Thanks for visiting the site. The origins of volunteersouthamerica.net
date from early 2005 when I was looking for grass-roots, zero-cost
volunteer work in Argentina.
Finding volunteer work that didn't involve paying a middle-man/third
party a large amount of cash was much more difficult than I
expected; the result was many happy hours searching on Google,
travel forums and obscure spanish-language websites for a suitable
volunteer work program.
In the end, for various reasons, I didn't volunteer in 2005; but I
had found a handful of interesting volunteer programs and realised
that lots of other people were in the same boat as myself - looking
for genuine grass-roots volunteer work in South America. I didn't
want my 40+ manhours of research to go to waste so I posted what I'd
found on volunteerargentina.net, which later became volunteersouthamerica.net.
Its a widely held view that you have to pay to volunteer in SA, and
its easy to arrive at that conclusion; internet Search Engines
are dominated by the 'big ticket' volunteer placement websites, which offer
a more packaged, higher cost volunteer experience than I was looking
for.
The purpose of this site is to show potential volunteers
that free & grass-roots volunteer programs do exist in SA; and
secondly to raise awareness, support & promote these little-known
organisations that do such great work in building communities and changing
peoples lives.
As you may have discovered, most grass-roots volunteer orgs are difficult to find online
- they don't have the resources to market themselves effectively -
so if you know of any I'd really appreciate it if you'd get in touch!
If you represent an organisation that accepts overseas volunteers
but doesn't have a website, we can create and host a basic web page
for you within volunteersouthamerica.net, where you can publicise
your organisation and create a reference point for potential
volunteers. See
Luz_Del_Mundo and
Wachimak as examples of
internally hosted pages, this service is provided free of charge and
takes about 7 days to set-up.
The volunteer programs on this site fall into 3 generic categories;
First there is the USD$~300 per month programs that provide full board
and accommodation, these are 'flexible' programs that allow you to
volunteer for long or short periods, at a time convenient to you.
Whilst I'm confident that all the programs listed here do good
work, personally, I would only sign-up to this type of program if I
was confident that the money was being used properly, i.e. to cover
volunteer 'costs' and perhaps pay for other legitimate program
expenses.
The second category of program is a day-centre type program, usually
involving street-kids. In this type of program volunteers organise
their own food & accommodation independently and volunteer during
the day. Generally these programs charge little or no fees and are
very pleased to see you. Good examples are
LIFEargentina and the
Cusco based street-kids programs.
The third category of program is the no-fees, longterm commitment
operations e.g.
voluntariosesperanza or
fundacionsantamartha,
which ask for 3-12 months of your time but charge no fees and offer
free food & board to participants, you've got to love this type of
operation and if you are looking to make a real difference and have
a life changing volunteer experience, look no further.
In certain cases on the main page, I have given an brief opinion
about a volunteer organisation (visible when you move the cursor over the web
address). This opinion is based either on
feedback received or just my gut feel about the program. Bear in
mind that it is just one persons view; if you happen to believe I
have something useful to say, then take notice, you would however be
much better off contacting past volunteers from the program(s) you
like, to get a clearer picture of what you are letting yourself in
for.
If you want to write an article for this site on any volunteer
related issue you'd be more than welcome, FYI the site gets hits
from lots of countries, but the main ones are (in order) US, United
Kingdom, Canada & Australia; presumably from people
planning/researching their volunteer work.
If you want to write for the site please note that you'll need to
use your real name and (optional) include a picture of yourself
looking fabulous.
I'd like to thank Elizabeth Sanders and Victoria Ferrero for
contributing to the site (see their links on the main page).
Elizabeth makes some good points about the maturity of volunteers,
which I think would apply to all the programs, not just Bruceperu.
Most volunteer organisations have minimal resources and the work is
tough and challenging, requiring 100% full-on commitment.
If travelling to SA to make a difference isn't the most important thing
in your life right now, my advice would be don't volunteer;
go backpacking around the continent for 2-3 months and see how you feel
after that.
Finally, thanks to (my brother) Phil for his work on building the site,
we tried to use lightweight images and gimmick-free pages
to ensure the site will load quickly on low speed (that is code for
South American) connections. This site is completely non-profit; at
times its a pain in the backside to maintain, but if it has spread
the word about free volunteering and maybe encouraged one or two
people to volunteer who might not otherwise have done so, its been
worthwhile.
