Looking to make a difference while you travel? Then voluntourism might be for you. A volunteer vacation allows you to get off the beaten path and become a member of the local community as you travel.
Here are five amazing voluntourism experiences from around the world to inspire your next volunteer vacation.
Save the Costa Rican Sea Turtles
Help save Costa Rica’s sea turtle population by volunteering to record nesting turtles, mark nests and deter egg poachers along the Costa Rican coast. Programs are available for leatherback and green sea turtles. Nights are spent working on conservation efforts, and during the day, you’ll be free to explore your local surroundings in Costa Rica.
Teach English in a Vietnamese Orphanage
Are you a native English speaker? Then, you may find teaching English in Vietnam a rewarding experience. Rather than working full-time at a school, you can volunteer to teach English at a local orphanage. Between your volunteer work and a home stay, you’ll be fully immersed in Vietnam’s culture. If you’d rather not teach but want to volunteer, the orphanages also need people to help play with the children and care for them.
In Ecuador, you can volunteer in a wildlife rescue and work with the Amazon’s endangered species. Or, for an immersion experience, you can volunteer with a native community to help them preserve their traditions and way of life. After work, your native hosts will serve as your Amazon guides, offering you their firsthand knowledge on the vast rainforest.
Throughout Africa, organizations are working to conserve the wildlife that call this continent home. A few volunteer experiences in Africa include hand-feeding baby cheetahs, tracking elephants across Botswana or rehabilitating leopards to be re-released into the wild. Opportunities are available throughout Africa, in areas including South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
If you’re looking to exchange volunteer hours for room and board, check out WWOOF, or Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms. WWOOF is an organization that matches volunteers with farms around the world. Generally, volunteers give five to six hours a day on the farm and receive accommodations and meals in return. After your volunteer hours, you’ll have time to explore the destination. Experiences range from tending to olive trees in Italy to working with alpacas in Australia.
(Main image: Egan Snow used under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license)
