“A young man (volunteered) in a school for blind, deaf and mentally challenged children and fell in love with helping kids overcome their disabilities,” Riccioli added. “He’s now going into speech pathology.”

It’s not just about career choice, but also about the skills that participants receive.

Angelique Snyder spent a year in Costa Rica with Francis Corps, volunteering at a day care. She has since nearly completed another year of service, this time in the United States with a different organization, and plans to begin her masters in clinical psychology in the fall. Snyder credits her volunteer experience with propelling her into her future career.

“I don’t think I would have got in (the program) if I hadn’t done (the service years),” Snyder said. “It fostered a lot of growth. I think I matured a lot.”

Snyder said her two years of service prepared her by developing certain skills.

“I’m more confident now,” she said. “I learned patience and … to remain calm in stressful situations.

“I learned to rely a lot on my community for support, and to be a better member of a community.”

And for Stephanie Kelly, who travelled to Cuernavaca, Mexico, the experience was all about insight.

“It was probably my first encounter with extreme poverty,” Kelly said. “It was heartbreaking. It was really hard to see.”

Kelly spent 12 days in Mexico with Global Connections, a group organized by the Canadian Catholic Students Association, helping out in the community but also learning from local people about their struggles and hardships.

“You’re learning about their struggles through their eyes, through their words,” Kelly said. “It gave me a different perspective. It let me see things through people who are actually experiencing them themselves.”

It’s been more than two years since Kelly was in Mexico, but she said she still thinks about her experience.

“The thing that stays with me is the simplicity of faith,” Kelly said. “I saw people that are just barely surviving … and they have an even stronger faith than I do. They have a passion for life that I hadn’t seen before.”

Ryan Gerrish and Mitch Bloemberg, two graduating students from St. Mary Catholic Secondary School in Hamilton, Ont., had a similar experience when they travelled to the Dominican Republic last March for a volunteer trip organized through their school’s D.R.E.A.M.S. program (Dominican Republic Education and Medical Supplies). They spent a week building a house.

But Gerrish said her week-long trip to the Dominican solidified her desire to become a nurse and work in Third World countries.

“It’s what I want to do with my life,” Gerrish said.

For Bloemberg, he and a friend want to implement the D.R.E.A.M.S. program at their university next year. And he has personally grown from his volunteer experience.

“The biggest thing you can take away is appreciating all the things you have and treating people with a lot more respect and dignity,” Bloemberg said.

As for Kelly, she has wise words for anyone who is perhaps a little unsure if they should consider a volunteer trip.

“If you immerse yourself in another culture … that’s the way you’re going to see the world and be inspired to change things,” she said. “The people you meet are going to impact you for possibly your whole life.”