Volunteering


Hello everyone!, I went to the Granite City of Scotland, Aberdeen, where I stayed for three months in 2022.

I spent most of my time travelling around Scotland, especially the highlands and Aberdeenshire. However, my stay abroad also included voluntary work with the Scottish Wildlife Trust. There, I was part of a so-called Wildlife Watch Group, which was a nature club for young children. Generally, the various group activities take place at the weekends. Our team of supervisors had to plan each club meeting carefully to find exciting locations for the children to explore. For example, one get-together took place near the rough coastal cliffs in the south of Aberdeen and another meeting was along the river Dee. Children were usually tasked with surveying the area around them and looking for signs of wildlife. Here, local experts assisted them to follow the traces of said animals. On other days, they crafted things like bird feeders. Farm visits were also part of the programme, and the children could pet and feed highland cows and other typical farm animals, like goats and sheep.

As I went abroad in late spring and early summer, it was always cold and wet. No day went by without a little bit of rain. Then again, if you wear the correct clothing, the weather doesn’t have to stop you from exploring Scotland.



Hello everyone!

I did some volunteering for a year from August 2021 until August 2022. I was stationed at an outdoor activity centre located near Kidderminster, which is just about an hour away from Birmingham, England. I was one of 18 volunteers who worked there as an activity instructor. Our main responsibility was to accompany and instruct a group of children and young adults over a period of a week.

The centre offers a wide range of different activities, such as climbing, high ropes, zipwire, rafting, caving, archery, fencing, just to name a few. I was able to become an archery and fencing instructor through the centre and gained a qualification for paddle sports rescues as well.

England has beautiful landscapes, mountains and coastlines. Especially the south-west is a stunning region, but I also travelled to Wales and Scotland where I encountered the great outdoors. Besides nature, cities in England have a lot to offer as well. I just want to name Bath as one example that really impressed me on account of its Roman architecture.

Of course, you can argue about the bad weather as one of the big stereotypes we all know about, but to be honest, the weather in Germany is not much better at all.

I experienced the British people to be friendly and helpful. Moreover, they are often open for a quick chat.

During my volunteer service, I developed personally in many different ways. I became more confident in speaking English on a day-to-day basis. Also speaking in front of big groups got easier for me. Furthermore, I became more open-minded towards other people and had some lovely and interesting conversations with them during that year.

Overall, I am very happy and incredibly thankful for the chance to spend some time abroad. The experiences and impressions gained during this time are priceless and will last a lifetime. If you are thinking about going abroad, I can only strongly recommend doing this. It can be scary at first to take such a big step – but it will be worthwhile in the long run!


During my stay abroad, I experienced the two extremes that exist in the U.K.: For the first two months and three weeks I stayed in a very remote area in North Wales with a family that had previously rescued about twenty animals. I was a “helping guest”. Before Brexit, I would have called it "volunteering". I organized it myself via “workaway.info”. You can organize au pairs, work & travels and other types of volunteering on the platform as well. The advantage is that you can find something that suits your budget and at short notice. But you also take a risk, because there will be no official contract (unless you make one). So, there is less certainty that everything that was agreed upon beforehand will also happen. I highly advise you to arrange a video call with potential contestants before you confirm and finalize anything with prepared questions.

Helping the family with babysitting and animal care made frequent communication necessary, which was very helpful for building up my confidence in speaking and overall language skills. Even though many people still speak Welsh in Wales, I didn't really witness that (except for Welsh accents and the announcements on buses). My host parents had an academic background and were actually really interested in languages in general, but especially English and its varieties. Their children were very talkative as well, which was all beneficial for me in the end.

On my free days, I tried to visit as many places in North Wales as possible; the ones in the Snowdonia national park were my favorite (most of the photos have been taken there). The pristine nature in this region was awe-inspiring. Sometimes I felt like being in a Rosamunde Pilcher movie while walking with sheep on the footways. I can now also say that I have been to the place with the longest place name in the world; it is called “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch”. I must admit that I found the place name more interesting than the actual place though.

Helping the family became really draining though after two and a half months. That's also why I decided to spend my last week in London before heading home. I found an affordable shared flat in London with other students who were also very nice and communicative. I feel like I talked to more people in this one week than I did in the two months and three weeks in North Wales, since I saw more sheep than people in Wales. Although of course, I didn't talk more in London than in the family in North Wales. I saw a lot in London. Most of which can be visited in about one hour. But I also did some quiet things, e.g. visiting Karl Marx’s grave. In comparison, I enjoyed the not so famous places much more than the tourist hotspots, because I felt like they represented the “real” London much better. I also found the district Lewisham in the southeast of London, where I was staying at, really nice, although I had not heard such nice things about it beforehand.

Speaking of cardinal points, there are really noticeable differences between west and east London that I sensed (which is not a secret though). Immersing myself in the English language has really shaped and consolidated my language skills and opened a new world for me regarding accents. The children in the family in Wales were actually only able to understand British words, as opposed to the American version. Furthermore, only the British accent (e.g. only the British pronunciation of "can't") was understood. This led me to develop the ability to switch between accents, which I couldn’t do before my stay abroad. Lastly, I also noticed cultural differences between the one(s) in Wales and London, which were really interesting to me.