In 2014, we were frantically searching for at least some information about volunteering abroad to start traveling without a job or a lot of money. Since then there has been even too much information: it has become even more difficult to sort through it and find something worthwhile.

I’ve managed to participate in 26 volunteer projects on three continents, and I consider volunteering to be one of the highest quality ways to travel on a budget. Hence the article – detailed, honest and subjective.

What kind of “volunteering” are we talking about?

The word “volunteerism” has many meanings, but this article will be purely about sharing experiences and knowledge. That means I will not be referring to social or highly specialized volunteering – helping orphans, supporting the community during natural disasters, or cleaning up trash in the yard. Those are also good topics, but they have little to do with travel.

So here goes: volunteering is about exchanging your time and skills for lodging, experiences, and varied experiences.

Volunteering as a sharing experience

In my opinion, this is an ideal case. There is a host who needs help, and there is a traveler who is willing to provide it. Help can be absolutely anything: from painting a house to feeding cheetahs, from harvesting crops to drinking alcohol together in a Muslim country. There are projects in almost all the countries available to visit; in some you can count them on the fingers, but in others you have to choose from three thousand options.

More often than not, a volunteer is not expected to help for a few hours a day, but rather to be involved in the process, to communicate and share knowledge. If a person comes to build a house, does it diligently and skillfully throughout the day, and the rest of the time sits in his room, distracted only by food, his presence on the project is unlikely to please a good host.

What do the projects provide?

Most of the time we are provided with lodging and food, but this is variable. For example, in Uganda we lived in a tent and were fed only beans, bananas, and a tasteless mass of corn powder. In Italy we had our own cottage, and the luxurious four meals a day made us noticeably bloated, with the hostess not repeating her dishes once in two weeks.

At first glance, it might seem that the poorer the country, the worse the living conditions will be, but that is not the case. In France we were starving and always freezing in an unheated house on wheels, and the Philippines for three weeks were high in a private house in the middle of the mountains, cooking his own food, which were bought on our list. So it all depends solely on the host and the type of work.

Somewhere only accommodation is provided and a volunteer buys food by himself, somewhere the cost of food is divided between all the volunteers and the host itself, somewhere the conditions are comparable to the best resort in the world, and somewhere you don’t want to stay for a day. And yet, the experience of the project almost always depends on the host.

If the host is cool, even modest conditions are of secondary importance. Class is not only determined by the nature of the person, but also the interest in volunteers: a good host is not just feeding and housing. He shares information about the country, recommends places to visit, and sometimes takes you there himself.

Types of volunteer projects

There are over 36,000 projects on the Workaway alone, and not all of them are interesting, mutually beneficial, or even free. It all depends on the country or the individual/organization. Some people really need help, some yearn for free labor, and some even try to earn money by volunteering. The latter is especially true in developing countries, such as those in Africa.

To understand what to expect from a project, you need to read the information on the host page very carefully. More often than not, people with serious convictions write about them in the first lines: neither they nor the volunteer will be comfortable if their life positions are diametrically opposed.

The pitfalls of volunteering

Fortunately, there aren’t many of these. If you carefully read the descriptions and reviews for each project, the chance of running into trouble is close to zero. Still, there are a couple of things to consider.

Of the 26 volunteer projects I have participated in, only two have had truly negative experiences: one on religious grounds and one on ethnic grounds. In both cases, both sides were wrong. The hosts were wrong in their intolerance; we were wrong in our unwillingness to tolerate their intolerance. Of course, a host would not write in the project description, “I make volunteers pray before they eat and read the Bible out loud whether they want to or not,” or “My husband hates Russians.” And negative experiences are not often described in reviews. So no one is immune from such surprises, and the best thing to do in this case – quickly bid farewell.

The other “stones” are minor and obvious: the constant communication is exhausting, the rules of another’s home sometimes seem wild, and with some people you just can not get along. In all of these cases, it’s important to remember that this is just an experience, and no one is forcing you to live here. If you don’t like it, leave.