Volunteering - your help for a free stay, from week to months
With volunteering you are expected to work 4-6 hours on a business day for a free stay and food. We try to focus on places where you get something in return, not just work for free and pay for everything. This is not the idea of free holiday. Many of this help involves work for a good cause, like saving animals, building schools, working on organic farms ... From a few weeks to preferably months, you could also do this with your family.
Fair exchange between budget travellers, language learners or culture seekers and hosts is promoted at Workaway. With 7.000 host and 20.000 volunteers, some of them outdated, covering almost every country. Divided into 20 categories from building to child care. So if you found yourself among this skills; gardening, building, child care, elderly care, cooking, farming, language, teaching, maintenance, charity, computer… it is just time about to become workawayer. Longer stay preferred. From B&B, farms to child care. Some really strange offers, like no electricity, no running water. Free for hosts and 22 € for workawayers. Be careful what you agree on and read the feedback which in general is positive. An online listing of host farms, B&Bs, backpackers hostels who invite volunteer helpers to stay with them short-term in exchange for food and accommodation, you could find at Helpx. 5000 hosts all over the world. Divided among: organic and non-organic farm stay, home stay, backpacker hostel, accommodation and even boat (maybe 20 or so.) Some outdated as well. Longer stays preferred by hosts. Not that much members but great stories to tell, and great advice like insurance, companions and visas!! Free to surf and join, but 20 € if you want to see the contact details. Hosts to be approved! The oldest one is World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms: linking volunteers with organic farms and growers. In return for volunteer help, WWOOF hosts offer food, accommodation and opportunities to learn about organic lifestyles. So, this one is about organic farming. Kids welcome. 4-6 hours per day are considered a fair exchange. Number of hosts - unknown. Want to become a volunteer? It is free, but well here gets complicated, no search engine available, just a link to county list, then join the local organization, then you get the out of date print out list. The list is long by the way. Hello, we are in the internet search Google area. Or it could be that this prevent Couchsurf overkill. Travel with a cause and Ecoteer. It is a solution for cheap volunteer and working holiday abroad. With ecotourism, conservation, humanitarian, teaching, research, organic farm and other project to support the volunteer and free holiday idea. Project placements register for free. Ecoteer volunteer register for £15 yearly fee or £25 lifetime. There is approximately 500 project to choose from and some of them are really special. Projects are validated, BUT some if not most of them require payment. This is not exactly free holiday. What is the point of volunteering if this is a paid stay. Obviously somebody (projects) find another way to get some additional money to finance the projects. Well you could not expect to get Safari guest farm Namibia for free. |
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