These university trips are a combination of volunteer work and adventure travel.Trips generally range from ten days to three weeks in length but can be extended with various extra packages we can provide or your own additional travel. Each trip requires a minimum amount of fundraising and the trips allows you to get to know the communities that your work and fundraising is benefiting.
The logistics for each trip are orchestrated by our partner Adventure Alternative, a fully licensed and award-winning travel tour operator. The volunteer work is organised with our local staff, so participants will always work on a project that has been chosen and managed by the local communities, NGO's and people who we've been working with for decades.
Past participants of these trips have remarked that what they learned while volunteering has stayed with them even once they came home. Beyond simply volunteering to build a school or work on infrastructure, these trips are a remarkable chance for intercultural exchange. Meet your peers living in Africa, talk with Nepali professionals working in development, and open your eyes to the wider world. It will change your view of yourself and your home country.
Benefits of a University Volunteer Trip with Moving Mountains
A university volunteer trip with Moving Mountains will have a multitude of benefits for the participants. These benefits can be both tangible and intangible. For students of international development, international relations, or many other disciplines, these trips are a unique chance to get practical experience in the field.
But even for students of other disciplines, these trips are an opportunity to open your eyes to the vast differences and many similarities between cultures and lifestyles across the globe. On a trip with Moving Mountains, your eyes will be opened to different ways of life, cultural points of view, and even different ideas of what “normal” means. It truly is a chance to become a global citizen.
As a volunteer, you’ll be able to have an impact on your project, helping to build schools, medical clinics, children's homes, rescue centres or helping to provide clean water in rural communities. However, the real impact will be at the personal level. You’ll meet people your own age who come from dramatically different backgrounds than you. This trip is a chance to explore their point of view and show them yours. With social media changing the face of life in the developing world every day, you will make friends for life.
Development Benefits for Local People
The development work of Moving Mountains always has the local communities as the main focus. Because of this, our university volunteer trips are also community focused. We make regular assessments of our communities and create projects that are custom designed to help them achieve their own goals.
As an organisation, Moving Mountains works closely with local authorities on the ground to establish goals and set targets. We aren’t working towards our own development goals, but the development goals that are established by the local communities.
Additionally, all of our staff in-country are locals and more often than not they've been trained by Moving Mountains and are now employed by us. We believe firmly that the local people and communities should be the architects of their own futures.
When you take a university volunteer trip with Moving Mountains, you can be certain that your time in-country will not be exploiting the local population, nor will it be taking away employment opportunities for local people. We actively work to dispel harmful stereotypes about development and instead strive to encourage cross-cultural communication and understanding.
Volunteer work with Moving Mountains is a chance to experience development done by a community, for the community.
Fundraising Requirement for Moving Mountains
Each participant on a Moving Mountains trip needs to meet a minimum fundraising requirement. This money goes directly back to our projects on the ground. It might help fund the construction of our next development project but it will also help to cover the long-term running costs. Wherever we send the money, it will allow us to continue our long-term development projects, and to make sure that the work you do on your trip will continue to have an impact for years into the future.
Though university students may only come to volunteer with us for a short period of time, we want to ensure that your work has an impact that lasts for years. Your work and time spent in the country are essential, and the fundraising requirement helps to ensure that the benefits are felt over the long term.
Moving Mountains has been working in Nepal and Kenya for over twenty years. Over the years, we’ve achieved great change through long-term, sustainable development projects. Your volunteer trip is a small piece in a much larger vision.
You may come to Kenya and help our staff build a school building but the money you fundraise might also help to pay the salaries for the teachers who work in the school. The combined impact? Great access to education for children for the longer term.
Interested in our university volunteer trips? Click through our different trips to learn more about the specifics of each trip, the individual itineraries, affiliated costs and fundraising requirements.