An Open Letter to Anyone Planning to Volunteer Abroad

Dear future volunteer,

We have been arranging volunteer placements since 2007, and in that time more than 25,000 people have passed through our programmes. We have read their applications, answered their late-night questions, met them at airports, and read their reviews afterwards. This letter is the advice we would give a friend who told us they were thinking about it. It is not a sales pitch. Some of it may put you off, and if it does, that is probably the right outcome for you and for the community you would have joined.

You are going to help, not to save

The school in Tamale, the clinic in Arusha, the turtle hatchery in Kosgoda: these existed before you arrived and will run after you leave. The people who staff them know their work better than you will in a month. Your job is to add to their capacity for the time you are there, doing what they ask, the way they ask it. Volunteers who arrive with this attitude are welcomed back. Volunteers who arrive to fix things are politely tolerated.

Choose the cause before the country

Most people start with a place. It is more useful to start with what you can actually offer. If you have never worked with children, a childcare placement will be hard for you and not ideal for the children either. If you are fit, practical and happy outdoors, conservation work will use you well. If you are a nursing student, a healthcare placement matched to your level will teach you more in three weeks than a year of reading. Decide what you are for; then look at where that is needed.

Go for longer than feels comfortable

One week is a visit. Two weeks is enough to be useful in conservation and community work. For anything involving teaching or children, four weeks is where you stop being a novelty and start being help, because the children have stopped testing you and the teacher trusts you with a group. We run programmes from one week because people’s lives have limits, and we will tell you honestly which placements work at that length and which do not.

Understand what you are paying for

You will pay a programme fee, and you should know exactly where it goes. Ours covers your accommodation, your meals, airport pickup, orientation, the placement itself and an in-country team you can reach at any hour. It does not cover flights, insurance or visas, and we say so up front. Every fee is published on our cost page and the reasoning is on why we charge. Whoever you go with, ask for the same breakdown. If a provider cannot or will not give it, walk away.

Take the safeguarding rules seriously

If your placement involves children or vulnerable adults you will be asked for a criminal background check before you go. You will be told not to be alone with individual children, not to photograph them without permission, and not to give gifts to some and not others. These rules protect the children first and you second. A programme that does not have them is not one you should join.

Expect the first three days to be hard

Nearly everyone has a low point around day two or three: the heat, the food, the language, the realization that you are far from home and the work is less structured than you imagined. It passes. By the end of the first week most volunteers have a routine, a favourite breakfast and someone they can talk to. Knowing this in advance is most of the cure. Your in-country coordinator has seen it hundreds of times and will not think less of you for saying so.

Your family will worry; give them something concrete

Send parents and partners the practical details before you go: where you are staying, who your coordinator is, how the 24-hour support works, what the insurance covers. We wrote a guide for parents because we were answering the same questions every week. A worried family is easier to reassure with facts than with enthusiasm.

Learn the greetings before you land

Twenty words of the local language change everything. Not because you will hold conversations, but because trying signals respect, and respect is repaid quickly. Hello, thank you, please, sorry, good morning, how are you, the numbers to ten. Do this on the plane if you have not done it before.

Be honest in your review

When you get home, write about what actually happened, including what did not work. Our volunteers have left around 1,460 reviews on Reviews.io and the average is 4.8 out of 5, but the ones we read most carefully are the ones with a criticism in them, because those are how placements improve. The next volunteer benefits from your honesty more than from your praise.

And then come back to it

Not necessarily on a plane. Some of the most valuable things former volunteers have done happened at home: fundraising for a school they taught at, sending equipment to a clinic, staying in touch with a coordinator for years. The placement is a beginning. What you do with it is up to you.

If, having read all this, you still want to go, we would be glad to help you do it well. Start with programmes by cause, read what past volunteers said, and ask us anything. There are no silly questions; we have heard them all.

With respect and best wishes for the trip,

The Volunteering Solutions team

Before you go: a short checklist

• The cause chosen before the country, based on what you can offer
• A placement long enough to be useful in that cause
• A written breakdown of what the fee covers and does not
• Background check arranged, if the placement involves children
• Insurance that covers the activities you will be doing
• Visa requirements confirmed with the embassy and your coordinator
• Family briefed with names, addresses and the support line
• Twenty words of the local language

Written by

Luni

Luni Chhochoon writes for Volunteering Solutions, a certified B Corporation, covering volunteer abroad programmes, destinations and tips for travelling with purpose.

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