Volunteering your time and energy overseas should always be free right?
Wrong.
This is the biggest misconception and complaint among prospective volunteers. On the surface the idea of paying to volunteer overseas seems ridiculous. Often rumors are thrown around of mega-corporate volunteer organizations paying six figure salaries by charging people to volunteer. This is far from the truth.
Since the early 1990s a large percentage of volunteers abroad have been short term (less than 3 months) volunteers. In many cases, the organizations and communities which host the volunteers have found they can be more of a burden than a help.
Short term volunteers do not have the time necessary to help the community as a individual: not staying long enough to learn of the community’s problems, culture, and sometimes even language.
The result is that short term volunteers need to have guidance and leadership in order to best direct their energy. This guidance comes in the form of special organizations which host and support volunteers from abroad.
An organization acts as a middleman for volunteers and communities/causes, providing the former with arranged food and board, emotional support, orientations, flight information, and sometimes entertainment, all the while providing the later with able and willing bodies and brains. These organizations are funded by the fees they charge volunteers.
Without these middle men, volunteers have to independently find projects, housing, and local transportation before even buying a plane ticket. This can and has been done by independent volunteers, but is takes more time, energy and in some cases money than using a middle-man organization.
Simple rule of volunteering abroad: Unless you have special applicable skills not possessed by the organization, expect to pay. Examples of these skills are pilots, doctors, mechanics, teachers, IT specialists, engineers, and lawyers.
Professionally skilled international volunteers still require the same expenses (orientations, support, bedding) to the community as unskilled volunteers, however skilled volunteers bring valuable abilities generally not be possessed by the community.
“After the cost of bedding, food, transportation, and orientation are calculated against the amount of work a three week unskilled volunteer can accomplish, we discovered that these volunteers actually are burdening our organization both staff-wise and financially.
The only volunteers that we still consider worthwhile are professionals: Doctors, Lawyers, and Engineers since these types can bring special skills to our projects which would not be present otherwise.”
-Jackson Doorman, of New Community Africa
Projects requiring manual labor are cheaper when using local labor who do not require the same level of support as overseas volunteers. Furthermore, paying for local labor stimulates the local economy.
In eyes of an organization, you can see the difference in “cons” between unskilled volunteers and local labor.
Unskilled Volunteers:
Advertising Costs (generally through the internet)
Local Transport to and from airport
Room and Board
Orientations
No knowledge of local culture
Little to no knowledge of local language
Available to work for a limited time.
Local Labor:
Pay
Many volunteers do not realize a large percent of the fees are actually used to buy the materials needed to complete projects.
“Their money actually helped buy the cement and tools necessary for the school, while their muscles actually worked to build it.”
-Stephanie Stallman
It is probably more accurate the think of the fees as a required donation to the project. Without these fees, many small non-profit volunteer organizations couldn't fund their projects.
Volunteering abroad and volunteering at a local soup kitchen are very different. The costs involved in the former can be quite high or quite low, but if you find the right organization it will be the experience of a lifetime.