Are you a student, graduate or young adult looking for a meaningful way to spend your summer, after graduation or as part of a reading backpacker trip or holiday? Check out our essential guide to volunteering your way around the world with top tips for how to apply, where to go and recommendations for the best projects and organisations.
Why Volunteer Abroad?
Have you ever taken a trip that blurred in your memory after you left? Perhaps the hostels that began to seem the same, the whirlwind visiting of local sites or days spent lounging on a beach? Memories sometimes run together until you realise that a defining cultural impression of a place you visited is missing.
Marcel Proust wrote, “the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” By volunteering your way around the world, you can not only witness those new landscapes, but see them in a whole different way.
True cultural exchanges bring the world closer together. They provide lasting effects to the visitors and give something back to the indigenous communities. There is no better way to become immersed in a community than to serve it.
The value that is created when people of different cultures become role models for each other. The influx of foreign volunteers into isolated villages and impoverished communities provides a direct contact with alternative cultural traditions, especially for female participants. Seeing a woman from another country bending over a shovel, digging a canal or irrigation ditch, may influence the adult women and their daughters in ways that we are not currently aware.
You’ll really learn a lot and get to help worthwhile causes – there are so many projects in need of publicity and help. You might not realise the value that the experience will have for you personally too.
Best Volunteering Abroad Programs
Don’t choose to dig a well in Cambodia just because it’s a cheap flight from Thailand, if digging a well isn’t something you are going to enjoy. Make sure you follow your passion.
Check out the organisation to ensure that it is of interest for you and its mission is something you can really get behind. If you are passionate about human rights, volunteer with refugee services around the globe. If you love children, volunteer at schools and orphanages. If you want to help protect the planet and our animal species, then make sure you choose projects that are doing that work.
Top Rated Volunteer Organisations
Some organisations provide an authentic volunteering experience in many of the world’s most spectacular countries, while making sure that safety, support and accountability are paramount.
Some companies have more than 25 years experience in running and supporting volunteering projects worldwide, and with dedicated teams of staff in worldwide locations like the UK and the USA, providing peace of mind for volunteers and families back home, as well as unforgettable experiences.
These are the best websites to use when organising a volunteer experience.
One World 365
One World 365 is one of the most established companies helping students, aduates and young travellers to work, volunteer, intern and travel overseas. Search projects in 100+ destinations. To apply for a project, or for more information, click the “Apply Now” link on the project description and one of their volunteer advisers will be able to help you find the perfect trip.
Go Find Programs
Go Find Programs is your easy to use yellow pages directory to finding information about the best volunteer projects around the globe.
Gap Year World
Keen to take a gap year and give back? Check out the opportunities on Gap Year World.
How You Can Make a Difference
There are three general areas where you can expect to make an impact:
Project:
You bring energy, experience and skills to share with the local community. Whether you are helping plant trees or sharing medical skills on a health project, you are making your mark.
Cross-cultural sharing:
When people come across borders to live and work together, it’s powerful. It breaks down barriers and dispels stereotypes. Whether you are connecting with a local or another volunteer from a different country, those relationships you create matter.
Yourself:
In travelling and volunteering, you will probably change for the better. You will pick up new skills, have new experiences and make new friends. How each of us grows is deeply personal to who we are, but be ready to change in ways you may never have imagined.
Short Term & Summer Volunteer Trips
Short trips travelling and volunteering abroad during summer can be perfect for students, graduates and first time travellers or those with limited time available who still want to have a meaningful experience, learn more about the culture they are visiting, and still make an invaluable contribution to a long-running conservation or community project.
Whether you’re looking for an adventure excursion, to add a volunteering experience into a longer period of travelling, or use a short break to give something back by volunteering, you can find a huge range of projects suitable for you. By joining a project you’ll have the opportunity to get involved in an activity or project where you’ll meet a whole new group of people, learn and have a completely new experience.
How to Volunteer for Free / Low Cost
Many non-profit organisations rely on volunteers to carry out their daily missions; if you plan it right, you can work your way around the world very cheaply by doing volunteer service gigs. Here are some methods and tips for doing so:
Incorporate Volunteering into Existing Travel Plans
When travelling internationally, the biggest expense of volunteering is getting there. Very few organisations pay your airfare, unless you are committed to a long-term assignment. If you can work volunteering into the travel plans you already have, your expenses go down and your chances of using volunteer work to extend your travels more cheaply, or even for free, go way up.
Participate for longer, rather than shorter periods of time.
There is a rule of travel that you may have already discovered: the longer you stay in one place, the more your expenses decrease. You are cutting airfare and long-route transportation costs, and accommodation is usually much cheaper by the week or month.
This concept applies just as much to volunteering as it does to regular travel. Due to the amount of resources an organisation has to spend to recruit and train you, costs passed along to the volunteers for their expenses are much higher when you are only volunteering for a few days or a couple of weeks.
Once you start volunteering for several weeks or months at a time, the organisation gets more value for your work in relation to the resources they’ve spent setting you up, and it’s more likely that you will not have to front many expenses associated with volunteering.
In fact, for longer-term volunteers of a month or more, many organisations will provide you housing, some meals and maybe even a small stipend. For a really long-term commitment, say the year or two years required for the Peace Corps or teaching English overseas, some organisations will even provide your airfare.
Plan Your Volunteer Route for Maximum Effectiveness
When it’s time to travel from one place to another, use the internet and low-cost airlines to figure out the best geographical route to take. Start by searching on aggregator sites like Kayak, Wego, Momondo and Skyscanner. Then be sure and check out Which Budget to make sure you are finding the best deals.
Often you can just check low-cost tickets or the best deals between countries without putting in specific cities or dates. This will help you figure out the cheapest points to travel, and volunteer, between.
For example, going from one place in Europe to another using Ryan Air would almost certainly be inexpensive. Likewise, flying between dozens of Asian cities on Air Asia can be done for EUR 50 or less. By knowing the lowest-cost transportation options ahead of time, you can search for and choose volunteer projects in the destinations that appeal to you.
Safety Tips for First-Time Volunteers
A volunteering program or gap year trip is a great opportunity to explore other countries, to help make a difference, and to further a future career. For many teenagers and young adults – as well as their parents – this can be daunting though.
Travelling to a developing country is an amazing experience, but culture, language and infrastructure differences can be challenging and in some cases problematic.
Be aware that sometimes arranging treks, trips and even transport from within a foreign country can often mean placing your safety in the hands of companies or individuals who are not required to pass any background checks, and are ultimately not accountable to any respected authority.
Our best advice is to research all companies before applying and also follow all important new and local safety advice on arrival.
Popular Projects
Helping Animals
This is one of the most desirable ways to give back and it is easy to see why. Who wouldn’t want to help at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand, or work with lions in South Africa, or slots in Costa Rica, or sea turtles in Greece?!
Community Development
There are so many life-changing programs where you can work with people and communities in developing countries around the globe. Popular options include helping building and constructions projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Or teaching and improving educational efforts. Or working in community outreach centres in a medical capacity.
Conservation
The world more than ever needs help, with the impact of global warming and habitat taking effect. Play your role in improving environmental awareness and work to improve nature and conservation.
Sports Coaching Abroad
By playing sports children gain confidence in themselves and learn about the importance of working well in a team. By volunteering to coach children, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, volunteers are helping to contribute to engaging children to improve their skills as an individual and have fun. Valuable skills that will help further their future progress.
Regardless of whether you want to help coach a specific sport or just be involved in general sports coaching activities, projects are committed to delivering the opportunity for children to become interested in and get involved with sport. Volunteers are vital in the progress of these projects development and helping to meet the needs of the children.
Apply
There you have it, everything you need to know before volunteering abroad.
With a little thought and planning, you could spend weeks, months or years travelling the world very cheaply, doing good and getting an immense amount of joy and satisfaction in return.
Hopefully this guide has given you the inspiration to apply and helped give you ideas for where to go and what to do. Now go participate and let us know how you get on.