I recently stumbled upon a program that lets you take volunteer trips of varying lengths of times (from 1 week to 24 weeks), this program is International Volunteer Headquarters, or IVHQ. After hours of searching the website for a program and location that was exactly what I wanted, I settled on taking a trip to Tanzania volunteering at an orphanage. I applied earlier today for the summer of 2015, This will be the summer after I graduate from high school and before I begin college.
On top of researching the individual Tanzanian program I also spent a lot of time looking into the organization itself. It is a fairly new business (if you consider 2007 new) but I found countless good reviews in many places. IVHQ seems like it's an amazing company dedicated to giving volunteers safe and fulfilling trips. I can't wait to begin working with them!
The volunteer experience itself is very inexpensive considering the prices of the other programs. Volunteering in Tanzania costs $460 for three weeks and the registration for the program costs $249. With other similar programs I found that these trips cost around $3000 without airfare. The expensive part will be the plane ticket, The lowest prices I could find were close to $2000. I will also need to raise spending money and money for supplies and paperwork.
In order for me to make all of the money necessary in the next year I will need to fund-raise $250-$300 per month.The problem is, I live is a rural area where there isn't much work, in order to have a chance at finding a job I would need to travel 20 miles to work, and it's hard to find work that a person under 18 can do. If you have any ideas of how to make steady income I would love to hear from you in the comments!
