Different background, same goal
Okay, so you can be opposites in political preference and support the same soccer team, right? You can clash in opinion about the best basketball player and worship the same God. Your religion might be differing in many ways and you can support the same environmental cause. Your race doesn’t matter when it comes to admiring art. The neighbourhood you grew up in isn’t relevant when, when fighting for human rights.
Having the same interest, a mutual goal (whether that is helping your team acquire a titel, getting a bill passed, helping an artist… you name it) can really erase all other disputes. If we’re working toward a goal, that is the thing that unites us. Fan and core tribe member Leon💚 wrote a beautiful story about this matter 🙌🏼. Read it below.
Story
I’ve had the opportunity to travel quite a few times now. Whether it’s backpacking and not knowing where I would end up or even sleep that night or doing an internship abroad. Meeting new people from all over the world, getting to know them and creating new memories. This will create a bond that will not break easily.
Doing volunteer work with people with different backgrounds goes even further than that, but sounded quite challenging to me. Mostly because when it comes to species conservation, I’m the all- or- nothing- thinking- kind of person. This was obviously going to be one of my personal challenges going into that project.
The project I’m talking about is a sea turtle conservation project which is relying mostly on volunteers. This particular organisation has over 500 volunteers every year, from all over the world. These volunteers are mostly students. But not just biology or conservation students. People who study economics, law, nutrition and all the other bachelors you can think of come to these projects during the summer months.
Some volunteers use this project as their study object, others just want to make a difference during their time of school. Others see this project as a way to meet new people and expand their horizon.
This organisation has different projects and those projects vary in size. Both work-related and how many volunteers are active on site. The third time I volunteered for this organisation I went to one of the smaller projects. There were only 17 volunteers (as opposed to 80 to 90 on the biggest project) staying on this very basic camp site. You bring your own tent, there was no Wi-Fi, only two outlets (one was used for the refrigerator) and one shower with no warm water. Other projects however are located on public camp sites, meaning they did have Wi-Fi, sanitation blocks and enough power outlets to charge phones. Having all the luxuries you have at home sounds better than being able to charge your phone and camera, right?
Two weeks into the project we had some volunteers from a project close by visiting us. They were stunned. How can you live like that? And how can you all be so happy?
Two hours later they had changed their minds. This is so much better!
I will tell you why. No one was on their phone, talking to people at home or people they barely know on social media. We talked to each other, played games and organised our own pub quiz. We made music together and really got to know each other. During the work, but even more in between shifts.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a biology student or work as a lawyer. It doesn’t matter whether your English is perfect or poor. It doesn’t matter whether you are 50 or 20 years old. Differences between the volunteers are the first thing you see, but are also the first things to disappear.
We all had the same goal: to make sure we make the world a better place for sea turtles and help in their survival, both as a species as taking care of individual animals.
It’s been 6 years since this summer and I still talk to most of the volunteers, even though we can’t actually see each other in real life.
Having the same goal brings people together and forms bonds that cannot be broken easily. It makes sure that differences between us fade and highlights the things we have in common.