help Aussies planning their big overseas working holiday adventures and sometimes you meet those people who want everything planned and you can see it in their eyes that they believe they know exactly what the destination will be like, what it will look like, smell like, what the people will be like and what the food will taste like. Especially if they are heading to a westernized country like Canada, The US, Ireland or Britain, they expect it to be like Australia but with a different accent.

The Reality of a Working Holiday 

Expectations are often not met when a person heads away on a working holiday with high hopes, little money and a dream they wish to fulfill. One of my most memorable travellers came to me and explained he wanted a job as a cameraman, on a specific top Hollywood TV show. He was 19, he had no experience and he was a little devastated when I explained that it is unlikely he is going to score a job like that in the USA.

The best advice I gave him was, if you couldn't land that job here in Oz, there is a good chance you won't land it overseas. The sad thing is, with the state of the world's economy lately, even if you have fantastic experience, a degree and contacts, you won't necessarily land a job in your chosen career field. As we move forward into 2009, you've got to be realistic about the job market overseas. Perhaps it is time we go full circle and people once again look at the opportunity to go to the UK as a chance to work in a pub, travel Europe and make fun of the Pom's sporting efforts face to face, rather than climb the career ladder.

By all means I am not trying to discourage those who want to chase their dreams and careers overseas but for the sake of disappointment, I'm just saying, keep it real

Tim Tam Slam Dunk

If ever there were something to bring a tear to a proud Aussie’s eye it was Hugh Jackman on the Oprah Winfrey show explaining our love of Tim Tam bikkies and then proceeding to present the entire audience with a packet each of our Aussie snack which was devoured with real appreciation of a ‘true Australian favourite’ Since that moment, Tim Tams have been gathering speed in the US market with cookie company Pepperidge Farm making Tim Tams available in US Target stores. Finally Americans will get to experience the scrumptious treat Aussies have sworn by for years.

This important merging of our two cultures does pose an interesting dilemma. For those of us travelling over to America or hosting American friends here in Australia, our choice of true blue Aussie souvenirs has been drastically diminished. As we pack our clip on koalas, our wombat in a can, our Caramello Koalas, vegemite and Milo, there is one present that will remain on the shelves of Coles here in Oz because, apparently, they don’t need us to supply them with the chocolaty goods anymore. Before we know it they’ll be giving them out for Halloween, slapping a slightly different name on it like Sim Sam or Dim Dam and calling the Tim Tam Slam a Dim Dam Dunk.

We’ll look at Americans everywhere eating our national biscuit, calling it a cookie and we’ll reminisce about the days when only an Aussie could understand the sentence “Kicking back in your uggs doing a Tim Tam Slam with a mug of Milo.”