Volunteer in Russia

Take Time to Help Others and Have Fun

By Joshua Hartshorne

Russia is a relatively cheap place to live. My monthly budget in Irkutsk is $500, and I ski and eat out a lot. This makes it financially quite feasible to be a volunteer, even over a long period of time. Not only is it feasible, it’s a really good idea.

As a student in St. Petersburg, I had a wonderful host family. Otherwise, I found it very difficult to meet Russians, a frustration shared by nearly every other student.

Contrast this with my volunteer experience: When I came to Irkutsk to volunteer at the Great Baikal Trail Association, my "boss" met me at the train station and put me up for a week with her friends. Within literally hours, I had a circle of friends inviting me on hiking trips, advising me on buying skis, and inviting me to parties. To this day, I have met every one of my friends through my volunteer job. I have been on numerous ski trips, attended a wedding, hosted a New Year’s Party (the most important Russian holiday) that lasted almost 24 hours, and threw a bachelor’s party—in short, I’ve done all those things I wanted to do as a student.

Just as important: in Russia, everything is done through contacts. Arriving in Russia with a set of contacts (your workplace) can make a crucial difference between floundering miserably and having a wonderful time. My friends helped me find an apartment, get an encephalitis vaccine (necessary in most of Siberia), register my visa, buy skis, and set up a trip to Mongolia—most of which I could not have done alone.

All this, and I get to do important work. After years of being a student and being essentially focused on myself, it’s nice to have a year set aside to spend my days helping others—and Russia is a great place to do that. It has more protected land and nature parks than any country in the world by a large margin, so there is no shortage of environmental work. Russia also has a depressingly large orphan population, and physical disabilities are also distressingly common. There is no shortage of need.

What there is, is a shortage of information. While there are many organizations eager for volunteers, few are well known abroad and most do not have web sites in English. I have been assembling a list of organizations interested in taking volunteers, which is posted at www.baikal.eastsib.ru. More resources are listed below.

JOSHUA K. HARTSHORNE studied at Oberlin College in Ohio. He now lives in Irkutsk, Russia, where he worked for The Great Baikal Trail Association..