Volunteering with Communities in Africa│Asia
“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”
Margaret J. Wheatley
Community Determined Volunteering Projects
The programmes on this page are focused on outcomes for communities, and impact on other aspects simultaneously, but as you would expect, each of our projects has community outcomes
Volunteer with communities
HIV+ Women’s Cooperative
Location: outside Nairobi, Kenya
Weeks: 2 - 12
Code: Ke_CI_HIV+
Project Description:
This collective has been operating in a suburb of a small town outside Nairobi since 1998.
It was established by HIV+ women to support each other in creating self-employment through a range of business.
Local women continue to join together to build their own self-employment opportunities to free themselves and their families from the economic effects of being stigamtised for being HIV+
They run workshops, and a school where their children are taught. Your volunteering can range from supporting the various business enterprises and the women’s work, to teaching the women’s children. This will engage you in a range of practical, management, youth and social work activities.
You will stay in the organisation’s dedicated accommodation.
Sri Lanka Village Development
Location: Sri Lanka, Anuradhapura
Weeks: 2 - 12 - 48
Code: SL_CI_Vi
Project Overview:
join us in Sri Lanka where we have been working with communities since 2015. You could join with a Buddhist village community on a project tailored to your interests and length of stay. You could teach English in schools and to monks and villagers. Learn Sinhala, and Tamil, weaving, woodcarving, fishing, cookery, as well as supporting the villages to develop organic agricultural practices. You could also raise money and build toilets, and put in bio-gas cooking infrastructure
*dependent on the activities selected
Turtles│Mangroves│Livelihood
Location: Kenya’s East coast
Weeks: 4 - 52
Code: Ke_EC_EC
Project Overview:
Driven by the community’s vision to safeguard it’s coastline from rising sea levels and increased storm activity, conserve its natural treasures, develop food resilience, and grow incomes through tourism, this project offers volunteers and gap yearers a wealth of experiences. You could be preserving the nesting sites of turtles, planting mangrove trees, building tourist walkway infrastructure to view birdlife, through to website development, office work and management.
This work is also close to other projects in Kenya, which you can also join
Maasai* Community Development
Location: Maasai tribal area S Kenya
Weeks: 2 - 12 - 48
Code: Ke-CI-MCO
Project Overview:
This is a unique opportunity to spend time with one of the world’s best known tribes, not as a tourist observer, but as a volunteer engaging with them in their lives. You achieve this by volunteering with a Maasai community organisation, established in 1997 to address health, illiteracy, human-wildlife conflict, and to grow incomes, and deliver education to 6,000 Maasai tribespeople across their 700km² tribal area.
Traditional ways of living are under pressure globally, and your volunteering with a Maasai community organisation supports them in adapting to those pressures so that they can continue living off their land in the future as they have for generations. Your role ranges from monitoring livestock movements to avoid habitat degradation and livestock predation, to identifying known medicinal plants for the pharmaceutical industry to analyse for their potential curative benefits, to teaching in schools.
Teach in schools, learn traditional agriculture and animal husbandry, manage traditional medicinal plants, support habitat and wildlife conservation
Maasai (Ke_Cl_MB)
*external link to read more about the Maasai people
