Volunteering
Hey guys! Just wanted to share some tips on volunteering ~ Here are some suggestions for Volunteering / Community Service:
Habitat for Humanity
Participate or work for events like Relay For Life or March of Dimes
Tutoring children
Volunteer at the soup kitchen / homeless shelter
Coach a youth sports team
Medical mission abroad
Read to residents at a nursing home
Aid for an animal shelter
I’ve done all of these except the last two. I wanted to immerse myself with my community and with communities abroad. In the picture above, I was helping a Masai Village women of Tanzania, Africa. Her name is Mary and I believe she was laughing at the way I tried to speak Swahili. This was an incredible experience that I highly recommend to all of you applying to PA school. Travel outside your community, impact others and grow!
I joined Medlife on this trip to Tanzania in 2014 while I was at USC. I had an amazing time and it was very organized however, it was a little pricey! More recently in 2017, my friends and I cared for children with disabilities in Cusco, Peru with Ubelong! The overall process with Ubelong was amazing, professional and affordable! I spent 10 days in Peru, 5 of those days were spent volunteering. I was able to use my credit card rewards for my flight to Peru (highly recommend this because I saved $1,000!). For about a week, I spent in total, around $900-$1000! This included hostel stay with Ubelong, lunch and dinners provided by Ubelong and the volunteer fees. Also, we planned many tours like Machu Picchu and cooking lessons!
I highly recommend Ubelong! They have so many locations to volunteer abroad, with diverse projects (business, medical, care-taking, infrastructure, etc.) and various time commitments!
Also, be sure to keep track of all your hours you accrue for these experiences. Create an Excel sheet or write it down in a notebook:
Contact/Supervisors names and numbers
Your position
Description of what you did
Duration of experience
This will make your life much easier when you input info into CASPA :)
