Get Ahead By Going Abroad...To Do Some Good

For years I've been telling people to go abroad. My argument has been simple: working overseas is personally and professionally transformative. It's good for you, good for your career, good for your company.

This is still true. However, today as never before, there is yet another option that more and more Americans and American companies are catching on to - one I think could make the proposition of working overseas even more enticing to many. It's what I call "getting ahead by going abroad...to do some good."

In short, it's about high-skill volunteering in a foreign land. This can take many forms, but let me give you just one example of what I mean. Say you're a logistics expert. You know how best to get things from point A to point B. Well, that's not only a skill your company needs, it's exactly the type of skill many humanitarian aid organizations need to carry out their relief missions, to get food aid from where it is to where it is needed, for example.

So, if you're interested, maybe your company would sponsor you to volunteer with one of these great organizations. It just takes a few months to help an organization deal with a particular long-term crisis or to help them build the skills and capabilities of their own staff on the ground whose job it is to do this every day.

High skill volunteering is a real win-win-win-win proposition in my book. You win by getting overseas experience (often in an emerging market), personal development and probably personal fulfillment. Your company wins from you getting this exposure and development. The non-profit wins as you've helped them carry out their mission and enhance their capabilities. And, the people that non-profit serves win as well since, in the example above, you've used your expertise to deliver the aid they so need.

At my company, Kraft Foods, we've been doing this for years. One program we've been running since 2001 sees several members of our R&D team competing to volunteer in developing markets on behalf of the UN. Each opportunity lasts about 8 weeks and the feedback we've gotten from the Kraft volunteers and the UN has been amazingly positive. Another example is the story of a friend of mine, Jeanne Shalvoy. In her early 20s she went off to volunteer in Africa. It was there she says she learned the skills and confidence to start her own business. Today, she is a successful business woman deftly juggling work and family. Volunteering in Africa was good for her, good for her company, and, good for those villages she helped.

Comments

[Cynth]

Thanks for this article. Having been a high-skills volunteer, I can afiirm that it's gratifying to apply my expertise where there's often a greater need. And it's a meaningful way to find professional inspiration and re-vigoration for those who seek it. My experience involved my providing a two-year series of professional training, a few weeks at a time. In addition to sharing my skills with those who can more deeply benefit, it was important as an American (and global citizen) to continue our tradition of helping those in need, and to demonstrate that Americans are more than the attitudes and policies of this Administration and the geo-political headlines of the past few years.

[HatingTheGame]

Definitely a good time to be outside of the US. If for nothing else but to be a good ambassador to the rest of the world. Show them that we're not all cowboy yahoos. Now with the coming of Obama, there seems to be incredible interest in what America can become (better), not just what it is (McDonalds, Pizza Hut, and the Cartoon Network).