Volunteer in Peru at health placement.Observing and assisting local health professionals enables you to support much needed community healthcare services. Volunteers may be placed in hospitals, health clinics, homes for the elderly, orphanages, and even elementary schools that work with limited resources and offer services to low-income populations at minimal or no cost.
In addition, these healthcare service providers often deal with language barriers because of diverse populations and multiple languages. All of these circumstances and more create an environment that welcomes the dedicated and ongoing support of Cross-Cultural Solutions volunteers throughout the year.
Observe, Learn, and Support as an International Health Volunteer
Besides daily support, a key contribution of any volunteer in this type of placement is the opportunity for cultural exchange between nurses, doctors, and patients—from exchanging ideas and life experiences to simply offering companionship. In some cases, the cultural exchange even extends to teaching English to community members and health professionals.
Your presence alone provides these professionals with support and a sense of solidarity for their work. Volunteer work may include educating about basic health and nutrition, physical therapy activities, cleaning, or organizing.
Examples of Volunteer Work
Your tasks as a volunteer observing and assisting health professionals will vary greatly depending on your fluency in the local language, experience in the health field, the structure of the organization, and the customs of the country where you are volunteering. In any case, remember that these organizations ask for CCS volunteers and that you may be helpful in a variety of ways. You could:
- Educate new mothers about preventative healthcare and nutrition in Peru
- Provide “play therapy” for children and support the nurses at a children’s hospital in South Africa
- Accompany nurses on vaccination campaigns for communities near the city dump where residents are at risk for disease in Guatemala
Observing & Assisting Local Health Professionals placements are available in:
CCS volunteer placements are always designed with the community's immediate requests and needs in mind. For that reason, we cannot guarantee specific volunteer placements. For more information, read about our Placement Process.
