Why Pay To Volunteer

All short-term international volunteer programs have a program fee which covers the expenses of operating the program. Below is an excerpt from a book on international volunteering that helps to explain the necessity of a fee.

from HOW TO LIVE YOUR DREAM OF VOLUNTEERING OVERSEAS
by Joseph Collins, Stefano DeZerega, and Zahara Heckscher
published by Penguin Putnam, Inc., 2002

Prospective volunteers are surprised to learn that many programs charge their volunteers a fee to participate. At first, this can seem ridiculous — Why should you pay money to work for free? Aren't you already forgoing income you could be making? Here are a few things to keep in mind while trying to understand why the vast majority of programs charge international volunteers a fee:

The local organizations and projects with which you volunteer overseas have limited resources and are seldom able to subsidize your trip or cover the costs of hosting you. (These costs include housing, feeding and transporting you, among numerous other things.) If they did have the financial resources to pay an international volunteer, it would almost certainly be more beneficial and cost-effective to hire a local person instead, someone who already knows the language and culture and is likely to stick around.
Identifying appropriate host organizations overseas and working with them is time-consuming, takes resources, and requires an experienced and professional staff.
The process of preparing, training, transporting, housing, feeding, and supervising volunteers is not cheap. Additional services such as health care, re-entry assistance, travel medical insurance, and more, all add to the expenses of a program.
The costs of recruiting volunteers, producing literature, answering the phones, sending mailings, developing a website, and interviewing potential volunteers are significant.

Cross-Cultural Solutions is an independent non-profit organization with no governmental or religious affiliations. Like all not-for-profit organizations that run international volunteer programs, Cross-Cultural Solutions' programs are driven by volunteer contributions.

Click here to see the CCS program fee. Click here to see more details on how Cross-Cultural Solutions applies the volunteer's program fee towards its operations and what the fee covers while in-country.