More and more young people are taking on volunteer work nowadays.
Some even travel to the other side of the world and do unpaid work for a charity or other non-profit organisation there. They help to build homes for poor families, teach children 5 English, take care of orphans, or help to protect an endangered species.
A number of charity groups organise educational programmes for children around the world.
They teach subjects like 10 English and Mathematics to children while staying in their community and getting to know the people and their culture.
Several charity organisations help build houses or schools for poor children around the world. In the village of Kamakwie in Sierra Leone, for example, a team 20 of young volunteers built a secondary school for poor orphans.
For people interested in wildlife, conservation groups organise volunteer holidays throughout the world. You can help wildlife research in countries like Kenya and Botswana or protect 251 turtles in Mexico, Zanzibar, or elsewhere. On Redang Island in Malaysia volunteers come from all over the world to help conserve the endangered green turtle.
A volunteer holiday is for people who want to make a difference in the world and are prepared to give up their own time, money, and, effort to do it. Volunteers have to be realistic though and understand that they cannot change the world in 35 two or three weeks. To some volunteers it seems that they are not doing much by helping out for only a couple of weeks but, in fact, every bit of help counts. Thanks to young volunteers, the lives of millions of people around the world are improving and, in their eyes, the sun is probably shining brighter than it used to.
Rita Smith is 43 years old. She lived in Richardson, Texas, and worked for the Dallas Police Department. She's an officer. Her husband is also a law enforcement officer, but he did not work in the same department. They have a 15-year-old son, Matthew. Like most law enforcement officers, Smith worked in shifts. She worked an early shift last week. She started working at 07 o'clock and finished at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. When she worked an early shift, she got up at 5 o'clock. She spent a few minutes with her family, then put on her uniform and went to work. She always went to work by car. She doesn't use public transport because it's unreliable. It usually took an hour to get to work. When she arrived at the Dallas Police Department, she had a briefing. Then she would pick up her patrol car and drive to her patrol area. Smith loves his job, but doesn't like paperwork. “For everything I've done, I've filled out three forms," she says. It took me a lot of time”
