paying to volunteer?

marvin2k

whats the story with paying money to volunteer?

there are lots of volunteering options with usit and other groups for projects that seem very worthwhile .However they are often fairly expensive . Id wonder if it would do more good to just donate that money to a group rather than fund yourself being there .I can understand paying for your own flights transport , visa etc but the program fees are a bit much . I mean id be willing to crash on a mat on the floor and eat whatever the locals are eating .Do they really need volunteers or is it just a service like you give us money and we give you an experience but we really dont need you to be there that much .Has anybody done any of these , could you tell how you found it?Im also wondering if anyone is aware of volunteering projects where you just pay for flights and basics .

elambra

I just went with 'Travel 2 Teach' in Vietnam ...and yes we were really needed

marvin2k

had a look at the travel to teach website ,

two week stay 450 euro plus 250 euro course stay , so 700 euro .Add on flights and insurance etc , its a lot of money , which if you just donated could go very far .

From what I heard Vietnam is not an expensive place so 700 euro would not be needed to keep the volunteer in shelter and rice for two weeks .Im up for some volunteering but I dont think the places that charge you to do it are really crying out for the help . Ive been paid to teach english in asia , id gladly do it for free but i think its a bit cheeky to be asked to pay for it .

elambra

I paid 650eur for 4 weeks, T2T got 150eur of it for the running of their organisation (compared to some places based in Ireland that took 90% of the cash. Since t2t is based in Thailand their costs are cheaper. Remember it costs to run a business even if it's not-for-profit) and the School got the rest of the money.

The owner rents a house for 6 volunteers to stay in, we pay for our own food.

The rest of the money goes towards the school. The maintenance, food (we give the kids lunch every day) and one paid Vietnamese teacher all cost money, and from pretty expensive research, t2t was the agency that gave most of the money to the actual school..

That said, people are always welcome to volunteer to teach at the school, but they don't get shelter and would be expected to give as much donations to the school as we did (500eur)..

cfitz

elambra wrote: »

That said, people are always welcome to volunteer to teach at the school, but they don't get shelter and would be expected to give as much donations to the school as we did (500eur)..

For someone without volunteering experience this is quite difficult to understand. If they need volunteers and you turn up as a useful volunteer how come they turn you away unless you make a donation also? Do they have a surplus of volunteers?

sunflower_sal

I did a 12 week volunteer programme in Thailand from Jan-Apr through usit. I applied through there site had to do an interview and took ages for them to get back to me. The woman in Usit couldn't tell me anything at all about the programme so I went in fairly blind just know I would be doing 6 weeks teaching and 6 weeks orphanage work.

They could tell me nothing else except that my 700euro would cover my 3 months food and board and a brief intro to thai culture.

When I arrived in Thaland I was crapping myself but ended up in an amazing place with loads of volunteers... Two weeks thai culture experience taking in temples, tiger sanctuaries, dinners out in restaraunts cooking lessons.Loads and loads of stuff it felt more like a holiday at the start but then got stuck into teaching and both that and the orphanage were AMAZING!!! best thing i've ever done.

I also had the added bonus of finging out that english volunteers were paying 1000 POUNDS upwards for doing HALF the duration of my programme.... (Assuming all the extra cash was gong into the U.K company's back pocket.)

I became friends with the head co-ordinators and I know my 700 was strictly my food board and to pay towards the tools and materials we would buy to work in the orphanage. As a paying volunteer I think it was WELL worth the money for an amazing experience.....Usit hadn't a clue what they were doing so i'm not advising anyone to go through them but Greenway Thailand is the org I worked for and they DO need help year round but they teach yu so much and you have a great time. Some people do just go for the 4 week long experience prog but genuine people whoo want to work with kids in need will not be left disappointed.

Funny thing though... I checked out of interest back on Usit a few weeks ago and the prgramme I did in January for 700euro ... has gone upp to 1200 euro now, I wonder is the extra 600 paying for a representative who knows what they're doing or is it feeding the kids in Ingburi??

elambra

cfitz wrote: »

For someone without volunteering experience this is quite difficult to understand. If they need volunteers and you turn up as a useful volunteer how come they turn you away unless you make a donation also? Do they have a surplus of volunteers?

They don't strictly turn you away, but t2t (at the moment anyway) has a surplus of volunteers wanting to do this work and if the school had a choice between getting 500e or getting someone who could be potentially unreliable and losing out on 500e they would obviously pick people through t2t...

Sometimes Volunteers would turn up and we'd take them in, but they were usually of no use and would only turn up for one or two days..

This is a small school I was working in, only 3 classes so it's different for diffrenet cases

Glacier

If you had the money to pay, what is the ultimate volunteering experience? I wouldn't want to teach though.

paddylonglegs

My firends went to middle america last year to help with conservation of turtles,is this on the same level as helping out kids in an orphanage or school?They held lots of fundraisers and raised the money that way,it sometimes felt like we were just funding their holiday.Not sure what the difficulty rating was of turtle conservation in the carribean.