Looking for any general advice. My wife and I want to cancel Christmas this year to travel somewhere and do some good.

Something like a Habitat for Humanity type project in a poor area, volunteering at an orphanage, help out at a free clinic, etc.

We're wide open, but it wouldn't hurt to be in a town/city where we can get a beer at night, or maybe hit a resort type town for the last few days of the trip.

Google shows some organizations that do this, am I wise to go through one of them? That would have it's advantages, but I also don't want to be herded around with randoms, not able to go out at night, etc.


Thanks, any thoughts appreciated.

most of these orphanage or volunteering stuff are actually really bad and just money spinners. the kids are being used etc etc. Just do a bit of research on the subject you fiind some information.


this is not to say all are like this, but alot are.

A lot of the projects you find on the internet are just travel agencies trying to make money of you (trying to sell you language school-voluntary job combos for example). I've had some bad experiences with this myself.

I volunteered at this project in Colombia and I can wholeheartedly recommend, you deal directly with the project itself. As you can tell from the website they charge a fee to volunteer. When I volunteered there it was basically a place where underprivileged kids come to get lunch, help with homework and activities but now they also have other projects for adolescents and adults. During the week you help out with preparing the food, helping the kids with their homework, teach English etc. and on the weekend they take you on small trips or go for drinks. The woman who runs the project is an awesome person and like all the Colombian kids always has a smile on her face, everything is very relaxed (no problem if you ant to skip day or travekl the country and come baclk later) and there is room for initiative.

The guy who set up this program is a small business man in Bogota and wanted to do something back for the community in his hometown. We asked him about he fee and he explained us that he set the project up this way beacuse he taught it was a substainable way to run a project like this. Since they is very little money from the local and national goverments for projects like this he donates a % of his income to the project and charges the volunteers a fee. Anyway it's further explained on the website.

I volunteered at this project about 3 years a go I think and have been back several times (without having to pay the fee). The last time, in April of last year, I was there for only a few days and was pleasently surprised to see that the project had grown substanially. They are providing help, eduaction and food to a lot more people now and also in other areas of the city.

^nice!

These sorts of trips are a horrendously poor way to allocate assets. If you have a particular skill, it makes sense to go to Nigeria to share your Medical knowledge with a local hospital.

But it makes absolutely no sense to make yourself into a menial laborer for a week and pretend like you are helping local people. In many cases, you are actually hurting the local people because if it wasn't for you working for free, they would give these jobs to more capable locals.

It's kinda stupid to pay 1000s of dollars to go paint a school in Africa. The biggest beneficiaries are the "non-profit" shills. It's just another spin on tourism. Indigeous Peruvians do not need a gaggle of American teenagers spending a week and $1000 each to paint their school house. They can do it themselves in 1 day and $500 and it actually hurts the locals because they rarely get any of this tourist money and it takes away the jobs from them... They get scraps and the non-profit gets most of it.

Many thanks, exactly the sort of thing I was looking for! Coincidentally, I was about to e-mail a friend who worked for a non-profit in Bogota. I was going to ask her if she knew of any projects down there if this thread didn't work out.


You make great points, and it's the main reason I started this thread. I guess I'm trying to find a wall that won't get painted at all without my help.