Independent Volunteering, Part III: How to Find an Organization upon Arrival

It was 10:30PM. I had just walked off the plane at Kilimanjaro airport and was waiting at immigration to get my visa stamped. I was trying to keep a positive attitude, but one thought kept creeping back into my head, “What the hell am I doing here?” I had traveled halfway across the world in the past 24 hours, and despite planning this trip for the better part of a year, I was beginning to realize that I had surprisingly little knowledge of what life would be like here or how I was going to go about finding a volunteer opportunity. I spoke exactly one word of Swahili – “Jambo” (“hello”) - and wasn’t even sure how to go about doing something as simple as finding food to eat. The only thing I had was one contact – a friend of a friend with whom I had only previously communicated via email– who had promised to pick me up from the airport and arrange my first night’s accommodation. It was something, but considering how much uncertainty I was facing, it was hardly comforting.

Three months later, I’m writing this post having established a stable life in Tanzania. I’ve found two great organizations to volunteer with, a comfortable and enjoyable place to stay, and a network of friends made up of local Tanzanians, volunteers, and expatriates. So how did I go about getting from that first day, where performing even the smallest tasks were intimidating, to the point of creating this an established life? That’s a story for another day. However, I will discuss how you can go about not only replicating my experience, but hopefully doing it more easily, quickly, and with fewer mistakes.

The process of acclimating yourself to a new country and building a stable life during your independent volunteering experience can be challenging, starting from the moment you arrive. Without a doubt, the most daunting part of your trip will be those first few days. No matter how much Internet research you do, or how many current or former volunteers, residents, or travelers you talk to, nothing will quite prepare you for when you first step off the plane and realize you’re about to spend the next several months in a completely foreign environment. Further, you will be almost entirely alone, your only local contacts being friends-of-friends, most of whom you have probably exchanged no more than a handful of emails with, if that. However, despite these difficult days, you will be amazed at how quickly and easily you will be able to adapt when forced to. Of course, it’s also helpful to have some ideas beforehand as to where you can begin searching for opportunities, and this is where I will start.

If I could offer one word of advice for your first days upon arrival, it is not to worry about overspending your daily budget, especially if you don’t have any local contacts. Learning to live in a new city is like learning to do anything else; it takes time and effort, and you won’t necessarily be good at it right away. Therefore you may need to stay in nicer accommodations, eat at more touristy restaurants, and buy from more expensive shops while you are getting to know the city. Of course, you can certainly ease this process by doing some research beforehand, but you won’t truly gain an understanding of a city until you experience it for yourself (imagine trying to get a sense of the Sistine Chapel from reading about it in a book).

If you have local contacts in your destination city, they can be especially useful during your time immediately after arrival. Ask them to help you arrange your first few nights of accommodation, as well as transportation from the airport or bus station, and be sure to offer to compensate them in some way, be it cash, a meal, or a small present. If you don’t have a local contact, then book one of the popular tourist hotels in the area. Likely, they will offer some mode of transportation from the airport or bus station, although it may come at additional cost. Again though, it’s worth reiterating: Don’t worry about overspending your budget during your first few days. The peace of mind you attain from knowing you have a safe, reliable transport and a comfortable bed awaiting you upon arrival is well worth the extra money.

Your first order of business after settling into your hotel - other than getting a good night’s sleep if arriving late in the day - should be to find the bare essentials, which in this case means an ATM and a cell phone (or SIM card, if you have a phone with an unlocked SIM). The importance of cash is pretty self-explanatory, especially if you’re in an area that does not widely accept credit card. A phone will be important because it will serve as your primary means of following up with the contacts you will be making in the upcoming days, specifically in reference to leads on permanent accommodations and volunteer opportunities. You may also find it helpful to locate an internet café to aid you in any additional research and contact friends and family back home to let them know you arrived safely.

Once you have your cash and cell phone / SIM card, it’s time to start looking for permanent accommodation and volunteer opportunities. This is easiest done by talking with expatriates and other long-term volunteers, rather than native residents. While this may sound discriminatory, it is not, and there is good reason as to why foreign-born residents are a better source for this information. First, they will be aware of any additional challenges and hardships you may face as a foreign citizen living in the country, be it passport / visa issues or dietary restrictions. Also, as someone who was once new to the country themselves, they will be far more attune to any concerns or hesitations you may have about your new host country, and will be able to advise you as to how best to adjust to your new lifestyle conditions. This is a perspective that a native resident will simply be unable to provide. Finally, they will be much more likely to be a part of, or know, members of the volunteer community, given this is one of the most popular reasons westerners relocate to developing countries.

The best way to find ex-patriates or other volunteers is to utilize any existing contacts you made before your arrival. In the absence of any existing contacts, you’ll have to go out and search for them on your own. Most cities – especially those with a large presence of NGOs – will have at least a few popular ex-patriate hangouts. An easy way to identify these locations is through the use of a guidebook such as Lonely Planet or Rough Guide. If you don’t happen to have a guidebook handy, another option is to inquire about them at any popular tourist hotel. The receptionists should be knowledgeable about the popular restaurants and bars frequented by ex-patriates and western visitors, and will usually be happy to help, regardless of whether you are actually staying at the hotel (although a tip is probably appropriate).

Once you have the names of a few places, it’s up to you to go out and network. For those who aren’t natural networkers, this process may seem uncomfortable. Fortunately when traveling, you should never be at a shortage for easy topics of conversation. All you need to do is ask questions: “What brought you here?” “How long have you been here?” “How long are you staying?” Once the conversation turns to you, it will be completely natural and fitting to mention that you just arrived in town and are looking for a volunteer opportunity. I’ve found that most ex-patriates / volunteers / travelers are usually eager to help out in whatever way they can. And even if they can’t help, at the very least you will come out of the conversation with a new friend.

So you know how to find information about accommodation and volunteer opportunities; now how exactly do you go about choosing which opportunities to pursue? I’ll discuss how to go about choosing you accommodations first, as the criteria are fairly straightforward and familiar to anyone who has ever searched for a place to live before:

Cost: Does the price fit within your budget? Are there any extras included, which would reduce other areas of expenses (e.g., a hostel which provides breakfast / dinner)?

Safety: Is it in a safe neighborhood? Do the locks on all windows and doors work? Are additional safety precautions taken, if required in the area where you are staying (e.g., burglar bars, security walls, guards, etc.)?

Location: Is it in a convenient location? Is it close to public transportation, stores, and restaurants?

Comfort: Will you be able to easily perform basic tasks (e.g., cooking, laundry, etc.)? Is it equipped to deal with any infrastructure challenges (e.g., generator for power outages)? In general, do you think you can feel at home there?

You should explore multiple locations and price ranges to get an accurate picture of housing costs in different areas of town. Also, if possible, you may want to look into a variety of living arrangements (e.g., single apartment, hostel, etc.), and determine which is most appealing to you. Once you have explored several options, you should choose your favorite and arrange a short trial period (preferably no more than a couple days, although depending where you are at, it may not be possible to arrange for anything less than a month). This is to ensure there are no problems which are not immediately obvious during a showing, such as excessive noise during the night, a leaky roof when it rains, and so forth.

The process for choosing a volunteer experience is very similar to that of finding accommodations, albeit with different factors of consideration. In this case, they should include:

Personal Interest: Are you passionate about the cause? Is it a demographic you are interested in helping? Does the work sound appealing? Will you be excited and motivated to come in each day?

Opportunity for Impact: Will the opportunity fully utilize your talents and past experience? Will there be an opportunity to expand your role over the duration of your commitment? Will you be given the autonomy to shape your role according to your skills and interests?

Organizational Ethics: Is it clear the funding is being used appropriately? Are the benefactors of the organization treated will? Do clear guidelines / policies exist to govern the organization?

Organizational Culture: Do you like the culture / feel of the organization? Do you enjoy the people with whom you will be working? Can you have a healthy working relationship with them?

Convenience: Is the organization an easy commute from your place of accommodation? Is lunch provided or easily accessible? Are work hours flexible when needed (e.g., can you take a day off if you need to take care of visa issues or other important matters)?

Once you have chosen an organization, you should once again arrange a short trial period, somewhere between 3-5 days, to get as accurate a picture as possible of what your volunteer experience would be like. If you’re having trouble narrowing the list, it’s possible to do a trial period with more than one organization at a time, although I recommend limiting yourself to no more than three at once. If the trial period is a success, then you can make a commitment. However, if it doesn’t live up to expectations for whatever reason, feel free to move onto the next organization on your list and try again. Once you have made a commitment, be sure to contact the other organizations you have been in communication with to inform them of your decision and thank them for their time and any opportunity they extended to you.

From this point, it’s up to you to make the most of your opportunity. If you have any additional questions, feel free to post them as comments or send me an email.

Independent Volunteering, Part II: How to Choose Your Destination

Note: For simplicity, I will limit this discussion to only relief work in developing countries, although in reality NGOs and relief organizations exist nearly everywhere in the world

So, you’re sold on taking the independent volunteer route, but haven’t a clue as to how to go about doing it? Where do you begin?

First you need to choose a destination for your trip. Important factors to consider when deciding include:

Personal Interest: Where have you always wanted to travel? Which cultures seem especially interesting or appealing to you? Which cultures have you always wanted to learn more about?

Cost: In general, what is the cost of living of your potential destination? What is the range in the cost of living, depending on various levels of comfort (i.e., low budget vs. high budget living)? How do these costs compare to your allotted budget for volunteering?

Challenges: Is there a significant language barrier? Will the trip require special vaccinations? Are there any difficult climate conditions? Are there safety concerns? If any of these challenges do exist in one of your destinations, it doesn’t mean you should refrain from going there. However, it is important to be aware of their existence and honest with yourself in your ability to handle them.

Need: What do you know about the social and economic problems of your potential destination? Intuitively, does it seem that your skill set (e.g., language skills, teaching, business, carpentry, etc.) could be used to address some of these problems?

With the exception of need, these are the same factors which need to be considered when you do any long term traveling. This is a subject that has been written about extensively (including my favorite book on the subject, found here), and therefore I won’t go into any further detail on them in this post.

Once you've narrowed down a list of potential countries, the next step is to research NGOs, not-for-profits, and relief agencies that exist in each area. The goal here is to ensure volunteer organizations exist in your potential destination. It's advisable to search at both the country and city level, which may help you refine your decision on a final destination. If you are having trouble locating NGOs in a specific country or city, you should be wary of pursuing volunteer opportunities there (Read: There's a reason they aren’t there). While a general Google search can suffice, you may also find it helpful to visit websites specifically dedicated to connecting volunteers with opportunities, such as www.idealist.org. Search specifically for volunteer opportunities posted in English. Again, the goal is not to find the specific organization with whom you will volunteer; rather, it is only to ensure that an active volunteer network exists within your destination. Remaining non-committed can be easier said than done, as you may find numerous volunteer opportunities or project descriptions which sound interesting and exciting. Just remember, description and reality can often be vastly different, and the only true way to get a sense for a project is to actually experience it for yourself. That being said, you may find useful leads worth pursuing once you do physically arrive at your destination.

A second resource, which is often times the most valuable, is other individuals who have travel or volunteer experience in your potential destination. Once you have narrowed your list of potential destinations to two or three options, don’t hesitate to let anyone and everyone know about it. Be sure to let them know your areas of interest, and tell them you’re interested in talking with anyone they might know with experience in the area. You’ll be amazed at the number of names you receive in response. You should follow up with as many of these contacts as possible, no matter how distant (your sister’s boss’s wife’s niece who spent two months in Cambodia is a perfectly legitimate contact, assuming your interest is in Southeast Asia). Also, don’t be afraid to talk with people who have travel / volunteer experience in destinations other than those on your short list. You may find new areas of interest which you hadn’t previously considered.

There are two reasons why I find individuals with first-hand experience to be of more value than any other form of research. First, these connections may have local contacts who still reside in your destination, be it native residents, ex-patriots, or long term volunteers. Further, they will most likely be willing to connect you with these people, thereby making your life infinitely easier from the moment you arrive. Second, they are the most reliable source of information, period. Oftentimes, there are many different sources of conflicting information about travel destinations. How much of the local population actually speaks English in your potential destination? Is the area safe, as the country’s tourism website claims, or are incidents like the one you read about in a national newspaper - where a traveler had to escape from a gang of machete wielding thieves - commonplace? Sometimes it’s difficult to tell. But anyone who has spent a couple months living there will be able to answer these types of questions in a level of detail with which you won’t find in any book or on any website. As long as you trust the individual and are planning on a similar experience (i.e., you aren't talking to someone who toured the country by staying in five start hotels while you are planning a budget volunteer trip), you should take their word over any other source of information.

Once you’ve thoroughly conducted all your research, it’s time to make your decision. While most people find choosing a country fairly easy, they are often not nearly as picky about cities, and therefore can have a harder time deciding on their specific destination. If this is the case, use the following three criteria to help you make your decision:

Local Contacts: Which cities do you have friends, or friends-of-friends, who are willing to help you settle and find organizations? Once again, having local contacts will make your life infinitely easier upon arrival, and therefore is a factor that should be given signification weight in your final decision, especially if it is your first time volunteering in a developing country.

Expatriate / Foreign National Population: If you don’t have any local contacts, it may be necessary to base yourself out of a city with a large expatriate community, specifically when traveling to a country with a significant language barrier. This will make the process of developing local contacts, and therefore finding volunteer opportunities, easier. While exact numbers may not be readily available, you should be able to form a general idea based on information found on the Internet.

Presence of NGOs: Again, this is where you should rely on your Internet research. Were you able to find a significant number of NGOs in the area? How many opportunities were posted in English on volunteer websites such as idealist.org?

After making a decision, you simply need to book your flight, apply for a visa, get your immunizations, and arrange accommodations for the first couple of nights and transportation from the airport or bus station upon arrival. Again, detailed information on how to go about doing this can be found in long-term travel publications such as Vagabonding. Check in soon for part III, which details what to do upon arrival.

Independent Volunteering, Part I: What is Independent Volunteering?

Having now gone through the process of planning my own independent volunteering experience, I wanted to write about how others can go about doing it for themselves. Therefore, the next three posts will be dedicated to the independent volunteering process. The first post will define what independent volunteering is, and talk about the pros and cons of taking the independent volunteer route. The second will explain how to choose a location for your independent volunteering experience, and the final installment will describe how to go about finding an organization with which to volunteer once you arrive. If anyone else feels inspired to volunteer independently, then hopefully, by the end of these posts, they will feel confident in how to go about doing so.

First, it’s important to define exactly what independent volunteering is. The best definition I found using an online Google search was ‘making all volunteer travel and living arrangements without the help of a third party organization’. (In contrast to the more common option of volunteering through all-inclusive programs which arrange all travel and accommodation, in addition to providing the volunteer experience). However, while this definition is technically accurate, I feel it fails to address one key aspect of the independent volunteering process. I would therefore add the criterion that true independent volunteering involves explicitly waiting until after arriving at your destination to find and commit to an organization. While this may seem like a technical detail, it’s actually an important aspect to helping you achieve all the benefits of independent volunteering.

So, now that you know what independent volunteering is, why do it? When making my own decision, two specific factors stuck out: flexibility and cost. First, volunteering independently gives you much more flexibility in almost all aspects of your experience. To begin, you are not confined to the time frame of a program. You can plan your start and end dates around important aspects of your life back home, such as your job, an apartment lease, the holidays, important family events, friend’s weddings, or even the ski season – whatever’s important to you. You’re also free to volunteer in whatever capacity you like, and can even split time between multiple organizations if you desire. Finally, you have the freedom to mix your volunteering with as much or as little travel as you’d like.

In addition to being more flexible, independent volunteering will usually be cheaper as well, provided you aren’t trying to live a life of luxury. One explanation for this is because volunteer program expenses will always include administrative fees to cover the costs of arranging the logistics of your trip for you. A second reason is that, oftentimes, a large portion of program fees go directly to support the projects themselves (e.g., buying raw materials, covering on-going operational costs, etc.). While this provides projects with necessary and, oftentimes, much needed funds, I can think of two reasons why it is also unfavorable. First, from a program perspective, it prevents would-be volunteers who are unable to afford the prohibitive costs of these programs from donating their time and efforts. Second, from a volunteer standpoint, it gives you very little control over how the program coordinators use those funds. Independent volunteering, on the other hand, not only allows you to choose the amount you want to give to your organization, but also puts you in a much better position to direct where and how those funds will be spent.

One other possible explanation for high program fees is corruption. Many organizations masquerade as NGOs - which are not legally allowed to make profit - but keep a large portion of the money they charge volunteers as personal income. Sadly, I have heard a number of stories of volunteers who paid large program fees, only to find they were housed in sub-par accommodations on projects that suffered greatly from lack of proper funding. While these corrupt organizations are certainly the exceptions rather than the rule, it can often be difficult to separate the honest organizations from the dishonest ones before actually arriving on site. Independent volunteering can help minimize the risk of inadvertently aiding these corrupt impersonators by giving you the opportunity to visit an organization before committing to it. Getting the chance to inspect the conditions of the organization, chat with other volunteers, and interact with beneficiaries (e.g., students, the local community, etc.) should enable you to accurately access the honesty of an organization, and therefore provide reasonable assurance that both your time and money are going toward an honest cause.

While independent volunteering offers many advantages, it’s also not without its challenges and disadvantages. First, it involves significantly more research upfront than traditional volunteering. It also lacks the structure and security of a volunteer program, and therefore independent volunteers must have a willingness to spend at least the first part of their trip in a state of limbo (I adamantly insist finding an independent opportunity is not as difficult as most people think, but nonetheless concede that anyone wanting to take the independent volunteer route must be willing to deal with a little bit of uncertainty). Third, the time it takes to set up a volunteer experience makes the independent volunteering option ill suited for short durations of time. Therefore, those who are unable to take extended absences from work or other commitments (at least two months, although three to six months is preferable) may find it a difficult option to pursue. Finally, it’s worth noting that volunteering independently can sometimes limit the places in which you can offer your services. Specifically, it is unlikely you will be able to volunteer in remote areas or villages, which can usually only be accessed by Western travelers with the support of an organization that has access to translators and specialized knowledge concerning how to survive in more exposed conditions.

A final difficulty of independent volunteering that deserves special mention is the issue of obtaining a volunteer visa. Most, if not all, countries will require you to apply for a volunteer, rather than a tourist, visa if you want to partake in relief work. However, volunteer visas can be difficult to obtain on your own. For example, Tanzania requires you to submit evidence that you are affiliated with a specific organization before they’ll issue you a volunteer visa. If you wait until after your arrival to choose an organization, you’ll obviously be unable to submit this required paperwork. Finding an organization like Ujamaa Hostel, who will submit your volunteer visa on your behalf by using themselves as an umbrella volunteer organization, is one solution to this problem. However, these types of organizations are few and far between, and therefore might not exist in the community in which you wish to volunteer. Nonetheless, their convenience means you should at least do a quick Internet search for them before pursuing other options. A less cost effective, but more practical, approach is to enter the country on a tourist visa, and then apply for a volunteer visa once you have found and committed to an organization. However, this will involve arranging and paying for two visas, which can be expensive (in the case of Tanzania, about $100 per visa). Additionally, you may have to volunteer without a proper visa for a certain period of time while the visa is being processed. This is technically illegal, although rarely enforced in most places. Nonetheless, it is a risk both you and the organization need to be aware of and mutually agree to take on. While the process of obtaining a volunteer visa can be nebulous and somewhat difficult, you simply need to be patient and persistent and it will eventually work itself out. (Note: I am working on finding better strategies for dealing with this obstacle, and will post them if and when I find them)

In summary, independent volunteering offers a wealth of benefits to anyone willing to fore go the certainty of a pre-arranged, structured program and do a little extra upfront research. Although the task of arranging an independent volunteer experience can be daunting for first timers, the process is infinitely less complex when you know what to look for in a destination and which resources to utilize to go about finding relevant information. Check back in tomorrow for part II, which will explain this process in greater detail.