The Business of Voluntary Work

By Yasmine Ayari

If it can be shocking to link the words “business” and “voluntary”, it’s still less shocking than the real facts it refers to. I decided to gather these contradictory words together under an oxymoron to reveal the paradox and show the absurdity it implies. In effect, what I mean by “business of voluntary work” is the fact that some so-called organizations (such as Projects Abroad, ProWorld and many others) make volunteers pay a lot more than they should to get the opportunity to intervene abroad.

Projects Abroad is an “international volunteer organization” (but it is a company, not an NGO) which allows people to volunteer for charities around the world, but more particularly in developing countries. The organization makes them pay a certain amount per month in order to cover the food and accommodation fees and for other services such as individual counseling and support during the whole mission, an insurance policy and the transportation from the airport to the project’s place. The price does not include however the transportation fees from the departing country to the arriving country. This can be appealing for people who don’t want to be left to their own devices when they go abroad and find it reassuring to benefit from an individual counseling and support, or who don’t want to organize by themselves their mission, because they don’t have to worry about accommodation and finding an NGO to volunteer.

I myself have already been interested in the volunteering opportunities that Projects Abroad offers, and I’ve even already benefited from this kind of services where you “pay to volunteer”, but through another structure (which is an NGO and where the prices are ten times lower). Indeed, the rates applied by Projects Abroad are really prohibitive, but also very questionable considering the living cost in the countries where they send volunteers. For example, in India, a volunteer must pay from 1500 to 1800 Euros just for one month. To have already been in this country as a volunteer and as an intern, I can testify that it’s way too much for the services provided.

What I find more shocking in these practices is not so much the fact of making profit from people’s gullibility by making them pay huge amounts of money but the fact of generating profits from voluntary work. It also raises the paradox of investing money in these “organizations”, or let’s say companies, rather than in the NGOs which would be more useful for the projects they develop.