My First Remote Volunteer Experience

For those who don't know me, my name is Chenda and I was born and raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I'm currently finishing my degree in Women's and Gender Studies at Carleton University and this was my first time doing a remote volunteer internship. I was approached by the idea by Carleton to do a internship for the experience and when I saw that there was an opportunity to do something with my degree, I took the chance. CECI was very welcoming and I was excited to meet CECI Nepal to get started on my mandate. My mandate was only for 3 months and I was working as a communication officer for the partner Manushi.

Since Nepal is 10 hours ahead, my meetings would be very early in the morning like 6am. I am a morning person but my brain has not had time to wake up, especially at 6am. CECI Nepal team was very welcoming and I had training for the first 4 days with them. It was great to learn about the country Nepal but it only made me wish I was there in person. Just hearing about the beautiful weather and many things that you can do outdoors like hiking in Mount Everest only made me want to go even more. During my mandate, it went by really quick as there were many challenges to overcome. First, many of us had gotten sick so there was many cancelled meetings, missed meetings and rescheduling and two big festivals in Nepal during the month of October. This sort of delayed many things for me as I couldn't do a lot of work because my partner supervisor was sick or I was recovering from Covid-19. When you are doing remote volunteer work, it does get lonely because you are by yourself. Therefore. it doesn't feel the same when you are interacting with your team in person. You don't get to know your team on a personal level because you only get so much time during meetings to ask personal questions. Also, you definitely have to learn how to manage your time and make sure to get the work done. You really have to motivate yourself to do the work because you don't have anyone around you to guide you or help you out in a timely manner. Even with all these challenges, I would do it again and hopefully be placed somewhere. If I was placed somewhere, I would like to see the pros and cons with remote volunteer and placement volunteer.

With Manushi, I learned a lot about their work with women, especially young women. They train many homemade producers to further gained their skills and knowledge about their products. These women are incredibly hard working and don't get enough recognition across the globe. They really make sure the quality of their products is up to standards. I hope this would encourage many people to try volunteer work and get to know how hard the organizations work to help their community.