Volunteer options may be available in conjunction with travel options.
Depending on the activity category, participants may be limited to specially trained or licensed individuals (such as in health care). Most programs require volunteers to pay up front fees to fund accommodations or what not – many volunteers must be fully self supported, paying for travel, resident accommodations and food.
- College student or youth programs. These may include any of the other categories, as well as may include special activities. For example, hundreds of students from one university spent their 3 weeks Christmas break assisting clean up efforts in Puerto Rico and Haiti after fall hurricanes left much wreckage in their wake. Many are offered as “internship” programs, and may include working on international business, business development or research projects, and can provide directly relevant experience.
- Teaching – Especially English language. English is the dominate language globally and there is a big demand for those who can teach English. Paid and volunteer positions exist to teach classes or as private tutors. Unfortunately, many of these programs have no specific qualifications, and some paid positions are slow to issue payments. Be cautious.
- Environment – Various programs send volunteers to participate in clean up functions, assist with research programs, or give talks and presentations.
- Medical/Health related – these typically provide trained volunteers to deliver health services to those in need. Generally limited to license doctors, nurses, paramedics and other health care professionals.
- Disaster assistance (like health care, may require you have specific skills)
- Church group sponsored activities which may include the categories above, plus religion specific “missions” and evangelism, or support functions for church activities.
- Well known programs such as the Peace Corps. I know several people who volunteered with the Peace Corps (2 1/2 year commitment) and worked on meaningful projects that leveraged their skills.
- “Virtual Volunteer Programs” – these may have arisen due to pandemic travel restrictions – not sure. Regardless, participants work remotely with their target program. A volunteer in the U.S. may provide business and marketing assistance, for example, to small businesses in Bolivia, over the Internet.
Observations
Sketchy and Expensive
My first pass at gathering information left me thinking many of these programs are bit hazy and sketchy. They feel like they are preying on the desire of many to be virtuous and help others – and have created a nice business “organizing” volunteer travel.
Searching online finds many organizations that will organize and set up “volunteer” options for you – but unless you sign up with your name, address, phone number, email address and lots of personal data (which sounds like this is going to be a sales pitch), their info is flashy but sketchy and limited.
One web site requires you to “sign up” before giving information about possible volunteer activities. Reading the footnotes, in addition to “per day” fees of $50 to $150/day, there is a $299 registration fee, a 5% banking fee, additional weekly fees that vary depending on the project, criminal background check fees, daily food and transportation costs, air travel costs, and more. Volunteers may also need to pay for language training.
Adult Volunteer Programs
Have not found any that seem honest and meaningful. Some are travel programs – fly in for 2-3 weeks and provide relatively low skilled assistance to a community. More money was spent on air travel and hotel accommodation than the value delivered to the community. It would have been better to have just sent money directly to those in need.
Target Young People
Many (most all) of the programs I found online, even if they say they target adults, focus on young people – college students or those in their 20s. You can verify this by checking their social media presence: virtually everyone in their photos is young. This can be fine but creates skepticism that they have programs appropriate for skilled adult volunteers.
Some programs seem relevant for students seeking hands on internship options in an international setting and/or for developing language skills.
What Work Will You Do?
Many programs are not skilled work but may have you restoring hiking trails, distributing food and clothing, working as an unpaid, low skilled staff for a “NGO” handling paperwork, and helping with fund raising events. Which might not fit the “Instagram-able” view of what you thought you might be doing!
This is a problem with many volunteer organizations – they are not set up to use highly skilled volunteers and use volunteers to replace minimal wage job functions. One “international volunteer” program says volunteers may “help sorting stock on hand”, assist at fund raising activities and general administrative tasks.
Volunteers’ specialized skills go unused, unleveraged, and the true value the skilled volunteer might deliver to those in need is wasted. It would be more economically efficient to hire local workers, at minimum wage, thereby boosting the local economy – than for the non-profit to use “volunteer” workers from abroad, especially considering the high expense of flying to the destination.
“NGO” is a non-government organization and has become a catch all phrase for any organization wanting to sound special. Some may be non-profit and some might not be. “Non-profit” does not mean an organization has no profits. It means only that the organizational structure has no “owners” or shareholders. All “profits” must be spent on the mission of the organization – but this can include high salaries for executive staff – and are not distributed to “owners” or “shareholders”. There are legions of non-profit organizations that spend 90+% of their incoming funds on fund raising and executive/staff salaries and 10% on direct assistance. Sorry to pop the bubble on this.
Many of these programs are expensive, make poor use of volunteer skills and prey upon those wishing to do good deeds for others.
Virtual Volunteer Programs
Several virtual volunteer programs enable you to help an organization or group in another country, from the comfort of your home. Think Zoom meetings and email!
Some of these leverage your skills, and for college students, may provide relevant internship opportunities and help develop existing or new skills.
Work may include grant writing (which could be a useful intern skill if this is your career direction), web site and software development, business and market planning and so on.
Student interns may even earn course credit for their efforts.
Are There Good Programs?
Undoubtedly yes. I see reviews from some students who participated as interns and found the experience relevant to their international career interests. They have posted positive reviews.
But how do you find and connect with good programs?
From my brief online sampling I have not found a way to verify good programs and that their programs are value to the participant or those they are intending to help. Sorry for the cynicism here but this is how it looks in my online survey, plus some comments from people I know who have traveled as volunteers in the past.
In conclusion (for now), my take away is there are some good programs, their value depends on where you are in life, what you want to get out of the program, and that you must look at these programs with “eyes wide open” as some may not match their sales pitch.
Featured image by: Image by Kristin Baldeschwiler from Pixabay