Finding free and local volunteering opportunities

Hi everyone!

Today I want to talk about volunteering. Not just any volunteering, but volunteering with small organisations/individual people.

In the past few years, conventional volunteering through for example large organisations has been receiving a lot of criticism. The main example being volunteer schemes at orphanages in Africa, where kids meet new volunteers every week, get attached and then have to say goodbye, which could, for example, evoke attachment issues (read more about it here: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/14/orphans-cambodia-aids-holidays-madonna). Of course, volunteering through big organisations is not just bad, there are a lot of examples in which it can really help because manpower and money is simply needed to get things of the ground, or to continue with an important ongoing project. This was also the case with the volunteering I did 7 years ago. The first time I volunteered, I found an opportunity through a big Dutch organisation. Since I was really enthusiastic to go to Borneo, and with my little experience this was the only opportunity I could find, I paid 1700 euro’s for 6 weeks of volunteering. When I was in Borneo and talked about this with the local organisation, they told me that of this money, they received around 700-800 euros. I was extremely surprised, since the Dutch organisation hardly did anything for me, expect for providing some information on the organisation and visa arrangement. Since then, I decided I would try to find my own volunteering opportunities. .

At the same time, a lot of individual people/organisations/companies have started to see the benefits of having volunteers. Volunteers provide them with manpower and skills which they might otherwise not have. These volunteer opportunities are often free and even offer free accommodation as well. Such organisations can be found on websites such as WWOOF.net (organic farming), workaway.info and helpstay.com.

Furthermore, often organisations just provide volunteer opportunities through their own website. If you know which country you want to visit and what kind of volunteer work you want to do, it can therefore be very beneficial to check if there are organisations in the country that focus on this. Sometimes you will then also find free volunteering opportunities since organisations are smaller and/or don’t really have a big volunteering scheme as a source of income. This is, for example, how I found my volunteering opportunity with Animal Refuge Kansai (ARK) in Japan. Read more about it here. Otherwise you might find opportunities that you have to pay for, but at least you know where all the money goes and that it directly contributes to the cause you support (in most cases, but if you want to be sure it can never hurt to ask to organisation what exactly they do with your money!).

Well, the message I hope comes across, is that it's not always the best to choose for the volunteering opportunities that you find straight away. You might pay a lot of money, which doesn't all go directly to the right organisation, and you might not contribute as much as you would like to. It's a good thing to really take the time to look for good volunteering opportunities, it is fun to do and often feels more rewarding! So take your time, go all out on the internet and find some amazing opportunities!

Cheers,

Hannah

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Afraid of your big travels? Start with volunteering!

Volunteer work opportunities have been booming in the past decades. From short-term options to long-term, from nearby to far away and from expensive to free. This range of choices can sometimes make it difficult to decide on where to begin searching and what to do in the end. In my future blog posts I will write more about this. Today, however, I will focus on the benefits of starting at a volunteer project when you want to travel in a country.

When I was 18, I decided to travel to Borneo, Malaysia. It would be the first trip on my own and I didn't know where to start. There were so many places to visit and so many things to do. However, what worried me most was having no idea what I was getting myself into. I had never been to Asia. Of course, I had done a little bit of research since I decided where I wanted to go, but to say that I knew what I should be expecting would be a big exaggeration. I was getting more and more nervous and doubted my decision to go, but I already told everyone and saved money for six months to pay for it all so canceling wasn't really an option for me. This got me thinking. What could I do to relieve some of the pressure and to have some control? After browsing for a while on the internet, I knew what I wanted to do, and it actually totally suited my dream of going to Borneo; I was going to volunteer in the rainforest with a local community, in an area with orangutans. I found this opportunity through a Dutch organisation called Activity International (https://activityinternational.nl/) where, at the time, the offered the opportunity to work at a local eco-tourism and forest restoration project. While I will get into the details of the price in a later blog, I do want to mention that prices at this organisation are high and that, if I understood correctly, about half of the money went to the Dutch organisation and half to the locals, which in my opinion is not fair.

When I finally arranged everything (paying, flight tickets, document signing etc), I felt much more secure about going to Malaysia. Even though I was still worried, now I knew that someone would be at the small airport of Sandakan to pick me up and drive me to a community where I would have a place to stay. I won't go into the details of my stay there, but I will tell you what the advantages are of planning such a volunteering period before the start of your real travels.

By doing this you are often provided with simple things which otherwise might worry you beforehand, such as airport transfers, food, accommodation, someone who speaks the language. This provides you with the opportunity to relax a bit and focus on other, more fun things. When you arrive at the volunteer place, you will probably experience a big culture shock (the severity of it depending on where you go and on how much you've traveled before of course). However, you might expect it to be bigger when going to a country and being all by yourself from day 1. When I got to the volunteer project, I was received with open arms and met the other volunteers. I experienced a severe culture shock for the first two weeks, but having the other volunteers around me really helped. Together we talked about the work, the culture and we just had fun. This gave me the opportunity to share my first experiences with other people and to feel like I always had support.

Next to feeling a sense of security before and during the volunteering, there were also other advantages. One of the biggest being, in my opinion, getting to truely know the culture. Of course, this again depends on the type of project you join, but in my case I truly felt like part of the community. I had to follow their rules (no shoulders or knees showing) and I had to learn their language a little bit. While it sometimes was intense, I got to know the culture in a way that I wouldn't have if I just went travelling. While volunteering at a local community project you immerse yourself in their way of living. By doing this, my worries about travelling and cultural ajustment in Malaysia disappeared.

Another great advantage of volunteering at local communities is that they have the best knowledge on their country. I got some great advice on where to go, what to do and how to travel. They told me about places I hadn't heard of before and one of the people from the community even invited me to join another project in the jungle for a couple of days, which gave me an awesome opportunity I would otherwise have never had.

Lastly, you can make friends for life. It's a great way to meet all kinds of people, from all over the world. This is great if you want to visit their countries since they will again provide you with the best recommendations, but it can also result in free places to stay and interesting friends.

Well, I would recommend volunteering to get to know the country, the people and to adjust properly to a new lifestyle. They can benefit from your financial contributions as well. However, I do want to press the importance of finding a good, sustainable and fair volunteer project. SInce nowadays volunteer programmes can become a kind of business which is not always in the interest of nature or culture. This, I will discuss in a future blog post as well. Hopefully I helped you a bit in taking a decision on whether to volunteer or not, or just provided you with some information. If there are any remaining questions or comments, don't hesitate to respond!

Cheers,
Hannah

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Volunteering in Japan

When looking for volunteering opportunities you can find an overload on the web, from free to paid. In this blog I will try to give an overview of free volunteering opportunities in Japan. Of course there might be many other opportunities, but this blog can be a first step in finding the best options for you and you can use it as a starting point for further research.

1. WWOOF
WWOOF offers worldwide opportunities for organic farming, so as well in Japan. The farmers can list the opportunities themselves so it can be really small-scale, but farms can also be huge. You have to pay around 55 euros to join the community for a year, but then you can apply for all the opportunities on there. Often you will get free accommodation and food, sometimes you even get paid (probably not in Japan though). I have never done it myself, but I have heard many good stories. It's a great way to get to know the local culture, lands and food! So if you're into farming, definitely try it out!

Website: https://www.wwoofjapan.com/main/index.php?lang=en

2. WorkAway
WorkAway is something similar to WWOOF, however, it is a platform not just for farming, but for all kinds of work. Offers range from working in a hostel to teaching English to children of just one family. The range of job types is huge, which can make it really fun. However, it can be important to check reviews since some jobs or environments might not suit you. Sometimes you get free accommodation, sometimes free food, but getting paid never really happens I think. I have found some great opportunities in Japan so I would definitely recommend you to check it :). You have to pay a fee of 32 euros a year for a single person and 42 euros a year as a couple. You can even buy workaway as a gift for someone going to japan and wanting to volunteer.

Website: https://www.workaway.info/

3. Volunteering at an animal shelter
The first time I went to Japan, I was looking for cheap volunteering opportunities. Since I love animals I decided to look for animal shelters in Japan and ask them whether volunteering there was possible. I ended up volunteering for a week at Animal Refuge Kansai (ARK). It was an amazing, rewarding experience. Animal care is not that big in Japan. While many Japanese people love (dressing up) animals, especially when they are young, when the animals get bigger, they often are abandoned since they don't fit in the house anymore, are not cute anymore or are too dirty. Of course, this only counts for a part of japanese people (I also know many Japanese that would never ever do this), it does happen and the couple of animal shelters present have to take care of all these abandoned animals. ARK animal shelter is owned by an English lady who has a passion for animals and who works together with an almost all Japanese staff. When I was there (7 years ago already) she lived in the middle of the shelter and I stayed with her. However, usually you will stay at the volunteering house for free if you work every day. The work consists of walking the dogs, cleaning and socialising the animals. I truely enjoyed it! This is also a good opportunity if you just want to volunteer for one day! They won't let you stay, but if you have a car you can visit them in the morning and walk the dogs or play with the cats I believe. They also have an office in Tokyo, but I think they won't offer you free accommodation if you volunteer there. Sometimes they also need volunteers for translating, social media promotion etc.

p.s. they have some beautiful animals in the shelter and they are up for adoption, even if you live on the other side of the world.

Website: http://www.arkbark.net/en/

Another place where you can volunteer is Japan Cat Network. They need help at their two animal shelters, with the events in Japan and you can even help out from home through social media. Even though their name suggests that they only have cats, they also have dogs at their shelter that need help. The animals are truely beautiful and working with them would certainly be fun.

Website: https://japancatnetwork.org/volunteer

4. Disaster relief volunteering
I don't know so much about this topic. What I did read is that giving money to local organisations working on disaster relief is still one of the most important things. But if you do want to help out on the ground I would like to refer you to this blog: https://disasterjapan.wordpress.com/volunteering-in-japan/
They know a lot more about this topic and the website is regularly updated I believe. So check it out if you're interested in this type of volunteering.

Well, I hope you have enough options now to start with! Volunteering in Japan is a unique experience. However, do keep in mind the behavioural code and politeness a bit to make sure that you have the best volunteering opportunity!

Any questions? Let me know!