We interviewed George and Marilyn Gough about their experiences of volunteering while traveling in their RV in the USA and Mexico. They told us about how they volunteered in California, helping the victims of the wildfires, and also in Mexico, helping children to learn to speak English.
One of the best things about RV living is all the new friends you will make along the way. We were very fortunate to meet George and Marilyn at the Catalina Spa RV Resort in Desert Hot Springs. Although they were also from British Columbia, Canada, we would never have made these new friends if they had not been at the same RV resort in California.
Marilyn and George turned out to be very special people, warm, kind, and caring. As a retired couple with some time to spare, they make a point of doing volunteer work while they are traveling. In the interview in the video below, they talk about how fulfilling they found it to help people in dire straits in California. Many of these people had lost everything but the clothes they were wearing – even their pets. Marilyn and George were very happy to have a chance to become Red Cross volunteers and help out as much as they could.
Can You Volunteer in Foreign Countries?
We learned from them that you can usually volunteer most places, regardless of your citizenship. So, it was no problem for them to volunteer for the Red Cross in the USA, even though they were Canadians. Similarly, they could volunteer in Mexico to teach English to school children, despite not being Mexicans.
Although we have not been nearly as philanthropic as George and Marilyn, we made a similar discovery in Palm Springs – where we were able to donate blood, despite being Canadian. In fact, the blood bank was delighted to welcome us. We will be donating blood in Palm Springs again next year. As we know from being blood donors in Canada, every time you donate blood, you could potentially be saving up to three lives. So, it makes you feel very good to be able to do that for a fellow human being.
Marilyn and George make the same point in the interview – what you get back from volunteering is at least twice as much as what you put in. Listen to the heartwarming story of how the children in Mexico thanked George for his help, bringing a full-grown (and very large) man to tears!
As George says, find something that you love doing and that will benefit other human beings, and get out and do it. And as Marilyn says, these days, there are far too many barriers between us. The bottom line is that we are all human beings, and it feels good to help your fellow human beings.
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