Meet a UP Volunteer

This January a new group of long-term Quest participants will head off from their homes in the US and Canada, and spend an extended amount of time – 6 months or a year – living in a foreign country and serving the local community. Something that sets United Planet programs apart is the diversity of the participants – we’ve got volunteers who’ve just finished high-school, and others who are older and have already studied and worked. I spoke to Harold Williams, who is heading off to Ecuador for 6 months, along with his girlfriend, Erin.

Harold is definitely a seasoned traveler – from early trips accompanying his father to the Caribbean, where he saw another side to Jamaica than many American tourists experience, to a pre-college trip to New Zealand and Fiji with a program which, like UP, is devoted to promoting cultural awareness. ‘When I travel I’m interested in getting a feeling for local life … I go to local establishments and want to get a sense of the people living there’ Harold said.

So what is he expecting of his Ecuadorean experience – a country, indeed a continent, he has not yet visited? ‘I’ve got no expectations, and no apprehensions’, he says. ‘I know that conditions can be bad, and that life can be very different to what we’re used to in the US. So you’ve got to go in prepared for this.’ Then, Harold tells me ‘you have to know why you’re doing what you’re doing’, a piece of advice which sounds simple, but which requires much thought and soul-searching (try it!)

United Planet organizes pre-departure training for all our programs; for long-term Quest this involves a weekend retreat where the participants meet each other. Some of those leaving in January have just finished high-school; others are older but have not had the chance to travel yet. Harold says ‘there was another guy at the retreat who’d been in the Peace Corps (Matthew Nessan, who is travelling to Australia), so we were able to talk about our experiences travelling and volunteering.’ I asked Harold what advice they gave to those less experienced than them. ‘You have to really think about what you’re doing,’ he explained. ‘You have to remember that you might not actually see change, and it might seem as if what you’re doing isn’t important. So you have to know why you’re doing what you’re doing, and know that the change is happening, but won’t necessarily manifest itself immediately.’ He compared the experience of moving to a foreign country to volunteer for an extended amount of time to changing schools as a young child: ‘you have to immerse yourself in the new place, you have to work, and you can’t fight it.’

Despite Harold being an experienced traveler, there are still apprehensions about taking on this trip. He tells me that he has decided to leave his job in order to do this – a job he will not be returning to. I ask him what his friends and family think of this move – after all, Harold is 26, an age at which many of his peers will be settling down, and making sure their careers are on the right track. ‘Mostly, they don’t understand,’ Harold tells me. ‘My father is keen, but most of my family aren’t really on board. Often, people are enthusiastic – until they realize that I’m actually doing this – leaving my home, friends, family and job for an indeterminate amount of time.’

So what gets him through the days when it seems as though everyone thinks he’s crazy? ‘You’ve got to have faith. You’ve got to realize that you decide how you live your life, and so having fears, doubts and uncertainties is inevitable. I know it’s a cliché but I don’t want to look back at my life when I’m 50 and have sat in the same desk from 9 to 5 every day. In my way of living, if you’re not helping someone else, you’re wasting your time’.’