Volunteer Programs

I am just starting this page. I want to make this a resource for backpackers who want to do volunteer work in Argentina. I will be putting together a list of programs and also posting reviews of programs. If you have had experiences, good or bad, with programs please let me know.

I have been living in the north of Argentina, in Salta, for over a year and have been thinking about starting my own volunteer projects in Argentina. One idea is to set up a network of schools, orphanages, food kitches, community centers, etc. around the country where backpackers can drop in and visit with the children and teens. I have been in many schools and other places and have taken many backpackers with me in various countries and it is always a good experience and a lot of fun for everyone. The idea is to post a list of participating places on this site, then you can contact them individually when you are going to be in that city. If you are traveling and you visit a school or somewhere and they would like to be on the list, please send me their contact details and any pics you have.

I am just starting to create this list of places you can volunteer in Argentina.

Conviven - This is an official NGO. It has an established volunteer program. There is no charge to be a volunteer.

Pancitas - This is a food kitchen in the very touristy Boca/Caminitos area of Buenos Aires. There is no program set up yet but they told me they can use any type of help. They only speak Spanish. The kitchen gets no help from the government. It is run by a very poor family out of their house. Tourists are unlikely to ever know something like this exists.

Mendoza Primary School - This is in the same Boca/Caminito area of Buenos Aires as the Pancitas food kitchen. The English teacher said she would love to have backpackers visit her classes.

Volunteer Program Database Project

Based on feedback from many volunteers, there is a need for a database of volunteer progams. So our idea is to create one. In the database we will have the program name, a description, the cost, the location, the contact person in South America, a review of it, and feedback from actual participants

As of May 2007 we are just starting this. Your help is greatly appreciated! Please email us and tell us about your experiences, good or bad. Please also let us know if we can give your email out if someone asks for it (we won't put it on any websites, but with your permission we will pass it along when requested if someone wants to verify anything or if they have any specific questions about a program.)

We are going to try to encourage the volunteer program operators to make it easier for volunteers to offer their services when they truly want to, but find the cost of volunteering prohibitive. By creating the databace and making more information publically available we hope encourage them to...

direct more money to the local projects
provide more information about what is really happening in the programs
offer email addresses of volunteers who are currently in the placements
provide contact information of the local project coordinators

In other words, we will encourage them to become a bit more transparent. It is too easy now for someone in an office in a developed country to collect high fees from an inexperienced traveller and then keep an unfair proportion of the fee in that country instead of making sure it goes to the local project. We also want to help prevent the situation where volunteers get to a placement and then feel disillusioned, disappointed and decieved when they find out the money they had spent to enroll hasn't made it to the local site. Frankly, after actually being in South America for a while, we believe that some programs are simply ridiculously over-priced when compared to the actual cost of accomodation, food and things like Spanish language classes. We don't like seeing fellow backpackers being taken advantage of in this way.

Another idea of the database is to help backpackers find good local projects which don't have a presence on the web.

Besides creating this database we want to start our own program. We are still in the planning stages but here are a few ideas.

- Organize informal visits to schools, food kitchens, orphanages etc.where children and teenagers can have a chance to meet backpackers from many countries. In particular, the idea is to locate places along the major tourist routes, such as Buenos Aires to Iquazu. Then a backpacker can get off the bus and visit, say, a school, for a few hours and have a very enjoyable time before getting back on the bus.

We will also organize various volunteer activities in Buenos Aires. The owner of a small local hostel has offered to be the contact person for the programs in Buenos Aires. We also have contacts in Salta.

Thanks for your interest and help!

Write to Steve eqimail@yahoo.com

Or if you are in Buenos Aires you can go to the local office.

Balcarce 776 (San Telmo between Chile and Independencia)
Phone 4343-3951

By the way here is one list of free and low cost volunteer programs. We want to get information on as many of these programs as possible. Also there is another website which can help you with your search of volunteer programs. There is a fee for the information search but it can save you a lot of money beause it will put you in direct contact with local projects so you won't have to pay a "middle man" in another country to sign up for the program.

I just talked to someone who had a very good experience with this company. She worked in Peru, near Cusco. Here is a website with their price list. It looks expensive to me but she said for her it was worth it because she didn't know Spanish at all and was going alone, etc.