Sometimes we think we are open-minded enough and flexible enough, but what happens when you arrive in a new country with different traditions, a different language, and different behaviors?

You may see why flexibility is important when it comes to volunteering abroad, and how it can help you to develop this ability.

If volunteering itself is challenging, what happens now that we can't leave our houses? The situation we are living worldwide with the COVID-19 challenges ourselves in ways we've never thought before, and we need to be more flexible than ever. We need to re-think our ways of being, of working, and the way society works.

It is in this kind of situation that we realize how important soft skills are. When volunteering you can develop and improve all kinds of softs skills: personal, social, communicative, and work skills.  Soft skills help us to operate daily and to face situations more effectively, and even though they are usually linked with the workplace, they are key when it comes to personal development.

This is a clear example of how we are used to functioning in a certain way, and how difficult is to change everything we do. We need soft skills, we need to be flexible and creative. We need to think with a critical perspective about it. How can people sustain if everything stops? Which is our role as an organization? What do we need to communicate? 

And you, do you think about what can you do about this? how can you be a volunteer in this situation? and what can you learn from it?