A volunteer program Abroad is essential for musicians!
Party in Canggu, Swim with turtles in the Philippines, Teach guitar in Uganda, roadtrip across Australia… there are many things you can do with your gap year | summer | half term.
Here is why musicians should consider a volunteering trip overseas!
1.Alternative Travel
Forget travelling to hit up tourist hot-spots, party and move on without gaining depth of understanding about a place and its culture or people.
Volunteer programs allow you to travel new places in a very different way!
By volunteering abroad you’ll likely be in places completely off the tourist route.
Such as with us in Western Uganda!
This gives you the opportunity to become completely immersed in authentic local culture, and take part in different experiences to your peers (Uganda isn’t called the pearl of Africa for nothing!)
Staying with a homestay, as with most volunteering programs, means you live their culture and daily life. It is very different than staying in a party hostel in Budapest, here you become a part of the family!
On a Music Volunteering Program you get to travel while using your passion for music to meet people, change lives and have a once in a lifetime experience.
2.Make a difference While travelling
Tourists are often known for causing trouble in the places they overrun on their gap years, causing degradation and multitude of problems (just look at Boracay…)
But what if you could travel to an amazing destination and enrich lives there instead of damaging them?
Rather than the ‘I don’t know how to build schools but I’m going to go to Africa and build a school’ program model, you’re using a skill you actually possess to enrich peoples lives.
Music!
Not only are you getting to experience a whole new country and culture. To meet wonderful people, enjoy new food, see new landscapes.
But while doing this you can make a real difference!
You can inspire the communities you are placed with, teach them lasting skills with their instruments, help them find their passion.
The staff here at the Living Music Foundation have transformed their lives through dedicating themselves to music, could you help a vulnerable child find their path?
Read about the advantages of learning music here
3. Not harmful ‘Voluntourism’
To add on to the last point….
‘’It is rare in the voluntourism industry to find projects initiated by a community seeking foreign volunteers’’ (Thinking Beyond Borders)
That is us. We are a small local organisation, who local communities and people approach wanting musical training to improve their lives and enrich their futures.
We want overseas volunteers who can share their musical skills to help us train these communities!
This is not the harmful act of forcing things to happen to a community, such bringing in unskilled volunteers to build a school they did not ask for.
This is musicians sharing skills with one another.
4. A project you’re passionate about
Sure. If you want to volunteer you can do so with any number of organisations and for many different causes.
You’ve dedicated hundreds of hours to your skill in music, whether that’s playing guitar, the xylophone or singing. Why is that?
You probably think other children should have the opportunity to learn music and the chance to utilize its transformative power.
You probably understand the importance of music, and what skills it can develop, the places it can take you, the joy of playing!
We want musicians to share their musical skills with people that want to learn music
You’ll get to connect with people from a whole new country, lifestyle and culture, but you have one HUGE thing in common – a passion for music!
Here at LMF we have friends all over the world due to a shared passion for our music.
If this hasn’t inspired you to take part in a music centered volunteer program, check out our website and read more about our organisation!
