Volunteer opportunities in Northern Thailand

spinandscribble

thought since it took me so long to figure out a place to volunteer i might put this up to help others. ppl tend to go with i to i ect as they think it saves hassle but they're a profit making organisation and you're better off giving the extra dosh to the charity you'll be working at.

There is an organisation in Chiang Rai running some cool projects
to do with Montessori education, agriculture and handicrafts. They have just
branched into volunteering experiences, however look to give their
volunteers a wide range of placements over their time so you can experience
many different things. However if you spoke to them I'm sure they could organise for you to volunteer in one place. They do charge a fee which goes towards accommodating you,
however I know that for this project the money goes to directly help the
projects he is working on (something that doesn't always happen with other
organisations). He is very organised and lovely to deal with i hear. The volunteer
website is this
http://www.worldwidelanguagestudy.com/t ... ngrai.html and
their foundation website is this http://www.khomloy.org/index.html

In Mae Sai there is an organisation called DEPDC. They
have a formal application process and prefer longer term volunteers usually
6 months, however its worth contacting them about doing it for a shorter
period of time. Their web link for volunteers is
http://www.depdc.org/eng/volunteer/volunteer.html

Child's dream are a very friendly crowd of different projects but have only one short term (3 wks or more) project in tomato village in the hills a hour away from Chiang Mai. It seems interesting but its very isolated but if you're after that type of rural living then great, they could do with some volunteers.

There is also an organisation in Chiang Rai called Mirror art who run
volunteer placements. you can check out their website here http://www.mirrorartgroup.org/volunteerenglish.html
This is the crowd i'l be working at now as childlife has cancelled their western volunteers but this crowd came highly recommended to me.

If you are planning on mid may school should almost have started again.
There are heaps of schools that love having native English speakers teach
that you would be able to volunteer at. You could almost approach any school
and they would be happy for you to teach.
- Kru Uan is an English teacher for one of the largest schools in
central chiang rai easystudythai@thaimail.com

Don't know if this will be of use to anyone but after spending the last few months online looking at people wandering the web not sure how to get into volunteering without handing over a few grand to some big money making organisation i thought this might be of help to someone. Most of these dont require you to pay to work there but some like mirror group try to help by putting all the volunteers together in a building where you'll eat/sleep/cook together for only around 190 euro a month, that covers food/bed and some extras like treks/tribe village stays. this money will then go back into the charity.