Oftentimes in one’s career, a desire to embark on a new set of challenges may inspire you to move in a new direction. Perhaps the organization or company you work for provides training for career mobility to allow you to travel, experience the world, and give time to a worthwhile cause. Or you might be at a point in your career where you want to make a difference and take lessons and perspectives you’ve learned back home to share with friends and colleagues. For someone whose career depends on being able to understand, lead and manage others, training people is a skill that can be gained by volunteering with young community members in Haiti. Working with underserved youth by assisting them in becoming better leaders can help you to improve yourself in remarkable ways.
So, how exactly might a professional benefit from training with the youth of Haiti? Young citizens of Haiti are a subset of the population where development and training could make a big impact in the future. “Of the 1.6 million Haitian youth aged 15-24, only 13 percent are content with their lives. More than half of 20-year-olds have not completed secondary education and nearly half of youth in the labor market are unemployed,” reports the World Bank. They need the skills and knowledge professionals to propel them into gainful employment, and ultimately greater life satisfaction. Learning about youth before they enter adulthood can prove to be valuable insight for you to understand how future workers could be happiest in their jobs.
If you are a company leader, training young community members would allow you to sharpen skills needed to lead adults, hone your personal style of leadership, and may allow you to discover how to broaden your ideologies in the workplace. You can have the freedom to implement management practices or learn about how groups behave in work-related settings. Your leadership would make a lasting impact through teaching, coaching and support.
Volunteering abroad offers professionals many directions to learn, enrich themselves, and change the world.
If you HAVE, you too can SERVE.
Written by Maria Gutierrez
