Week 4 Getting to Know My Colleagues

During my time at Unearth the World, I have experienced a great deal of mentoring from my boss Kathryn as well as her husband and co-founder Mike.They are a very interesting couple in that after many years of working in sales, they quit their jobs and travelled for nearly a year around the world, visiting around 20 countries and volunteering in many different projects. During their trip they realized the good and bad of the voluntourism industry and sought to make a change. They are truly selfless and kind people and I always look forward to talking to them or asking them for guidance as I work on my projects. This week was especially fun since I submitted my first Ghana Country Guide. It was with this that Kathryn mentored me on the importance of looking at the project as a volunteer going to a country for the first time. I thought about what to include in the guide and what voice to use throughout, deciding to not go too in depth on the colonial history of the country and more into culture and food.

Kathryn and Mike both mentioned that if they were to do their trip again they wish they had a profile on each country they visited just to better grasp certain things, such as culture and customs. I respected their input and the qualities they have that I really admire include their readiness to look into and discuss questions I have revolving around volunteers and how best to approach my specific projects. For instance, my blog post a week back discussed slum tourism, which is when people pay money to go through a slum. Kathryn and I looked into how to portray the negatives of this industry while also showing what can be learned from such an industry even existing rather than just bashing it. Kathryn and Mike both want to show the positives of voluntourism when done right, they also discuss the negatives of it, but they want to show everyone that pre trip, on trip and post trip training can make a difference and improve the industry. When I think about it, I would need to see the negatives of the industry to truly follow the career path they took. I would need to see a reason to change it and have a way of doing so through my personal experience. I would need to travel with someone around the world and witness the benefits and negatives of volunteering abroad and its only when I would have this knowledge and background that I would decide to take action and pursue a career around voluntourism. Working on the training curriculums with Kathryn is only helping me with this concept and I'm excited to go over them with her and see how they would be portrayed onto future volunteers!