Emergency and Relief

An option for highly skilled and experienced volunteers only. It involves doctors, nurses, midwives, psychologists and the like responding to humanitarian crises, conflicts, wars and natural disasters abroad. Some volunteers are on 72-hour standby to go anywhere in the world.

Working with Children

Typically, work in this area might include volunteering as a sports coach, a placement in an orphanage or working with street children.

Education and Training

Most volunteer placements in this category are teaching English (with or without qualifications) in preschools, primary or secondary schools, and to adults. Depending on your talents or qualifications, you could end up teaching almost anything

Business Administration and Office Work

Depending on your experience, you might work for a local NGO writing fundraising proposals, managing a project or volunteering in their marketing, PR or finance departments. The aim of these placements is usually to train local people in the skills you possess so that they can become self-sufficient (such work is referred to as capacity-building).

Building and Construction

Good, old-fashioned manual labour often forms a big part in volunteer work. You are usually sent as part of a team to help build schools, community centres, houses, bridges, dams or latrines. There is also a need in this area for skilled volunteers to work as civil or structural engineers and construction or site supervisors.

Health and Nutrition

Professionals are often required in this area, but you don't have to be a fully trained nurse, doctor, speech therapist, nutritionist or physiotherapist to contribute. Non-medical volunteers can often help in other areas like the promotion of health and hygiene issues in a local community.

Community Development

This category encompasses a wide variety of community and social programs. You might help women's groups set up income-generating schemes (eg selling handicrafts), work with a local village on empowerment issues or help establish a system for disposing of rubbish in a village or region.

Staff Volunteering

Some volunteer organisations, particularly those aimed at the youth market, need in-country volunteer staff to help manage and run their overseas programs. You might be a medic on an expedition, an interpreter at a field base or a project manager working with a group of 17- to 24-year-olds.

Agriculture and Farming

This one is almost exclusively for skilled volunteers. Communities often need horticulturalists, foresters, agronomists and agriculturists.

Conservation Volunteering

Volunteering in this area could involve clearing or constructing trails in African national parks, studying flora and fauna in a cloud forest reserve in Ecuador or monitoring climate change in the Arctic. There are countless options available.

Archaeology and palaeontology also come under the conservation banner and are two fields that rely heavily on international volunteers.

Wildlife Volunteering

If you choose to work with animals you might be doing anything from monitoring sea turtle populations in Costa Rica to analysing the migration of grey whales in Canada to working in a home for neglected or orphaned wild animals in Namibia.

Marine conservation straddles both the conservation and wildlife camps. Tasks for volunteers may include underwater surveys of coral reefs in the Philippines, diving with whale sharks in Honduras or helping with dolphin conservation in Florida.