People ask me all the time “How did you get into that?” or “Why Malawi, Africa?” I also occasionally get the comment “Why do you go all the way to Malawi to volunteer when there are plenty of people here in the USA that are in need of help?” All of these questions and comments I welcome. I welcome them mostly because they open the conversation up to things that go much deeper than simply taking a two-week “Volunteer Vacation”

I say on my website that With Change In Mind is not so much about the destination as we are about the Journey. That statement is made for good reason, but in no way means the destination doesn’t have its place in that journey.

My heart was drawn to Africa and after some research drawn more specifically to Malawi. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the people and culture there and once I had fallen in love I knew that continuing my work there was going to be an important part of my own journey.

What I have had the pleasure of experiencing through my work in Malawi is that it does not matter where your heart leads you to volunteer, it matters only that your heart is lead somewhere or to someone.

I’m not sure how many of you have seen the movie Pay It Forward with Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt, but I find my mind frequently drawn back to an image in that movie that was drawn on a black board. It was a picture of a little stick man and then arrows leading to three other little stick men. The first little man had done something for the three little men below him and in turn each one of those little men had done the same. The picture got bigger and bigger and eventually once you understood the concept you could see that it could go on and on. Or in the words of Buzz Lightyear “To infinity and beyond!!!”

These questions I often get take me back to that very image and I try to find the words to explain to others that when you volunteer your time to a cause or a person that speaks to you the ripple or butterfly effect that one act causes does the very same thing. It could ripple in the form of that person doing something for someone else and so on, or it could ripple in the form of what you then learn about yourself and what you are a capable of doing in your own life, own country, own town etc..

Some might see volunteer vacations as a selfish way to see the world. You trek off for an adventure and paint a wall or kiss a few babies and come home feeling quite good about yourself. While this could be true, there is much more likely possibility. The more likely scenario is that even if you did take that trip only to see a new place and have an adventure I think you will find that once you are home and you start to think back on the journey you will begin to see far beyond just that two-week experience. You will begin to realize that now you see the world in a bit of a different way. You find yourself treating others differently and you find yourself feeling more grateful for things that maybe before your trip you took for granted.  You might find yourself saying something that I have said after many of the trips and projects are complete. “If I can do that, then what else is possible for me?” or “ I never dreamed the short time I spent volunteering could have such an impact!” or what about “In my mind I was doing something so small, but when I saw the look on the faces of those I had helped I realized just how big of a change I had made”

So in the end the destination does matter, but the journey is far more important and what you learn from that journey are lessons that will in fact change your life. For me the destination is Malawi. I have been able to see how many lives have been changed by traveling back to the same place year after year. I have also had the pleasure of watching how volunteers who have traveled with me have taken what they have learned and experienced and come home and begun making change in their own lives and the lives of others. It’s a circle, but in order for the circle to be set into motion you have to take the first step. The fist step is giving of yourself to something or someone. Once you do that the process begins and as we know once a circle is drawn it has no end it just goes on and on “To infinity and beyond!!!”