Venture Within

An absolutely amazing experience! I can’t wait to go back again!

I was fortunate enough to experience both the Costa Rica and Thailand projects and have only great things to say about them. Venture Within allows you to experience the country and its cultures in ways that being a tourist can't get you. During the project you truly immerse yourself in the culture and come out with a new found respect of others. I still to this day keep in touch with the member of my groups two years after the projects. Working together with like minded individuals is so much fun and is great practice for the future.

It was my first time traveling outside my country when I joined Venture Within. Being apart of the group and having transportation, accommodation, activities, and food taken care of for me was such a great relief.

I highly recommend all Venture Within projects. You will come out learning so much, not only about the country and culture, but about yourself.

I was lucky enough to be a participant for the June 2018 Thailand program. To say that it was a life-changing trip would be an understatement. It was such a unique experience of complete cultural immersion, which opened my eyes in so many ways! Through the leadership portion of the program, I learned tools that will help me both personally and professionally. Experiencing multiple cities of Thailand and seeing the similarities and differences of each was awesome! Some of my favorite highlights include river walks with the elephants in Surin, the Monk Chat in Chiang Mai, and our free day, which was spent white water rafting through the jungle! These two weeks were the best of my life, and I'm now planning to participate in the Costa Rica program next year. If you're considering participating in a Venture Within program, DO IT! You won't regret it!

My experience with Venture-within was everything I needed and so much more. The people I was randomly paired up with ended up being some of my very best lifelong friends! Not to mention our group leaders were two of the coolest people I've ever met! Christy and Liz kept us in a safe environment the entire time, wasn't worried one bit about my safety on the entirety of the trip to Costa Rica. They also have helped me out in my future goals as well with outstanding recommendations to help me get to exactly where I want to be on my path. The leadership workshops really helped me to pause and reflect during our time, which is hard to do when you're submerged in another culture. The workshops were great to sit down and sort through the many thoughts and feelings and to also see your experience through your group mates eyes as well! They really helped me to come out of my shell and seeing the same world from different perspectives had to be my favorite part of the workshops. The cultural aspect of the trip was so rewarding. We dove into another part of the world and language to help out and learn as much as we could, and that's exactly what we did! I learned so much more of the language there than I ever could reading a book! Liz gave us mini lessons of the language that we tried out in real life, and what's a better way to learn the language than that? Also being able to provide helping hands in a place that needs it the most was just what I was looking for. Helping other people helped me to find myself in the end.

I 100% recommend Venture-within with all of my heart!