Traveling is not only about satisfying ourselves but also about adjusting to all the different conditions we infer during travel and understanding all we experienced during that time. For most people in Indonesia, travel is just a tourist activity that is considered a luxury and not a necessary thing to do in their lives. In fact through travel human can learn about themselves, gain new skills, and learn something useful for their life and their careers.

For Sharon who traveled to more than 100 countries around the world travel is just a way of life but travel is her university to educate herself. Been to countries where she has never been before, sometimes you will hear about a bad thing you got from social media and you get scared to visit. But once you were there, nothing dangerous had happened to her and you feel safe. Once you have a good intention, you will meet a good person who can help you and accompany you along your journey. She joined Vern Cork Library Project last September with IVP Indonesia. She felt doing a useful project with society by preserving some old and new books in a local community library, she expect that the project will be continued by motivated volunteers in the future who have a love for books.

We got a different story from Ariva. She works for a farming company in Semarang. She explained how volunteering experiences affect her career. She became a volunteer at Bhumi Horta in 2017. She had a chance to join an agriculture workcamp with Step Forward Vietnam in 2019. She mentions how working with locals abroad gave her a chance to learn new things that were useful for her studies when she was still a student at the University Wahid Hasyim. She can convert her volunteering experiences into university credits that give so much to contribute to the local community when she comes back to Indonesia. She managed to build her own social enterprise ‘KLiK (Kreasi Limbah Kertas) which focuses on recycling waste paper in Wahid University, Wahid Hasyim, especially in the farming faculty.

Those stories were delivered to all participants who attended the “Sharing Session” in Saturday (26/10) and collaborated with IAAS (International Association of Students in Agricultural and Related Sciences) LC Undip. More than 20 students attended this session and were motivated to volunteer abroad in the future. This will also become a final project for the internship group of IAAS before they make a new organizational structure for the next period. This activity was a follow-up meeting after a collaboration project between Teman Berkebun and IAAS LC Undip in the National Exchange Program this year.

We expect that during next period we could enlarge opportunities for university students to volunteer and experience different ways of exchange, not only in Indonesia but also overseas. Many countries allow Indonesian passport holders to travel without a visa, this is a good chance for Indonesian students to unburden themselves to explore their skills and potential through volunteering in any kind of subject especially agriculture.