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Volunteering Abroad


Red Alert
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I know some on here must have done it. I am looking at spending a few months away somewhere. Have had a brief scout around on the net, http://www.gvi.co.uk/ is the site I see most often. Anybody got any recommendations or story's? I would like to go somewhere and work with kids so it feels really like I am helping, somewhere that speaks Spanish too as I have been taking evening classes in Spanish for the last 10 months.

 

http://www.gvi.co.uk/projects/central-america/honduras/volunteer-orphanage/home

 

Looks like it would amaze and upset in equal measures.

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A couple of friends of mine have recently got back from their second stint working in Ghana; they went through Original Volunteers (http://www.originalvolunteers.co.uk). They can't speak highly enough about it, and I'm very tempted to do something similar myself. They did 3 weeks over Xmas & New Year and similar a couple of months back (though got delayed getting back with the volcanic ash thing so stayed for a couple of weeks longer than planned).

 

Have a look through the website, they offer placements all over the world in a variety of different roles. My friends were based around a children's school and did anything from teaching to helping to build a new block of the school to managing a local football competition!

 

The site says that the average amount of time to spend there is 3 weeks, but there's no real limit on duration of stay. Hats off if you go for it.

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Red Alert, no worries at all. Like I said I'm really tempted to give it a go myself. I'm currently taking a career break and doing some volunteering here in Southampton but I think that once I get summer and quite a few committments out of the way I'll be giving this a go. Hearing my friends talk about what they did, and how you can provide so much help for really little outlay and relative effort, it's just a thoroughly appealing thing to do.

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It's something I would have liked to do, but it seems weird to pay to do it, it then effectively just becomes an extended holiday where you get to go and look at disadvantaged people, who probably get new tourists visiting them every few weeks. Because of the cost involved in volunteering now, it seems to be a huge industry targeted just at the young upper middle class (usually graduates, who've just spent 3/4 yrs studying a specialist degree, yet don't know what job they want).

 

TEFL (teaching english as a foreign language) seems to make a bit more sense, in that you usually take a course first, and then get paid to teach in other countries, that way you're actually contributing something that locals can't do themselves.

 

Anyway the whole gap year/volunteering thing appeals to me, with the exception that 1. I can nowhere near afford it, and 2. it seems to be the fashion at the moment and as such the people doing it with you could easily be the annoying sort who are struggling to fit their hair straightners, crocs, ray-bans, tanning oil, hair gel, and daddy's credit card (and thats just the 'men') into their oversized impractical wheely suitcases.

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A couple of friends of mine have recently got back from their second stint working in Ghana; they went through Original Volunteers (http://www.originalvolunteers.co.uk). They can't speak highly enough about it, and I'm very tempted to do something similar myself. They did 3 weeks over Xmas & New Year and similar a couple of months back (though got delayed getting back with the volcanic ash thing so stayed for a couple of weeks longer than planned).

 

Have a look through the website, they offer placements all over the world in a variety of different roles. My friends were based around a children's school and did anything from teaching to helping to build a new block of the school to managing a local football competition!

 

The site says that the average amount of time to spend there is 3 weeks, but there's no real limit on duration of stay. Hats off if you go for it.

 

Great site that - I was a bit surprised that North Wales was not on the list though...........!!:rolleyes:

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