Urban gardening in Nairobi’s slums. All photos by author.
Bernard Pollack from Border Jumpers shares dozens of opportunities to work, volunteer or intern in Africa.
Most of what we hear about Africa in the United States (and across the Western world) are stories about conflict, famine, disease, HIV/AIDS and hunger. The news tends to be so negative that it desensitizes people from the problems, makes us feel powerless, hardens us from doing something about it, and even scares us from visiting Africa beyond the World Cup or a packaged tour safari.
In October 2009 I arrived in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where my partner Danielle and I started our journey to visit nearly every country in Africa. At every stop we are meeting with farmers, community organizers, labor activists/leaders, unions, non-governmental organization (NGOs), the funding and donor communities, and local press.
Our goal is that along the way we can highlight hundreds of stories of hope and success on the ground in Africa. We are visiting and profiling projects and innovations that are working in sustainable ways to alleviate hunger and poverty, and we hope to spotlight things that are working on the ground that could be replicated or scaled up. Along the way, many people ask us how they can volunteer and what organizations they can connect with to enhance their travel experience, so here is a list of opportunities for you to put your hands in African soil from a couple of days to a year. We tried to offer a wide variety of efforts, from long term work to shorter volunteer vacations.
Visiting a school in Ghana
1. Working Abroad has projects in several countries including a Watamu turtle project in Kenya, a White Lion conservation project in South Africa, and a Cheetah conservation project in Botswana.
2. Africa & Africa Venture has volunteer projects in Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda from three weeks to five months. Their Uganda project is based overlooking white water at the Source of the Nile, and the works consists of constructing, repairing or improving village schools, health facilities and buildings.
3. Worldwide Experience offers sports coaching and kids sports initiative volunteer work in rural South Africa. Project lasts either two or four weeks.
4. UVolunteer offers volunteer work in Ghana from helping at an orphanage, teaching physical education, and working at a medical clinic. Programs last either two or four weeks.
5. ikando places people in internships and volunteer positions in Ghana. Work projects include teaming with the Red Cross Society, the National Museum, Ghana Health Coalition, and an Autism Center.
6. Edge of Africa offers the chance to be a game reserve volunteer in South Africa including managing and maintaining the cheetah research and breeding project. Courses are two or four weeks.
7. StudentUniverse operates in South Africa and offers wildlife protection volunteering, that includes environmental education programs in local schools.
8. Real Gap offers a program in Zimbabwe, that works in rehabilitating the Black Rino back into their natural environment. The projects run four, eight and twelve weeks.
9. Gap Year Ghana offers volunteer work in Ghana that lets you teach, coach sports, offer medical support, practice journalism, or assist a refugee camp. Projects run from two to twelve weeks.
10. Project Abroad puts you with a host family in Tanzania. Work includes assisting an orphanage, working with special needs children, or helping a day care center.
11. Worldwide Helpers offers volunteer work in Zimbabwe to work with an HIV/AIDS school orphanage and provide support for community based awarness projects.
12. Volunteering in Africa provides projects in Ghana, allowing volunteers to work in education, health care, media/journalism, and legal work.
13. VolunteerAfrica has projects in Tanzania. Volunteers work alongside villagers on community-initiated building projects. Past projects have included health dispensaries, school classrooms, pit latrines, and homes for teachers and medical staff. Programs last four, seven and ten weeks.
14. Idealist offers literally hundreds of ways to volunteer in Africa, connecting you with dozens of organizations and agencies across the continent.
15. Habitat for Humanity works across the continent including Ghana, Zambia, and Kenya, and offers volunteer opportunities as part of their Global Village program.
HIV/AIDS orphanage in Harare, Zimbabwe
16. Volunteer 4 Africa provides budget ways of volunteering on the continet. Some of its projects include work at a community television station, an organic fruit farm, on tropical organic permaculture, a Maasai project, and at a Chimpanzee Rescue Center.
17. African Impact works in Mozambique with a pre-school orphan teaching program in the tropical beach town of Vilanculos. Project lasts up to eight weeks.
18. Cross-Culteral Solutions offers several programs across the continent including providing caregiving for infants, teaching, community support, and assistance to healthcare professionals.
19. Transitions Abroad offers an interesting listing of projects across Africa, including marine conservation volunteer program in the Seychelles.
20. Volunteer Abroad offers dozens of programs in Tanzania and Uganda, working with organizations like a center for the blind, hospitals, camps, schools, and orphanages.
21. United Nations Volunteers is a program that mobilizes volunteers to work in agriculture, health and educationn, human rights promotion, information and communication technology, community development, vocational training, industry and population. You must be 25 or older with a university degree or higher technical diploma.
22. Student Partnerships Woldwide works across the continent including in Zambia and Uganda. One type of volunteering activity SPW offers focuses non-formal education such as sports, music, drama, arts and debate to open a dialogue with youth and get them actively involved in learning about health and environmental issues.
23. GVI offers construction projects including one in Kenya where you work with former poachers of Tsavo West National Park, East Africa, to tackle human-wildlife conflict and the bush-meat trade through community infrastructure and development
24. i-to-i offers tons of volunteer project listings in Africa including working with AIDS orphans, teaching English, and construction in rural Kenya.
25. BUNAC offers volunteer programs throughout South Africa, offering opportunities to teach, work with children, promote HIV/AIDS awareness and work on environmental conservation.
26. Global Vounteer Network has literacy, HIV/AIDS, and gender-based violence prevention programs in Rwanda. Volunteer projects last between two weeks and three months.
27. United Planet offers six months to one year programs in Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria and other countries. The program in Lagos, Nigeria places volunteers with host families working with children from a variety of disadvantaged backgrounds including rescued child laborers, abandoned street children, disabled children, children from troubled families, those who have suffered abuse, and orphans.
28. All Africa Volunteers offers a penguin rescue project in South Africa that does rehabilitation and rescue work. Commitment starts at one week but can last much longer.
Women’s co-op near Accra, Ghana
29. AVIVA offers teaching and cooking programs at a primary school near Cape Town, which caters for around 300 children from five to thirteen years of age. Program lasts from one to four weeks.
30. VolunteerAdventures offers a public health outreach program in Zambia where you will assist the medical staff at several local clinics in Livingstone and work at a home for children orphaned by the AIDS epidemic. The program lasts between two weeks and three months.
31. Volunteer Partnerships for West Africa offers programs in Ghana ranging from women’s empowerment, to business developement, to arts and culture and microfinance.
32. Institute for Field Research Expeditions offers summer volunteer projects in Ghana and Tanzania. Volunteers will work in Arusha, Tanzania in an orphanage for three weeks and then spend the final five days on an African safari. Project lasts one month.
33. Cultural Embrace has a program in Zimababwe that lets volunteers work at a wildlife orphanage that offers a home to orphaned, abandoned and sick wild animals. Programs start at one week.
34. Advance-Africa offers programs in Kenya that place volunteers in mental health clinics, amongst the handicapped, in hospices, with HIV/AIDS patients or doing volunteer work in specific areas like nutrition and dental services. Programs last from two weeks to six months.
35. You 2 Africa lists several volunteer projects in Cape Town, including working on an organic farm.
36. Earth Watch Institute provides opportunties work in Madagascar protecting the fossa as well as coral and coastal ecology in Seychelles. Programs last about two weeks.
37. Pathfinders Africa offers volunteer vacations and conservation programs in Africa. Most of the programs are in Southern Africa and last around two weeks.
38. Global Service Corps has a program in Tanzania where volunteer placements include teaching English and providing necessary services to underprivileged children. Projects last from six weeks to six months.
39. Gap Year for Grown Ups offers tons of projects in Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
40. International Volunteer Travel provides placement on volunteer programs in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana, and Zanzibar Island.
41. Conservation Africa provides volunteer programs in Mauritius doing dolphin conservation. Some of the work includes photographing individual dolphins for identification, tracking pod movements and mapping habitat use, and cataloguing individual animals. Programs are between two and twelve weeks.
42. Volunteering Solutions offers programs in Malawi teaching English and working at an orphanage. Programs last from one week to two months.
43. Animal Job Direct offers a goods listing of organizations that have volunteer programs with animals across Africa.
44. Advance-Africa offers programs in Senegal and the Sudan. In Dakar, Senegal, you can work on a variety of medical projects, teach English or volunteer at an orphanage.
Know of any more opportunities to work abroad, intern or volunteer in Africa? Mention them in the comment section!
Community Connection
Looking for country specific volunteer opportunities in Africa? Check out Lola Akimade’s guide to volunteering in Nations Less Traveled on Matador Change.
About the Author
Related Posts
22 Comments... join the discussion!
-
-
thank you so much for compiling this list…i will pass this along far and wide!
↵ -
You bet!
Also, if anyone out thinks I missed an important one, please add it to the comments section.
Best, Bernie
↵ -
i would say project trust which is a scottish charity thst does year long placements in africa(Botswana, SOuth Africa, Uganda, Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mauritius, Senegal and possibly Rwanda) in care settings or in schools. http://www.projecttrust.org.uk
All placements are either 12 months or 8 months (under a seperate shorter scheme) but its only for those under 20↵ -
This is great information! Thanks so much for making this available
↵ -
Looks like a great list, but I would like to add one place; The Baobab Home, in Bagamoyo, Tanzania. I am going to work there this autumn and it looks really nice. The Baobab Home is about 1,5 hours north of Dar es Salaam.
↵ -
Unfortunately most of these listed are the “big” groups that charge upwards of $1500-2000 for two weeks of volunteerism with them. There are many options out there that charge minimal fees (a couple of hundred per two weeks or per month) that are just as good! Googling “orphanage, botswana” or “animal shelter, tanzania” can yield results of smaller, local organizations that offer volunteer opportunities without charging out the wazoo!
http://www.serveyourworld.com/articles/264/1/Free-Volunteering-Abroad is also good
↵ -
I’m psyched that this list is growing in the comment section! Keep sharing everyone. There must be hundreds of ways to volunteer and work in Africa, and we’d love to hear about them here on Matador.
↵ -
Hay everyone,
The list is a gud one, and yes for some people it might not be that affordable, so can we get some places/organization that we can provide services to, for free of course, and we do not have to pay for the expenses??..if someone knows, please do let us know kaz i do want to volunteer in Africa…
I am working in the development sector for some 5 years, and m currently working in IRC in Pakistan…
↵ -
Hi
A good list!
Touch-Humanity International Voluntary Services http://thivs.org/ offers exciting short, medium and long term volunteer placements all year around in Kenya, Uganda and Sudan, at low rates indeed.MB
↵ -
This is a great list. However, I refuse to pay to volunteer. Organizations can have my time, but not my money.
↵ -
Serveyourworld.com is my favorite volunteer search database and there are many free and cheap volunteer opportunities listed! Most organizations depend on volunteers for funding because independent donations can be hard to come by, but you would never convince me to spend $2000 for 2 weeks of volunteering. Maybe 6 months but not two weeks; living expenses in places like Africa and South America cost nowhere near that amount and to me seems like a rip-off, asking for too much :/
↵ -
Hi, we have just set one up in Nepal to help fund orphanages across Nepal. I spent 3 years there working & gathering informtion to do this and we only charge £200 a month which includes food & lodgings. And being closely connected with them we actually have talked and set up a target for each orphanage in terms of volunteers and we have a sponsorship scheme that pays straight to the orphanage.
I feel we are different to every other organization in Nepal because when we achieve our target in volunteers then we should work to improving the quality of life for the children.
if anyone has help and advice please contact me as all this has been done by me in between working full time because people kept telling me i couldnt do it.↵ -
I was a volunteer for 6 weeks and I would recommend anybody to travel to Knysna in South Africa and volunteer as part of the Edge of Africa team. The experience i had was absolutley breathe taking, an experience i will hold with me forever. Even though i was teaching children about HIV Awareness through the mediums of drama and dance, in actual fact, what the community centres did, was teach me more than i could have possibly imagined. Edge of Africa hold so many different worthwhile projects, so there is always something for everyone to do. It is clear that even the littlest bit of help can go a very long way to these causes. I would like to take this oppertunity to thank Edge of Africa for allowing me the chance to be part of their team, volunteering; their work is truly inspirational to all.
↵ -
The past few years I have spent time in South Africa volunteering with Edge Of Africa, and it was the best thing i have ever done. When I first decieded to do it, my first thought was to find something cheap, being a student I didnt have a lot to work with towards paying a large sum to volunteer. But with Edge it gives you a home, not once did i ever feel unsafe, I was always well taken care of and Dayne and Roger were like my african parents there when I needed them. You pay for this extra safety, and they certainly make it worthwhile, with nights out, weekend day trips and adventure tours so you get to volunteer yet still have fun and experiance South Africa.
↵ -
I spent just over 2 months volunteering for edge of africa and like the previous comments an experience i could and would never forget. The things i learnt, the places i saw and people i met and worked with were an inspiration. Although the questions i see being raised are off money issues should we pay to volunteer? Well i think that is a complete debate in itself.
Edge of africa is expensive if you just look at it as money but when you bring in the the effort that is put into your stay, the pattion the edge of africa team has and the projects worked on you immediatly see its going to a good place. I could now never put a price on the unforgetable experiences i had last year. I now have memories that can never be forgotten and the things i learnt and was taught will be there forever. It was an experience witch is now with me every single day and i will continually be thankfull to them.↵ -
Like the previous commenter, I volunteered with Edge of Africa for a month last year, helping out in an HIV clinic in Knysna. When the idea of going to South Africa was first suggested to me, I’ll admit I was terrified! But as I researched it more and and talked to Dayne and Roger (the two super-humans who run Edge of Africa) my apprehension turned to unbridled excitement. Words cannot explain the feeling you get when you board that first plane to South Africa, knowing what you’re going there to do. Or what you think you’re going to do, because every day there will surprise and amaze you. At least it did me.
Although I’ve not volunteered with other organisations outside the UK, after talking to friends who went with other volunteering groups in various African countries, Edge of Africa really set the bar with their passion, their caring attitude, and the range of options offered. Certainly worth every penny!
↵ -
Yup, another volunteer from EDGE of AFRICA, back after a month in South Africa on the HIV & Tuberculosis Awareness project.
Only wish I could have stayed longer! It’s the experience of a lifetime; you’re changing people’s lives every day, through little ways or big. And you’re surrounded by the family that is the Edge of Africa staff, made up of individuals passionate for life and for spreading that gift.
It’s like Ollie said; in the beginning, you’re a little apprehensive, but then you realize YOU’RE GOING TO FREAKING SOUTH AFRICA TO VOLUNTEER! It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. And then you think of all the people you’re helping in the hundreds of ways and you know that Edge of Africa has made sustainable projects that will last lifetimes and, then, well, it’s a bit of nirvana of life right there.
Another volunteer and I created and implemented an HIV & AIDS workshop at a youth centre called Sinethemba in a township in Knysna. The glean in a kid’s eye when he really understands is something magical, especially when you consider that English isn’t his first language, his schooling hasn’t been great, but he’ll give it every shot that he can and then one of those shots hits the mark.
There’s something magical is in EDGE of AFRICA….
↵ -
I think that I am in a unique position to comment on GVI, having just returned from 10 months of traveling and doing 3 GVI projects in a row. My aim was to take some time to see the world, immerse myself in cultures and to try and give something back to the world.
My first project was “Teach English to Buddhist Novice Monks and Local Communities in Laos”. The support here from both the GVI staff and the other volunteers was amazing. Living in a guest house with our own rooms gave the best of both worlds in that we were able to spend as little or as much time together as we each wanted. I went into the project with no teaching experience but by the end I was taking smaller groups of novices for lessons on my own. To have a young novice monk grab my arm and say “You are a very good teacher” was as rewarding as anything I have ever done.
For anyone wondering how your contribution is spent on these projects the blog for the Laos project at http://gvilaos.blogspot.com/ lists some of the things that they have been able to do.
My second project was “Teaching and community work in Nepal” and it was a completely different situation to Laos. Here I was on my own in a small village and looked after kids in an orphanage. Support was from the manager of the hotel where I was staying and eating and he was able to quickly and easily supply me with anything I needed. Working with children was completely new to me as well but it was hard not to fall for them and to be able to live the life of a local with such enthusiastic guides gave me a view of Nepal that couldn’t be matched by any standard trek.
The third project was “Wildlife Research Expedition in South Africa” and here the emphasis was on animals rather than people. Early starts, long days and mind blowing close up wildlife encounters were the norm. Living was in communal style and it was a bit of an adjustment after being so independent in Nepal to have to fit in with a group again. As in most communal situations the cooking and cleaning was a group effort with some meal noticeably superior to others.
The emphasis here was learning about the local environment, fauna and flora and regular lectures gave us a deeper understanding of what we were seeing along with the practical lessons in maps, telemetry and reptile handling etc. Many of the other volunteers had biology backgrounds or an interest in going into the field but I feel, even though I was only there for the “experience”, that I came away with a far greater understanding and appreciation of the work being done than I thought I would.
In the end I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend any of the projects that I did or GVI as an organisation. I had great communication and assistance throughout and have seen firsthand what they are managing to achieve in the field.
Ask questions. Volunteering may not be for everyone and it is important to be aware of the field conditions before you go but I can say from the unique position of having done 3 of them that a GVI project will change your life in ways that you can’t even guess now.
I also want to let everyone know that I have created an Unofficial GVI Volunteers forum at http://www.gviforum.com .When I was first trying to find out info about GVI and its projects I found facebook was not a real good way to create a long term discussion. It’s too easy for responses to get lost in the crowd if you’re looking for questions that have probably already been asked. I always thought that they should have had a proper discussion forum set up.
I ended up doing 3 projects in a row with GVI and kept asking other volunteers what they thought of my idea. They all said that it would have been handy when they were looking for information so, now that I’m home, I’ve set it up. It is unofficial though, so all posts are the opinions of the person making them.
I don’t work for GVI, I am just an ex volunteer who saw a need for a place where questions could be asked by those wanting to know and answers given by those who have actually been there. The GVI site will always give you the official details regarding a project but the forum is where you can go to find out the really important stuff, where’s the best coffee in town, is there wifi, should I bring my own shampoo or can I get it there. Like I said, this just an ex volunteer doing something so there will never be any advertising and I’m getting nothing out of this apart from the idea that I may encourage others to volunteer like I did.
So please check it out, sign up and participate. I only put it online today and it’s looking a little bare at the moment.↵ -
These are all terrific comments, thank you so much for making this post more and more useful!
↵
