---
title: What Volunteers Actually Mean When They Say It
description: "\"It changed me\" is the most common thing returning volunteers say, and the least specific. What finding purpose through volunteering abroad really looks like."
image: https://humanavolunteers.org/hubfs/Blogs-4-1.jpg
---

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# What Volunteers Actually Mean When They Say It

![Humana Volunteers](https://humanavolunteers.org/hs-fs/hubfs/humana%20volunteers%E2%80%99%20THOUGHTS%20(1).jpg?width=120&height=120&name=humana%20volunteers%E2%80%99%20THOUGHTS%20(1).jpg)

Oct 29, 2026, 4:12:55 PM

Ask anyone who has volunteered abroad how it went, and there's a good chance you'll hear some version of **"it changed me."** It's said sincerely. It's also one of the least specific sentences in the language.

Changed how? Into what? And is that change the point, or a side effect?

After 25 years of sending volunteers to development projects in Africa and Asia, we've heard that sentence more times than we can count. So here's our attempt to unpack it: what people usually mean, what they usually don't, and **how to look for purpose abroad without turning someone else's community into the backdrop for your personal growth.**

 

---

 

### **It's rarely the place**

When returning volunteers try to explain what shifted, they rarely start with the landscapes. They talk about how much they'd been taking for granted. About learning to wait. About discovering that **the skills they arrived with mattered less than their willingness to listen.**

Sofia, who spent six months in Zambia, described it as finally seeing the privileges she'd been carrying for years. Not a revelation on a mountaintop. [**A slow, slightly uncomfortable recalibration that kept going long after she got home.**](https://humanavolunteers.org/blog-humana-web-2026/nobody-warns-you-about-coming-home)

 

### **Purpose isn't something you find**

A lot of people go abroad looking for purpose as if it were waiting somewhere, ready to be collected. Fly out, pick it up, bring it home.

In practice, the volunteers who come back with a clearer sense of direction rarely found it in a grand gesture. **They found it in being useful in small, specific ways, inside something that was already working before they arrived.**

The projects our volunteers join are run by local teams and communities who know their context far better than any newcomer. A volunteer's role is to work alongside them: in a preschool classroom, a women's group, a farming project. **That can feel less heroic than people imagine. It's also far more honest**, and that honesty is often where the sense of purpose comes from.

Alessio put it simply. [**He liked being a small part of something bigger, where the weight never rested on him alone.**](https://humanavolunteers.org/blog-humana-web-2026/volunteering-abroad-as-a-team)

 

### **What actually does the changing**

Strip away the clichés and a few things tend to do the real work.

**Losing your routine.** When nothing is familiar, from the food to the timetable to how decisions get made, you have to pay attention. Keep that attention up for months and you start questioning habits you'd never examined.

**Living with other people.** Volunteers in our program spend ten months as part of a team: training together, cooking together, disagreeing and sorting it out. On a Building Weekend, someone who studied business administration learns to fix a fence with someone who studied marine biology. **It's one of the least talked-about parts of the experience, and one of the most formative.**

**Being a beginner in public.** Getting things wrong while people who know better are patient with you is humbling in the most useful sense. **It teaches you to ask before assuming**, and that habit doesn't wear off when you fly home.

None of this needs a crisis or a dramatic story. **It needs time.**

 

### **Why ten months and not two weeks**

Short trips can be a window onto another place. They rarely leave room for much else. **In two weeks you barely get past being a guest**, and the people hosting you spend a good part of their time looking after you.

Change that lasts needs a slower rhythm. That's why our program has three stages. **Three months of training at Lindersvold** in Denmark, studying the context you're heading to and learning to work as a team. **Six months on a development project** in Zambia, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, DR Congo, Malawi or India. And **a final month back in Europe**, turning what you lived into something other people can understand.

That last month is easy to underestimate. **Explaining an experience honestly, without flattening it into a before-and-after story, is where a lot of the real processing happens.**

 

### **The uncomfortable parts are part of it**

Purpose doesn't arrive without friction, and it helps to know that before you go.

**Culture shock rarely looks like drama.** More often it's tiredness, irritation at small things, or not quite knowing what you're for in the first weeks. For Cormac, in his first month at Children's Town in Zambia, the hardest adjustment wasn't the food or the heat. It was suddenly having no fixed schedule. 

**Language gaps slow everything down**, and that's not entirely bad. In Gurugram, Tommaso and Gloria found that speaking Hindi opened doors no amount of English could. 

And **your expectations will be wrong.** Not every day will feel meaningful. Some days you'll mostly be learning how things work. Those days count more than they seem to.

 

### **Four questions worth asking before you go**

**Why do I want to do this?** If the honest answer is mostly about how it will look, sit with that before booking anything.

**Who runs the projects I'd be joining?** Look for organizations where local teams lead and volunteers support, not the other way around.

**How will I be prepared?** A serious program trains you before you arrive, not on the plane.

**What happens when I come back?** The experience doesn't end at the airport. Programs that take the return seriously tend to produce volunteers who keep acting on what they learned.

 

### **So what does "it changed me" really mean?**

Usually, something smaller and more durable than it sounds. **A habit of listening before speaking. A clearer view of your own privilege. The discovery that you can be useful without being the main character.** Sometimes, a different idea of what you want to do with your working life.

You can't photograph that kind of change. **You notice it over years, in the choices you make**, long after the trip stops being the first thing you mention about yourself.

Still have questions about how it all works, from the training to the cost?   

[We've answered the most common ones here.](https://humanavolunteers.org/frequently-asked-questions)

##### [![Learning Before Teaching](https://humanavolunteers.org/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog-5_Gloria_Tommaso.jpg?width=520&height=294&name=Blog-5_Gloria_Tommaso.jpg) Humana Volunteers • Oct 29, 2026, 4:22:29 PM Learning Before Teaching 2 min read](https://humanavolunteers.org/blog/first-month-volunteering-in-india)

##### [![Before You Do Anything, Arrive](https://humanavolunteers.org/hs-fs/hubfs/Blog-3_Cormac.jpg?width=520&height=294&name=Blog-3_Cormac.jpg) Humana Volunteers • Oct 29, 2026, 4:01:18 PM Before You Do Anything, Arrive 2 min read](https://humanavolunteers.org/blog/blog-humana-web-2026/first-month-volunteering-in-zambia)

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