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Impact Abroad

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Why choose Impact Abroad?

Impact Abroad offers volunteer abroad programs in Asia completely free of cost (yes, you read right!). The organizations where we place our volunteers have work opportunities that focus mainly in education and community development. Our volunteer placements always aim to help disadvantaged and marginalized individuals, especially children. Find out more on the Impact Abroad website today!

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impactabroad.org

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Matthew
26
Male
5/5
Yes, I recommend this program
Program:
Free Volunteering in Yunnan, Lonely Planet's Top China

Volunteering

Feb 20, 2013

I volunteered at two locations while I was overseas with Minds Abroad: one was at an educational center for autistic children, and the other was teaching English to young kids at a school. Both experiences were fun, eye-opening, and I believe very beneficial to the kids. Minds Abroad staff actually took the bus with me to the school where I taught English on the first day so that I would know exactly where it is, how to get there myself, and get me situated with the adults working there! Personally, I found teaching English to be a slightly better experience.

What would you improve about this program?
I wish that I had received more advice about teaching English before I was put in the classroom. This really wasn't a big problem, because I figured it out relatively quickly. These are young kids -- make English fun! They're more likely to be cooperative learning "play basketball!" and making a motion like they're shooting a basketball than they will be if you try to teach them strictly practical things, even if they're basic, like "How are you?", "Tomorrow is Thursday", etc. As I said, this was minor, and I highly, highly recommend the program!
Response from Minds Abroad

Dear Matthew,

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your volunteer experiences online. We are so happy that you like our volunteer program in Kunming with Minds Abroad! Your feedback on the volunteer preparation is really helpful, we will give our students advices and guidance before they begin teaching to make sure that they can adjust the volunteer work better. Thanks again for your suggestion! We would love to see you again.

Minds Abroad

By Minds Abroad on February 21, 2013
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Staff Interviews

These are in-depth Q&A sessions with program leaders.

Annie Zhang

Program
Free Volunteering in Yunnan, Lonely Planet's Top China
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What position do you hold at Impact Abroad?

I am currently working as the China Program Coordinator, mainly responsible for the coordination with different local NGOs.

Were YOU able to volunteer abroad?!

I haven’t done any volunteering work abroad so far. If given a chance, I would like to volunteer to help the disadvantaged people struggling in poverty in India. Through the volunteer service, I would have a better chance to experience the real living circumstance and know more about the people there.

What does the future hold for Impact Abroad - any exciting new programs?

We are working with more and more local NGOs in Yunnan, including autistic children care centers and several special schools for disabled and disadvantaged children. We have an obvious increase in the number of students enrolling in our programs every year. Now, we are cooperating with Minds Abroad and incorporating their Study + Travel programs into our volunteer programs in order to help the students to gain basic language skills and enjoy the places of interests while doing the volunteering.

Why is language learning and cultural immersion important to you?

The reason I consider language learning and cultural immersion of great importance is that language is the best tool one can use to really learn about a new culture. As a very useful way to gain good knowledge of a new language, cultural immersion forces you to use the new language and enables you to really get involved in the new culture.

Describe a time when you felt especially proud to be part of Impact Abroad.

There are so many unforgettable and shining memories. I led two volunteers to an autistic children helping center. The children were very happy to see foreign volunteers again; even the child called Doudou showed us a lovely smile. Doudou was one of the children who is in a relatively worse situation. He never paid attention or tried to say a word to anyone except for his parents and his caring teacher. But on that day, Doudou presented a very big happy smile to our volunteers. The smile was so pure and clean that we couldn’t ever forget. We learnd from the teachers that more and more children became more open and brave to stay with strangers. With the help of their teachers and our volunteers, some children recovered good enough to enter a regular public school. Though I am not the one offering them help directly, I still feel happy and satisfied for what I have done. I can say, I am very proud every time I send a volunteer to site and help the people through the volunteer.