It is common practice for some students to take a gap year between high school and university in order to do charitable work abroad in underdeveloped countries. What are the advantages and disadvantages for young people of doing volunteer work?

Having yourself doing the same thing for many years is either making you tired and bored or comfortable. In this modern world, many students tend to take a gap year between high school and university in order to do different tasks as what they used to have in their last education. And one of the tasks they choose is doing charitable work abroad in underdeveloped countries. While there is nothing wrong with choosing this path, every decision comes with their advantages and disadvantages. There are some advantages to taking a gap year in order to volunteer abroad. First, being abroad and away for their family and friends means that students are stepping out of their comfort zone. According to psychology journals, doing something challenging, like going abroad, will not only challenge their skills, such as communication skill, management skill, etc, but also improves their knowledge, ability to be independent, and broaden their perspective. Second, an opportunity to volunteer in underdeveloped countries, such as Yemen, Palestina, Ghana, etc, will give their resume more colors on having diverse experience and it will likely to give a big impact on developing your career. For example, in my volunteer work in Madagascar, I was able to understand how important it is to protect wild animals, especially the endangered ones, and their habitat while also improving my photography skill. And the disadvantages of this particular step is getting yourself into a disease zone knowing most of the underdeveloped countries do not have decent healthcare yet. It means, students with a low immune system are not recommended on taking this step in order to protect themselves and the others are highly recommended on having a vaccine before going. Another downside of this program is most of the time the institution you volunteer at is more focusing on how good it would look on their business rather than improving life. So, make sure to always get lots of information on how a particular institution is doing their work and why. To conclude, the advantages are to improve students’ life skills and resume while the disadvantages are students will mostly have themselves vulnerable to disease and scammers.