Any organisations / schemes for DS to travel/volunteer/work abroad ?

[poppledopple]

DS will now take a gap year - wants to travel/volunteer/work in a few places around the world - but he will be travelling alone - so wants to join a few initiatives along the way (thinking of getting a round the world ticket).....will also post on secondary education....and maybe travel....

Try googling relevant organisations - there are loads !!!!

Thats the problem boj -- too many to sift thru - no idea if they are sharks or not - so looking for personal recommendations

just found Raleigh International - been going a long time and looks legit....but £2-3k for 5 or 10 weeks with flights etc on top ....ouch.

ds is currently in st lucia doing sports coaching - he has gone with changing worlds they have various projects all over the place

Dis went to Fiji with Frontier, to do a journalism internship, he had a great time but don't think he thought the organisation was great.

Just looked at both of those sites -- look great - thx

I used to work for Frontier. Please avoid them at all costs.

What skills or experience does your son have that charities will be interested in? If the answer is nothing but enthusiasm then you'll probably be looking at paying a hefty fee for someone to take him on and give him something useful to do.

If he's got gumption he'll find local charities that won't advertise through the Web for help.

Back in the day I used to use a guide called the Green volunteers guide. I wrote to 10's of charities and got a place where I just paid room and board.

Popple, DD will be working a ski season. Lots of firms.

www.workaseason.com/ have vacanices who young people to work as "snow rangers" which is essentially entertaining and looking after kids aged from about 3 to 13, so no cooking or cleaning. Crystal is another. These firms will have large groups of young people in a resort who are prepared to work hard as well as enjoy themselves.

She then plans to do Camp America or an equivalent. She is weighing up whether she could handle a specialist camp which essentially acts as respite care for disabled children or adults. These have a longer season and the work would be rewarding but challenging.

A friend gave me a tip about STA hop-on hop-off coach trips around Europe. There wont be many Brits but lots of Australians and Kiwis. There is also more support in terms of booking accomodation and access to key sights. So much easier to do on your own than inter-railing.

Have a look at ICS - it's like VSO but for young people, and it's very supported, as well as reputable: and there's no costs either to the participant - though they do need to do some fund-raising, they are supported with that as well www.volunteerics.org/

One of my brownie team is going away with Project Trust for a year.

Thank you for all your contributions - loads of great suggestions for him to investigate, plan and look forward to!

Definitely look at ICS. International citizen service. My daughter spent 10 weeks in India a few years ago building toilets in a village. Other than raising £800 or so by fundraising there were no other real costs. Although she was found some of her fellow volunteers motivation a bit odd. Eg, a couple of women went out to loose weight!