Have Life - Will Travel: How to Work and Travel, Find Jobs Overseas and Travel for Next to Nothing by Marks Simon

Author:Marks, Simon [Marks, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2013-02-01T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6 – Paid-For Volunteering

I hope this chapter doesn’t help you find work abroad.

A strange statement, but this book is about how to travel abroad without large funds. Having a chapter about paying large sums of money to volunteer might seem contrary to the book’s message. However, when I was seeking people for interview, I came across too many who had done this sort of thing and ended up regretting it. This chapter is short, it doesn’t tell you exactly how to find this work, and its purpose is to serve more as an (unquestionably biased) warning. So, let’s get to it:

Paying to volunteer might seem like an unusual concept for some people, but a Google search for “volunteering abroad” will not bring up a whole pile of free opportunities. Just to give you an idea of how paid volunteering works, I’ve conducted a quick analysis of the top result that came up on Google. It’s for a website called “Original Volunteers.”

An Analysis

From browsing the Original Volunteers website, I’ve chosen a project completely at random; it’s about working with children in Paraguay.

Some Maths

Well, in order to book any project with Original Volunteers, you have to pay an upfront fee of £125. This just allows you to book volunteer opportunities with the company. The cost of the volunteering itself is £125 a week, and this includes, from what I can tell from the website, just accommodation. They do say that a coordinator will meet you at the airport, but you have to pay for the airport transfer fee yourself.

Accommodation is in a “shared volunteer flat on the outskirts of Asuncion.” They describe the rooms as dorms, so you can reasonably assume you will be sharing a room with at least one other person.

According to Numbeo (www.numbeo.com), a website which calculates the cost of living in various countries, the cost of a three bedroom flat on the outskirts of this city is $297.50 a month.

So let’s assume that there are six people staying there (two per room minimum), all paying £125 a week, for four weeks. That’s a total of £3,000, or about $4,820 (March 2012). Of course, the difference is not all profit. There are bills, times when the flat is empty, and a whole pile of other costs, but even if you calculate these costs generously, the profit for Original Volunteers is just massive. Hire a flat for less than $300; rent it out for nearly $5k. It’s a good deal for them.

This should make it very clear to you that the idea behind Original Volunteers is not helping children; it’s making money. I do not want to imply, in any way, that this sort of volunteering is a scam. It’s not; there is no deception, it is basically just a package holiday. The “volunteer,” who would probably be more accurately described as a tourist, goes away, has a great time, and comes back feeling good about themselves.

This is what they pay for, and this is what they get. It

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