A Shoutout to GIVE!

GIVE is literally an acronym for Growth International Volunteer Excursions and their motto is, “travel with a purpose”. Yes, their motto is the first thing I noticed when I first learned about them, haha! So far, I have been on two trips in Tanzania and Thailand.

My Africa group and I in our symbolic GIVE shirts! Featuring children of Kairo village!

That being said, I first discovered GIVE freshman year of college in 2019 when I saw two recruiters from the organization painting a rock green and the words “travel with a purpose” in white. The slogan intrigued me as it should have, and I immediately approached the recruiters and asked them what the slogan was all about.

One of the recruiters was a lead guide for the Laos trip, and the other was the lead guide for the Tanzania trip. They excitedly went into detail about GIVE and explained to me GIVE’s mission, the volunteer locations, activities, and projects, and also asked me questions about myself. Fittingly, they were the most enthusiastic recruiters I’ve met! I was so impressed with the organization and the reviews I read about it being “life-changing”, and “an adventure worth the money and time”, that I nearly signed up to go on the Tanzania trip two days after finding out about GIVE! Unfortunately, my parents were not ready to send me overseas and later on, I was very thankful because that was the summer of COVID!

The recruiters mentioned a safari as part of the Tanzania trip!

I waited nearly two years to finally be able to register for the Tanzania trip and it was one of the most exciting announcements I have ever made. Before that, I hadn’t flown overseas since 2015, so I knew it would be an adventure that would take some getting used to. The beautiful thing that GIVE does for people who register for trips is that a volunteer profile is created and your deposit is good for life! Therefore, if you can’t make your trip during the dates you signed up for, GIVE can easily transfer the deposit to another date!

In addition, GIVE cares about their volunteers and therefore offers to guide them through planning their trip and gives them to-do lists and deadlines in their volunteer profile! They are also partnered with a flight agency called StudentUniverse, and will assist volunteers in booking their flights and also do all the work for them in the case that the flight is delayed, canceled, and/or needs to be changed! They also make arrangements so that volunteers who also book through StudentUniverse can meet up with each other during layovers and fly to the volunteer location together! I signed up through StudentUniverse for my Tanzania trip because I did not feel comfortable booking alone and risking flying all the way to Tanzania by myself and I was very glad I did because I met up with quite a few other volunteers during our layover in Qatar! The next year, I used StudentUniverse for my Thailand trip as well and flew to from Taipei to Chiang Mai with a couple volunteers as well.

We also did a passport photoshoot in Qatar!

The volunteer profile also gives their volunteers places to upload all their required documents and a link to purchase travel insurance! All you need to do is follow their instructions and travel insurance for your trip is obtained that easily!

If required for the location you are volunteering in, GIVE also provides instructions on how to obtain a visa! When I applied for a Tanzania visa, all I had to know was follow the link provided and copy all the information given to me by GIVE and my visa application was approved a couple days later! There is also an option to apply for a visa when you arrive at your volunteer location but it is so much easier to do it in advance and there’s less to worry about when you are more prepared! In addition, I did not have to get a VISA for Thailand because I stayed under 30 days.

The Actual Trip

Aside from the support volunteers receive prior to their trip, going on the actual trip gives a deeper understanding on how GIVE works. When my group and I first arrived at the Zanzibar airport, we walked out of the exit and saw two of our guides wearing the iconic bright green GIVE shirts! Yes, that’s how they wanted us to notice them, haha! They greeted us and loaded up all our luggage onto a Dolla Dolla (which is basically a Zanzibarian cab!) This is basically the same thing that happened in Thailand, except the vehicle was a smaller truck.

The Dolla-Dolla

The Thailand Truck

Day 1 of the trip is basically a rest day and time for the guides to retrieve all the volunteers from the airport, since people who choose different flight agencies arrive at several different times. It was the second day in Tanzania when we actually traveled to the village of Kairo Kiwengwa in Zanzibar, where our volunteering would take place. In Thailand, we flew into Chiang Mai and spent two days and nights there and then traveled to our volunteer location in Mueang Khong.

The view from our hotel in Zanzibar!

The view from our bungalow in Mueang Khong!

Our volunteer orientation occurred on the same day we arrived at our village and what this entailed was us receiving our green GIVE t-shirts and receiving a tour of our volunteer location. We were introduced to our volunteer projects which included teaching English to locals, and construction work for a new pre-school! We also saw the first school in the village which was actually built by GIVE a couple years ago! Before then, students had to travel 60 miles to Stone Town to attend school, so GIVE really does do communities a lot of huge favors! In Thailand, GIVE is partnered with a permaculture farm and that is one of our volunteer projects over there aside from education.

The outside of GIVE's school in Tanzania!

Our permaculture squad!

A common question I get from peers is if the GIVE trip is constant volunteering, and the answer, believe it or not, is NO! Orientation day on both trips took place on day 2 and consisted of our leaders giving us a planned schedule for the entire trip and in Tanzania, it included only six days of volunteering and it wasn’t even consecutive! While it is different by each GIVE program, Tanzania had two days of volunteering, a culture day where we would go back to Stone Town for the day, two more days of volunteering, an adventure day where we would go snorkeling, our two final days of volunteering, a travel day to Dar Es Salaam, and our final two days at a safari. Our volunteer projects were also not destined to be all day long as we had two different shifts (8-11, 2-5) and volunteers could choose if they wanted to do a morning construction shift, afternoon teaching shift, or vice versa. During our break times in between shifts, we had our lunch break, voluntary Swahili lessons, downtime, and one day a special day trip to a reef in the middle of the ocean!

A couple of my co-volunteers and a couple of our students!

In Thailand, our volunteering was consecutive, but for only five days out of the trip and only two days were full-day volunteering. We got to choose if we wanted to do education for the day or permaculture, and unlike Tanzania, we only did one volunteer activity for the day instead of both. During the three half-days of volunteering, we spent the rest of the day at a ceremony at a new school, and also spent a morning watching Thai children perform a traditional dance!

Our Thailand schedule written by a guide!

I have also had peers ask about the type of food we eat on the trip and the simplest way to put it is local delicacies but modified to be foreigner friendly. For example, we had rice nearly every single day, a fish meal for our first lunch together, and delicious Zanzibar pizza that was just bread with red sauce and cheese! And in Thailand, we had chicken and rice basically everyday, as well as a day where we made our own Pad Thai! They do feed us well on the trip, and nothing is rationed at all! In addition, GIVE is also accommodating for people’s allergies and/or if they are vegetarian, vegan, or have religious exemptions. And yes, your meals are one of the things included in the trip price!

On the left next to the fork is the Zanzibar pizza! Also included is chicken and rice!

Our first dinner in Thailand: Fried rice!

Although everything pretty much went as planned on both trips, the GIVE guides are prepared for any situation possible and always book our adventure activities and accommodations ahead of time. I do not think I have ever experienced traveling with such an organized group, but that realization cured all my anxiety for the trip! The guides also made sure no one got lost while we were in busy Stone Town and at the Chiang Mai Night Market, they never allowed anyone to go off alone, and they did a head count anytime it was necessary.

Fair warning, it is very common for volunteers to get sick on any GIVE trip. The good news is that the guides are well aware of this and come prepared with a complete medical kit as well as previously completing a required wilderness first aid course. When the majority of us (including me) got sick from eating street food in Stone Town, the guides took great care of us and made sure we stayed hydrated, gave us pain reliever medicine, and checked in with us regularly. I also developed a cold shortly after the contamination pains and the guides gave me tissues and Dayquil-which really helped me feel normal while sick! However, there is a way to avoid sickness from eating street food and it’s called Travelan! Not taking mine would be my biggest regret from the trip, but if I had taken it, I know things would have gone a lot differently! It’s a lesson learned!

The notorious market ahaha! (JK, the food was good when I was eating it)

I was doing really well at not getting sick for most of Thailand, but it was during the last few days of the elephant excursion add-on where it finally happened. I thought it was just altitude sickness since we were high up in the mountains for a few days, but when I learned that altitude sickness was not possible in Thailand, the fever, chills, and lightheadedness were something I could not diagnose. Therefore, a guide took me to the hospital in Chiang Mai where doctors discovered that it was a viral infection from infected mosquito bites I suffered from the entire trip! It was my first visit in a foreign hospital but the bottom line is that, your GIVE guides will take you to the hospital if needed!

Huay Pakoot-where the sickness started but beautiful scenery!

The end of the trip is obviously very sad and a lot of overwhelming reflection time, but the guides try and make it happier with goodbye gifts. One of them was a letter of thanks, thanking us for all our hard work and dedication to the community, and a list of benefits and next steps we could take as GIVE alumni. In addition, we also received a special green GIVE TANZANIA bracelet, and those bracelets are only for people who have been on an actual trip! I also got one in Thailand! GIVE also asks its volunteers to take a brief survey at the end of the trip and I did not have any suggestions for improvement on their end since I was so impressed with their organization skills and their care for their volunteers and the communities we volunteered for! All I said was that I would like to see more locations as the organization grows! (I know some potential places and projects haha).

Nyerere National Park, final day of the trip in Tanzania!

Not ready to go home after 2 weeks? Check out GIVE's add-ons!

For almost every volunteer trip, GIVE has add-on trips that include summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro (I missed out on this, boo), a scuba diving program in Hawaii and Thailand, and an elephant excursion trip (I did this one after Thailand!) These trips are generally only a week along, and the point of them is dive deeper into the GIVE experience!

For example, during the elephant experience we traveled to a couple different locations in Northern Thailand to learn about the significance of elephants in the nation. Our first day was hands-on where we dressed in mahout uniforms and fed them, gave them a mud bath and then bathed them in the river! Such a surreal experience in just a day!

Yes, those are our mahout uniforms!

The next day was at a no-contact sanctuary where we still got to feed the elephants, and the other days were trekking for them in the jungle! The experience taught us that in Thailand, elephants are a symbol of strength and intelligence and due to the dwindling elephant population, they are cared for very efficiently by their mahouts. We also got to experience what mahouts do daily-which is take treacherous hikes into the jungle to care for the elephants as well as feeding them and cleaning them. That being said, I recommend the add-on trips as much as I recommend the initial 2 week volunteer trip because add-ons will give you an adventure boost and deeper understanding of a culture.

One of our jungle hikes!

If you are thinking of applying for a GIVE trip and/or have already signed up for one but don’t know what to expect, I am here to tell you that you have NOTHING to worry about! Especially if you sign up for flights using Student Universe! It is one of GIVE’s many goals to make volunteers feel safe and free from anxiety so I want people to know that GIVE CARES. Don’t believe me? Read these numerous testimonials from past volunteers right here! If you would like to ask me any questions about my own experience or about GIVE per se, feel free to connect with me!

Our last night in Mueang Khong!