Program Reviews

I returned from Tanzania one week ago, where I volunteered and traveled for one month. I am a nurse in training and it was an incredible experience to work alongside nurses and doctors at KCMC. Everyone is so kind, welcoming, and supportive. My host mom, Mama Alice, is wonderful, incredibly supportive, and so kind. The volunteer house in Moshi is beautiful, and very very safe. I spent three weeks there, 4 days on safari, and one week in Zanzibar. I would highly recommend this program to anyone .

My friend and I had a great experience in Tanzania, we loved so much the landscape and the culture of it. We had a nice staying e we miss the kids so much! The volunteer experience was amazing and we are very glad we did it.I reccomend to organise Safari one you arrive for petter offers. Also lovely day trips that are recommended in what they send you. We also built some friendship with the others volunteers that we hope to keep in the future. Met so many people and heard really interesting stories.

I spent two weeks teaching English at a school approximately 50 minutes outside of Xela. The entire experience was wonderful. The school staff was great and welcoming. I was glad that I had a bit of Spanish under my belt because it made working with the students easier. The principal/director of the school was also very helpful, making sure that I had the classroom schedule for each day.

The Guatemalan people that I had a chance to talk to were wonderful. I was surprised how my Spanish listening skills improved.

The family I stayed with were very kind and inclusive. Evelyn prepared some traditional Guatemala meals that were delicious. The pepian was yummy! Although accommodations were a little tight at their house, their generosity more than made up for it. I am considering returning next year.

I am thoroughly enjoying my experience in Peru. My language has improved enormously thanks to my classes, Roger, and my host family who have all helped me so much. I have the best support if I need it and I am completely welcomed into my family. The project is rewarding and I feel like I’m making a positive impact on the lives of the Mamas and the children I am working with. In order to properly experience the project, I recommend coming for more than 2 months in order to establish real relationships with those you are helping and working with.

It was wonderful meeting the children and helping to teach them. The other teachers and volunteers were very friendly and helpful. Antigua is a beautiful city. I felt very safe walking around by myself even at night. There are many day trips that you can take on the weekend. I would recommend learning Spanish before volunteering. Not everyone speaks English. You can take lessons while you are there for as little as $10 per hour. It is relatively inexpensive for everything in Guatemala. All of the streets are cobblestone so bring sneakers or shoes with thick soles. I would recommend asking many questions about the house where you will be staying. All the details about it.

Staying with Mama Alice and her daughter Ana was a very fun and safe way to volunteer and explore the Kilimanjaro region. We were able to do lots of extraordinary things such as attend a local wedding, explore hidden restaurants and organize massages at the house! It was great to have built in translators and guides who soon became close friends. Definitely organize a safari on arrival (one of my absolute highlights) and a trip out to Zanzibar if you can make it. In terms of the volunteering, KCMC is a very busy hospital and I enjoyed observing several departments. I gained insight into a very different medical system to my own, and to very different diseases and injuries. I would highly recommend volunteering in Tanzania to anyone visiting the country, as I believe it's a truly unique way of understanding a culture and meeting fascinating locals.

This is an after-school program for needy children, aged 4-15. They come into the centre in the afternoon for help completing their homework, for additional tutoring in English and to have fun. Working with the kids was a great experience. But, the volunteer needs to be prepared for a very unstructured environment that requires that you put some thought into each day's activities. As I was focused on teaching English, I needed to think about the various abilities of the children and how to make the lessons interesting for them. Within any age group there are kids who are more advanced and more motivated than others to learn English. Even so, all in all I loved the experience of working with these children.

My time volunteering in Bali was split between volunteering at a sea turtle conservation center and teaching English in a small village in east Bali. Volunteering and living in Bali is completely different from going on holiday in Bali. The Bali you see on social media filled with white sand beaches, vegan food, smiling white people, and luxury resorts is actually not the Bali that locals live in obviously. There's so much depth to the culture here and until you fully embrace it, you will not learn to appreciate all this amazing island has to offer. I love working with animals and working with the sea turtles at the conservation center was out of this world. We even got to see a mother turtle laying her eggs in the middle of the night several times and it was so incredible to see "nature" in action. Teaching in Karangasem changed everything I thought I knew about Bali. The students were lovely and loved having a foreigner in their classroom. I enjoyed it very much. I have taught English many times and in many different countries but I have to say teaching here in Bali was an experience of a lifetime - the teachers were incredible welcoming and gracious towards me and constantly invited me to see the village with them. My direct host made the experience happen smoothly and was there whenever I had any question - big or small. Would recommend this program to a well seasoned traveler and someone really able to get out of their comfort zone.

I spent two weeks volunteering in the elephant village. It was extremely rewarding a lots of fun. Be prepared for physical labor and to be fully immersed in the Thai village life and culture. The local staff was great, the food we ate everyday was amazing and I just loved living so close to the elephants. Few comments: although I volunteered for 2 weeks, you were only allowed to stay in the elephant village Monday to Thursday and stayed in a volunteer house for the weekends (some people traveled on the weekends but I would have preferred to stay with the elephants), the overall crowd of the others there was very very young (teenagers to young 20s) and although I enjoyed the company of the other more mature volunteers I was not expecting such a young group. Overall, a really life changing experience - I will cherish those two weeks with the elephants for the rest of my life. Such a beautiful memory. Thailand is just lovely - I didn't meet a single person I did not like in Thailand.

I chose to work on a community development program 1x1 with the main program manager in the volunteer office. My project was to assist in a school building project in a small and poor village in Cambodia. My responsibilities were to re-write and improve the funding proposal (12 pages+), write the newsletter (5 pages+) to the current supporters who have already donated to the project, edit a marketing video that was previously recorded, and start the GoFundMe page for the project. I was only volunteering here 2 weeks and I definitely feel like I had a huge impact. During my time in Phnom Penh, I also visited the village where the school would be built. Although I left Cambodia after those 2 weeks, I have been in weekly contact with the program manager to help finish the project and we are nearly done!