Ecotourism Melanesia: Volunteering holidays

Volunteering holidays Make a difference while you take a break !
Spend up to 60 days on a tourist visa in PNG doing voluntary community development work that we arrange for you •Teach English in a village adult literacy program • Teach a short course in in a community education centre (computer skills, book-keeping, drawing/painting, pottery, catering) •Teach farming skills to villagers •Teach work skills to unemployed youth • Design a website for a non-profit organisation or rural enterprise •Provide business mentoring for a local entrepreneur • Help a school or community librarian computerise a collection • Help with fundraising activities for a charity organisation •Help a village community start up an ecotourism project •Help a community organisation draft a project proposal or funding application
What's a volunteering holiday? A volunteering holiday in Papua New Guinea is a community-based responsible tourism experience where you will be able to learn about PNG and see a bit of our country while at the same time having an opportunity to impart some skills and knowledge to the local people during your holiday. This can all be arranged on a non-extendable 8-weeks tourist visa that can be issued on arrival in Port Moresby* and is called a volunteering holiday. *Visa on arrival not available for African, Eastern European, Middle Eastern or Asian passports.
What's the difference between a volunteering holiday and a regular volunteer placement? A regular volunteer placement is a long-term assignment between 6 months and 3 years organised by a volunteer sending agency (VSA) like AVA, AYAD, VSO, or Oxfam. For a regular volunteer stint you would need to enter the country on a special aid worker's visa issued under the auspices of any overseas volunteer sending agency (VSA) which has a current Memorandum of Understanding with the PNG Government (see some links at the bottom of this page).
Many people interested in volunteering are not able to commit to a long-term volunteer placement but would like to make a short-term contribution in a developing country during their annual leave or vacation. A volunteering holiday provides this opportunity. It gives a taste of what volunteering in a developing country is like and may even whet the appetite to undertake a long-term volunteer placement with a volunteer sending agency (VSA) in the future.
Managing Director of Ecotourism Melanesia, Aaron Hayes, is a former PNG in-country manager for the Australian Youth Ambassadors volunteer program and is experienced in the organisation of volunteer placements and management of support services for volunteers. He designed the concept of volunteering holidays in 2005 to meet the demand from socially aware tourists wanting to contribute something to the developing world while taking their annual leave.
Who will I be helping? We have a preference to place volunteering holiday clients with small community-based organisations (CBOs) in rural areas because these are the settings where regular volunteers are rarely placed due to not meeting VSA criteria. We observe that most volunteer sending agencies have such strict criteria for host organisations in terms of the level of support that they must be able to provide to the volunteer (accommodation, office facilities, communications, identified local counterpart, measurable outcomes), that humble village community organisations are virtually ineligible to host regular long-term volunteers.
Most long-term volunteers coming through volunteer sending agencies are placed in well-established NGOs, church, government and charity organisations that have healthy budgets and employ their own staff. The volunteer is little more than a freebie who helps the host organisation save a bit of money on wages, when in fact the volunteer placement could in many cases be carried off by an appropriately qualified local employee or consultant. This is frustrating and disapppointing for the local labour market and should be reviewed.
Most community-based organisations in the rural areas do not receive government or donor funds because they are too small and often only recently established without any track record on funds management. These CBO's are often set up by local villagers frustrated by the lack of government services in their villages and wanting to establish a charity organisation to act as a conduit for goverment and donor assistance.
There are literally hundreds of these struggling CBOs in villages all over the country. While the government and donors are reluctant to fund them due to reliability concerns, these are the very organisations with the potential to bring help directly into the village communities without large chunks of funds being chewed up in administration costs at the middle management level as tends to happen within development organisations and volunteer sending agencies.
Many of our volunteering holidays involve assisting these little community-based organisations with tasks they cannot do themselves due to having no staff, no money and no expertise on their organising committees. Your assistance in this context will be most tangible. You will be able to physically count the number of people who have picked up new skills, new techniques or new understanding from you and your activities. Concrete outcomes.
Preparation at our end Despite being short in duration, a volunteering holiday still requires quite a lot of organisation at this end. We have to match you, your skills, your interests and your preferred location with a local commmunity organisation needing a hand with something, and do quite a lot of groundwork with the local people and the local authorities so that everyone understands clearly what they and you hope to get out of your stay. Sometimes local authorities cause a bit of red tape
We also need to identify a village guest house or homestay to accommodate you, and negotiate a weekly rate. Unlike a long-term volunteer assignment where the local host organisation (school, charity, NGO or government agency) might be expected to provide you with free accommodation and even a living allowance, a volunteering holiday must be funded entirely by you, the volunteer.
Arranging travel to get you where you need to go - often a rural area with no public transport - can also be quite a challenge for us. However we pride ourselves our our "we do anything" motto. We have a reputation for being the tour company that gets all the "weird stuff" referred to us from other agencies and over the years we have learned how to get to just about anywhere in PNG by air, land or sea (or mud).
Preparation at your end You'll be expected to pay your way for food and board (your money will make a big difference in the lives of the local family operating the guest house or homestay that accommodates you), and bring or pay for any materials required for the activities or tasks you are helping with. Remember that in most cases you will be staying in a rural area where people are very poor by Western standards and will not be able to support you or lend you money if you run short.
Therefore it is imperative that you budget carefully for this trip - with at least a 20% contingency margin - and perhaps enlist the support of family, friends, your local church or service club to help you make your volunteering holiday a success. It is not unusual for volunteering holidays to result in further charity assistance for your PNG host community after you return home - once people have seen the need and how you were able to help, they will be keen to pitch in.
So plan to take plenty of photographs to drop into web pages, photo albums and Power Point slide shows back home to help everyone see how you have helped in your own small way. This may motivate others to contribute to further assistance for the same people or another PNG community by planning a volunteering holiday of their own or contributing to a follow-up project for the community you helped by donating money, materials or time.
We will let you know if there are any specific preparations you will need to make for your volunteering holiday, like boning up on a bit of Pidgin English if you are going to any area where they use this instead of English, or being prepared to teach others how to makes scones.
What does it all cost? - Arrangerment fee AUD$900 - Travel arrangements at cost plus 10% - Accommodation approx AUD$140 per week - Materials etc for the helping activity - at cost
What does it all cost? Arrangerment fee AUD$900 We charge an arrangement fee of AUD$900 to organise your volunteering holiday. This includes matching you up with a suitable local community organisation that needs some help in an area you can provide, organising the activity, preparations for your arrival, monitoring and supporting the volunteering activity while you are in the country and follow-up liaison after you return home. We also provide a half-day cultural orientation on arrival in Port Moresby before you proceed to your placement destination.
Most villages don't have telephones so as you can imagine it can be quite time consuming for us to set everything up using other means of communication such as letters and messages passed by hand and mouth. We do not receive any outside funding for organising volunteering holidays so the arrangement fee you pay covers our overhead costs for staff time, communications and paperwork. The arrangement fee must be paid up front before we commence arrangements, at least 12 weeks before your proposed arrival date.
What does it all cost? Travel arrangements at cost plus 10%. We arrange your travel from Port Moresby to your volunteering holiday destination and add our 10% service fee to actual costs. (We are not a travel agency and we don't earn commission on airline tickets etc that we provide for you, and other local transport costs like village trucks certainly don't pay commissions so the 10% service fee meets our administration and communication costs to make your arrangements and make all payments in advance). All your travel arrangements must be prepaid 8 weeks before your arrival date as per our usual terms and conditions for tour packages.
What does it all cost? Accommodation approx AUD$140 per week Normally you will stay in a village guest house or a home-stay arranged with one of the people you will be helping. You pay these people direct for your accommodation and meals - we recommend a rate of AUD$140 per week for full board and $70 per week for room-only. Some schools, clinics etc have transit houses (usually built of bush materials) where visiting officials stay overnight and you can possibly live in the transit house during the placement and pay a family $70 a week to cook for you (mainly local-style food, but very nice).
What does it all cost? Materials etc for the helping activity - at cost You'll be expected to pay for any materials like paper, drawing implements, computer disks, tools for demonstrations, cooking ingredients, dressmaking or craft supplies, books, utensils or other necessities for your helping task. If this is going to be beyond your personal resources you will need to enlist the support of family, friends, local church, local service club or local charity in your home area to support you in your endeavour. Do not rely on any financial input from the local people. Ecotourism Melanesia likewise is not able to provide any financial or material assiatance for volunteering holiday helping activities.
Application requirements You can't just buy a volunteering holiday off the rack. We have a duty of care to the people in the community you with stay in to ensure that you are a "fit and proper person" to stay in a rural PNG community for an extended period of time and interact closely with the local people, some of who may have had little or no contact with foreigners before. In order to qualify for a volunteering holiday there are a few things we require of you:
1. a current CV showing qualifications, employment experience and list of checkable employment and character referees (phone numbers and e-mail addresses) 2. a police records check certificate ("police clearance") from your local police jurisdiction 3. a medical report from a doctor indicating your fitness for a two month volunteering stint in PNG and confirmation that applicable vaccinations and other prophylactic medications have been or will be provided prior to travelling to PNG.
After the volunteering holiday Ecotourism Melanesia is diligent in ensuring that all our volunteering holiday visitors do exit the country by the expiry date on their visa. Tourist visas are not extendable and substantial fines apply for overstaying a tourist visa. We will provide liaison communication between you and your PNG village host community after you return home, to ensure anything you send them arrives safely and to help coordinate any follow-up projects you may wish to organise.
We ask you to write a short report on your volunteering holiday that we can provide to PNG government authorities and for posting on our website for others interested in volunteering holidays to read.
Some links to formal volunteer programs operating in Papua New Guinea:	Australian Business Volunteers Australian Volunteers International Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development VIDA Volunteers