In 2022, I went from being a 21-year-old who had pretty much never left Canada to living full-time in a rural village in India for 2 months, working every day with a team of grandmother solar engineers whose languages I didn’t know.

The Solar Mamas of Barefoot College taught me not only how to build a solar lantern but also how to express myself and create deep bonds of friendship without relying on spoken language. By the end of my two months working with them every day, it felt like some of these women were my sisters, despite us never having had a conversation.

When I wasn’t in the solar workshop, I was in the plant nursery at Barefoot College, learning the basics of organic agriculture from the five nursery staff, who also taught me beginner’s Hindi, a few words of Marwari, and some Yoga. One day when I had a cough and sore throat, Hanuman Ji (the kind, caring man in charge of the plant nursery) jogged through the rows of plants, plucked a handful of different medicinal leaves, and showed me how to boil them into a bitter tea which he had me drink every few hours. It helped.

I also spent some time with a different NGO named the Sehgal Foundation, attending a field visit to the tiny village of Ghaghas, Haryana. Locals showed me their community radio station (critical for fighting misinformation and taboos as well as running remote classes during COVID-19) and their gorgeous elementary school, equipped with vibrant murals, clean water, and bathrooms. One thing I learned was that access to water and bathrooms is especially critical for improving girls’ education, because otherwise they must stay home when they get their period.

In New Delhi, the largest city I had ever been in, I met with a lady named Sampada from the Indo-Universal Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE), an organization encouraging young people to create impactful projects in their communities. She became one of my closest allies in India, not only encouraging my work and inviting me as a guest speaker at academic events, but also taking me in like one of her children and teaching me how to play Indian board games with her family.

The experiences I had in India unlocked a whole new perspective on the world, as well as a fierce love for travel which has taken me to 14+ different countries since then. The connections I made with delightful people have stayed with me, and continue to provide joy and open doors in my life to this day.

I wrote this post to answer the most common question I get from my fellow young people when I tell my stories: “how do I make something like that happen in my life too?”

By explaining my own journey, I hope to provide a roadmap for other students to create opportunities of their own.

How to travel the world as a uni student – and have a positive impact while doing it

  1. Figure Out Goals
  2. Take Inventory
  3. Methodically Remove Barriers

My personal journey was shaped by my unique identity and place in the world as a Canadian, a girl, someone with no dependents, someone with lots of food allergies, and so on. Not all of my story will be directly applicable to your own journey, but I hope that by sharing my process, it inspires you to pursue your own goals. Take in my story, then turn around and shape your own!

1. Figure Out Goals

Having a clear understanding of my own goals helps me shape beneficial experiences by leaning into opportunities which align with my goals whenever they arise.

a. What do I want to learn?

For me, travel is education. By setting up experiences to immerse myself in unfamiliar environments, I hoped to learn language, adaptation skills, design, innovation, and culture, not to mention the benefits of meeting interesting people who open exciting doors of opportunity.

The more foreign my destination is compared to the familiar world I know, the more I learn about culture, language, and different approaches to solving problems. Getting out of my comfort zone is… well… uncomfortable, but every time I do, my comfort zone gets wider, and the incredible experiences that come with it make the initial discomfort well worth it.

By going someplace with high contrast to my home, I not only learn about the culture at my destination, but also learn about my home culture by seeing my own customs (which I previously took for granted as “just the way things are done”) stand out as foreign.

I set out to travel because I wanted to better understand how the world really works. Along with this understanding, I wanted to augment my engineering education with examples of real-world designs and creative solutions from diverse cultures and countries. Equipped with that knowledge, I will better be able to come up with high-quality, sustainable solutions to problems I face in my life and my career.

b. What impact do I want to have?

My specific interests include education, ecological sustainability, peace, gender equity, renewable energy, community self-sufficiency, and anything about WATER: groundwater conservation, rainwater harvesting, clean drinking water, flood management, wetland ecology, river health… With so many interests, there was no shortage of potential places and organizations to get involved with.

By going around finding examples of cool projects and sharing that knowledge with the global community, I hope to empower people everywhere to take initiative and improve their own communities. That’s the goal of this blog, Adventure Engineering!

2. Take Inventory

Taking inventory of my responsibilities and resources at any time helps me narrow down where and when I can go to learn what I hope to learn, as well as where I can be most effective at having a positive impact.

a. Responsibilities

As a co-op student at the University of Waterloo, I had to be in Waterloo, Ontario, to attend classes every other four-month term, with the rest of the terms dedicated to co-operative education work terms. If you’re unfamiliar with co-op, it allows students to learn on the job during our degrees by working full-time in our field during short (typically 4 month) internships. I needed 5 co-op term credits for my degree, which I had already accumulated by 2022. I also needed to continue paying my rent and tuition, of course.

b. Resources

By 2022, I had one work term left in my term schedule, but since I had already earned the 5 co-op credits I needed, I could do what I liked with that four months from May to August between academic terms.

Through UW’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders (EWB), I had met a senior engineer named Raj Rajaram who inspired me to take action and encouraged me to travel. He had put me in touch with some NGOs in education, women empowerment, and sustainability in north India, and I had invitations from those NGOs to learn from their work if I could get myself there. Check my other posts (coming soon) for the full story on how that came to be!

So, I had a gap in time which I could use for this experience, I had a destination where learning will be inevitable, and I had some new allies at that destination who could help me find my way to achieving the impact I hope to achieve.

3. Methodically Remove Barriers

With ANY barrier, having allies – people in any area of expertise who are willing to support your goals by helping you network, creating opportunities, teaching you what you don’t know, etc. – makes overcoming a barrier a whole lot easier. A big lesson I’ve learned from my experiences is that our whole society is pretty much just people doing things, so if you can make friends with the right people, almost anything is possible.

There were a few key barriers I had to overcome before I could make this dream of traveling, learning, and having a positive impact a reality: namely, getting the financial resources to be able to afford a co-op term without a paid job, especially one abroad, and convincing my parents to let me travel. The latter is really about safety.

1. Allies

I gathered my allies by reaching out. I was authentic with my passions, told nearly everyone I met about my aspirations, and asked for support. It can feel uncomfortable to ask for favours (such as introductions, a place to stay, etc.) but by being open, honest, vulnerable, and energetic I attracted support from profs, mentors, and extended network connections to find organizations and allies aligned with my goals and values.

By continually putting myself out there and being patient, I eventually bumped into people with shared passions. Don’t underestimate the power of a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend.

Follow up, for real! If someone mentions a person, project, or organization that sounds interesting to me, I always ask for more information, and especially for an introduction. When a kind person makes an offer of support, and I can tell they genuinely mean it, I take them up on it with gratitude.

One of my previous co-op managers, Stan, says that enthusiastic youth have an extraordinary superpower: people are eager to help us out. It’s a trade, of sorts: we get help, and whoever helps us feels good about their contribution to guiding our life. If we can show our passion and energy, people feel inspired and are eager to guide us on a path they believe in. Our job is to keep in mind who we want to be and what impact we want to have, then lean into opportunities which aim us in that direction.

In the early idea stage when I didn’t have any destination in mind for my adventure yet, just a vague sense that I wanted to learn, travel, and do something good, it was easier to find allies first, then let who I met shape where I went based on their connections and fields of expertise.

So, when I would talk to people, I would mention that I was trying to travel to someplace different from home so I could grow and learn as much as possible. You never know who will have contacts in exciting projects around the world.

2. Finding Funding

Getting funding can be daunting to think about, but there is a lot of funding out there if you get involved in the right spaces.

I needed the money for my trip (flights, visa fees, travel insurance, immunizations, transportation, accommodations, food, water) and to acquire some additional resources I needed for my positive-impact project. (These were things such as an audio recorder and clip-on microphone to interview the Solar Mamas.)

Since I was in school, the first place I looked was for “international experience” bursaries and scholarships at my institution. Most required applications, but some of those applications were as simple as filling a few boxes with personal information to verify that I qualified.

The one grant I received helped offset the cost of my trip, but couldn’t cover it entirely.

Since I trying to have an impact, someone I met at a networking breakfast suggested I look into pitch competitions, specifically one for social entrepreneurship. (Social entrepreneurship means business for the purpose of having a positive impact on society or the environment.) This is where I got the majority of my funding, through GreenHouse at UWaterloo!

Other potential financial sources for your own adventure include:

  • your own savings from working
    • (such as through co-op/internships)
  • crowdfunding
    • (I’m not personally experienced with this one, but there are plenty of other blogs out there to reference)
  • government volunteering programs like the International Youth Internship Program or Volunteer Cooperation Program for Canadians.
    • (With programs like these, you usually apply for specific postings, and may have less liberty to focus on your own project. This might be a good thing if you would rather contribute to existing solutions instead of piloting your own.)
  • financial support from family
    • (if your parents have the capacity to support, ask! I’m not personally experienced with this situation, but I suspect it might make it more complicated to convince your parents to let you travel – I think it was easier to convince my parents I was responsible enough to go on the trip because I amassed the funding myself.)

3. How I Convinced My Parents to Let Me Travel

This section is really about safety.

My parents were worried about me (a young woman) going alone to a foreign country, especially one where I would so obviously be a foreigner with my pale skin and light hair. They were scared I would be a target to be taken advantage of, robbed, sexually harassed, kidnapped, or any of the other nightmarish worries parents have about their kids – not to mention that I’m deathly allergic to dairy and lentils, two of the main dietary staples in India.

I won my parents’ blessing through organization and persistence, proving to them that I am thinking about what could go wrong and actively preparing for it.

These are some of the steps I took make sure I would be ok in India, and to convince my parents that I would be safe:

  • Providing a detailed itinerary for my 2-month trip showing that I would never truly be alone, with addresses of my destinations, flight numbers, and other logistical details

  • Providing a spreadsheet of contact information of allies who will support me while I’m abroad and can come to my rescue if needed

  • Making preparatory video calls between my parents and my allies so my parents could scope out the situation themselves and judge the character of the people I would be with

  • Giving 24/7 access to my location on Google Maps to my parents and one highly trusted ally in India, who they could contact if something happened to me

  • Registering with the Canadian consulate in India so the Canadian government can track me down in case of emergency (e.g. natural disaster, war, etc.)

  • Carrying a powerbank to keep my phone charged

  • Always carrying a notebook with emergency contacts, in case my phone dies or breaks

  • Stocking up on extra-strong sunscreen

  • Bringing a LifeStraw water filter attachment in my water bottle

  • Packing medications, including iron and B-12 supplements since I can’t have lentils or dairy which typically provide those nutrients to the population of Rajasthan, and Pepto-Bismol, rehydration salts, and antibiotics in case of traveler’s diarrhea

  • Bringing a stock of 6 EpiPens in heat-protective cases to save my life in case I’m accidentally exposed to one of my food allergies

  • Beginning to learn Hindi, especially the names of my allergens

Most of the items on the above list came from a concerned person asking me, “what if…?,” then I think about the answer and what I would want or need to prevent or cope with that scenario. For example:

Mom: “What if a food vendor doesn’t speak English or French – how will you communicate your allergies?”

Me: “Here’s how to say it in Hindi, and if that fails, here’s the first page of my notebook with pictograms. I’ll always be with companions, and if they know, they can ask for me.”

Mom: “What if they still don’t understand, and serve you something you’re allergic to? Food allergies are basically non-existent in India.”

Me: “If I accidentally eat something I can’t, I’ll have 2 EpiPens on me at all times and extra backups in my suitcase.”

Mom: “What if your epinephrine is made ineffective from overheating?”

Me: “Ok, these evaporative cooling packs will prevent it from overheating, even if I have no access to electricity to cool ice packs.”

These steps don’t eliminate all risk – that’s impossible – but by being as prepared as possible I was able to cope a lot better with some situations I encountered while I was away from home.

Whatever your loved ones’ concerns are, listen to them! Your parents have probably heard of more atrocities in the world than you have, just by nature of being alive longer. Take their concerns seriously – they are real possibilities. Take action to mitigate the risks, and then show them how you are taking responsibility for your safety.

Also… it helped to be determined (or “stubborn”, as my brother likes to describe me) and continue to pursue my goals methodically. Over time, my parents warmed up to the idea, especially as they saw the steps I was taking to make it happen independently. They were certainly still worried about me, but I really appreciate that they trusted me and allowed this experience of my dreams.

Other tips

Here’s a list of documents, logistical tasks, and other tips you may find helpful to prepare for your adventure:

  • Passport (valid for at least 6 months after your planned return date)

  • Visa for the country you’re visiting (tourist/student/volunteering/working visa, depending on what you’ll be doing). START THIS APPLICATION EARLY!!! It took me two months longer than advertised because of processing delays and complications. You might need the following for your visa application:

    • Letter of support/invitation from the organization you intend to volunteer for, stating the address you’ll be staying at, what you will be doing, and any accommodations or compensation they will provide for you

    • Bank account statement (sometimes needed as proof of funds)

    • Proof of address (like a utility bill with your name and address on it or your lease)

    • Proof of enrollment from your academic institution

    • Passport photo (you can often get these taken at department stores or convenience stores like Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada)

    • Online application forms specific to the visa you’re applying for

  • Yellow fever immunization card (depending on the country you’re going to and where you’ve been recently)

  • Travel immunizations specific to your destination

  • COVID-19 proof of vaccination

  • Travel insurance (check if you have travel insurance coverage through your school, parents, work, or credit cards. Otherwise, I have used Travel Guard as trip cancellation insurance to supplement my university’s travel health coverage, and SafteyWing Nomad Insurance to cover both health and trip insurance in multiple countries when I had no other coverage. These links are not sponsored; I just like their deals.)

  • 2 spare recent passport photos, printed 2”x2” (helpful in case of replacing lost documents at your embassy, or if you encounter surprise visa requirements at the border)

  • Scanned copies of your ID and travel documents. Store printed copies in your bag with you, and digital copies online where you and your emergency contact(s) can access them.

  • Register with your national consulate so they can reach you in case of emergency, and save national emergency numbers in your phone and written on paper.

  • A budget spreadsheet for your trip/project (helpful for applying for funding and staying organized)

  • Climate- and culture-appropriate clothing. Search up “packing list <your destination>” and read a few different lists to judge what you will need to pack. Don’t forget items like an electric outlet adapter, a combination lock, and a waterproof bag (like a zipper seal bag) for important documents.

  • Exchange some cash into the currency of your destination before you leave home.

  • Some countries require pristine (new/undamaged) USD cash to pay for entry on arrival. Research your destination, and bring some USD bills in excellent condition. The ATMs in the airport arrival area don’t always work. Some borders are known to refuse USD bills if they are crinkled or torn in the slightest.

For University of Waterloo Co-op Students

One of the most common questions I get is how to make international volunteer experiences count for co-op credits at the University of Waterloo.

First, let me say this: I didn’t get a co-op credit for my term in India. I had already completed the 5 co-op credits I needed to graduate with my engineering co-op accreditation, so I had the freedom to take co-op term #6 as a freebie and I didn’t bother pursuing co-op accreditation. So, I’m no expert, but here’s what I know from my co-op experience and from the Work Abroad Co-op Requirements webpage.

The easiest way to ensure your term will count is to apply through WaterlooWorks (WW). If you can find an impactful international work opportunity posted on WW that interests you, it should already be approved to meet the work term requirements, so apply as normal through the interview/rank/match process.

If you found or created an opportunity outside of WW, use the “Arranged Own Job” (AOJ) form to register the opportunity within the UW co-op process. You will need to know details such the position title and description, start/end dates, rate of pay (or alternative remuneration – see below), and your supervisor’s name/department/contact information.

As far as I know, you will need a supervisor who can complete your work term evaluation. This might be a challenge if your project is completely self-directed and/or you work with multiple different organizations like in my case. That’s the major reason I didn’t bother trying to get the co-op accreditation for my term in India.

International positions have more flexibility when it comes to UW’s compensation requirements. Unpaid/underpaid positions can be approved depending on the local market standards, as long as some form of compensation is provided (e.g. flights, meals, accommodations, local travel, etc.). Read the “Unpaid/underpaid jobs located internationally (outside of Canada/USA)” section of the co-op roles and responsibilities webpage.

To be approved for an international co-op term, you need to satisfy the UW Work Abroad Co-op Requirements, which includes being 18 years old, in full-time studies, proficient in English, and having no criminal record, among other requirements. Your destination must not be high risk (“avoid non-essential travel” or “avoid all travel”) according to the Government of Canada travel advisories.

You will have to complete a Risk Management Form in WaterlooWorks, and pass the “Co-op Work Term Readiness Training” course on LEARN with at least an 80%. The course will appear on your LEARN homepage when your term abroad is approved.

I got most of the above information from the Work Abroad Co-op Requirements webpage on the University of Waterloo website. Use that website as your primary source of information.

Talk to your co-op advisor if you have any questions.

Conclusion

This road map I have presented to achieve your impactful, educational travel dreams is based on my own experience. This is just what I figured out while methodically taking down barriers to achieve my own dreams; not everything about my experience will apply to your experience, and you might encounter different barriers that I haven’t addressed here.

Each time a barrier appears which seems to be saying that it’s not possible to do what you have set out to do, don’t lose hope. Maintain the resilience (or stubbornness, depending on who you ask) to keep finding your way around each obstacle, defining your own path towards your goals.

Patience, determination, resourcefulness, and creativity will be major skills you’ll have to call upon. Before you know it, you’ll be arriving at your destination in a whirlwind of introductions and new experiences, wondering how the heck you actually made it happen.

If you’re interested in more details about my specific experience in India with the Solar Mamas, along with all the roadblocks and project pivots along the way, I’ll be posting my full story soon!