Arcadia New Zealand

Every semester we have a ‘Give Back to New Zealand' week. The purpose of this is to look at the study abroad experience from a different angle. Instead of seeing the experience as a circle with you in the middle, we wanted students to put NZ in the middle of the circle and look at how they can impact New Zealand in a positive way.

The week is optional, yet over the years we have seen students put their hearts and souls (and backs) into a variety of activities. These have included painting a mural on the wall of a public school, visiting a local rest home and entertaining the elderly folk who live there, working with animals at a local animal shelter, planting trees – to name just a few. One student, Joey Maloney, from Occidental College, climbed a tree on the University of Otago campus and performed for passers-by for an entire day and collected some hundreds of dollars for a local charity.

This year for the first time we managed to connect with a local primary school in Dunedin and nine of our students sat with children on a Friday afternoon and helped them with reading and writing for a few hours. Some loved the experience so much they asked if they could continue on a weekly basis. One student wrote about how weird it was to be able to enter a school without being buzzed in and found it interesting the way the teacher set different work for different students depending on their reading level. She also loved the way each classroom had a door to the playground and playing and exercising outside had such a big role in student learning.

We also had a group of students in Auckland take a ferry out to an Motuihe Island and planted native tree species as part of their volunteer efforts.

Please let us know if you would like to get more involved with volunteer opportunities while you are in New Zealand and keep your eye out for 'Give Back to NZ' week 1 – 9 October 2016.