BootsnAll Travel Community

Hi all,
Just officially joined BNA and I was hoping for some help. My fiance and I are getting married in July and then heading abroad for a year. We're planning on hitting Southern Africa, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand before heading home. We hope to volunteer for at least 3-4 months, preferably in two seperate locations. One in Southern Africa and the other in Southeast Asia, possibly Chiang Mai, but it doesn't have to be. The problem we keep running into is that many of the sites I've come across (o.k. all of the sites) require that you pay a ridiculous amount of money to go and volunteer your services. We are not looking for a handout or anything, but we'd like to at least get room and board provided for minimal cost to ourselves. I also realize that many of these organizations support themselves through these donations, but we are wondering if there are other options out there? We both have masters degrees, myself in education and she in social work. If anyone knows of where we can begin to look the help would be greatly appreciated!

Hello and welcome!

This subject actually just came up, and I'll post the link to that other thread right here. LiveNomadic (one of our more... er... committed posters) posted a couple of links, one of them being his own website, which looked pretty useful.

Donovan, one of the dudes on the BnA payroll has done some volunteering in Africa, I believe, but it was in the Western portion of the continent. You would have to check with him for more details, and I don't know if he has any info on Sub-Saharan Africa or not.

Thanks for your help meagicano, it's much appreciated! Found some useful sites and hopefully we'll find a match.

There's a good international network called WWOOF (world wide organic... something or another) where basically you live with a family in exchange for working mornings on their farms... My sister did this in Italy and the Czech Republic last summer and really loved it. I'm pretty sure there are places in SE Asia and Africa as well. The URL is http://www.wwoof.org/