costa rica homestays
My husband and I are living in costa rica for the next four months and want to volunteer somewhere with no fee?
We have been researching for months and can not find any place to volunteer that will not charge us an enormous fee! We would love to work with kids, like in an orphanage, day care center, school…we are also open to homestays or finding our own accomadations. We are now actually in Costa Rica and are still having trouble finding a place to volunteer! Any advice? We really need help!!
Smart of you to avoid the fee for volunteer rip-off. TO do something useful you have to work on a very local level, and be consistent.
Most schools would be glad to have English help but only if you can keep a schedule for a worthwhile length of time. If you can they also would be glad to get tutoring volunteers in math and science, if your SPanish is good enough. IT will take some annoying arranging on details- the schools do not normally offer help to students falling behind and you will be stepping on toes Many teachers, working and retired, pick up a lot of money offering paid tutoring services out of school.
Each local Red Cross station needs help, but only want help in fund raising- they do not want your advice or practical experience, if you happen to have any. Rules prevent your working with them directly in the field anyway. But they do need money and help for scheduled and irregular maintenance.
Each town or barrio ( a smaller administrative unit) can always use help on clean up and maintenance as well.
THere are still some public sponsored non profit retirement homes that are desperate for people spending time with the inmates (perhaps a bad choice of words). But be careful, a lot of the retirement homes are for profit and they would love to have you reduce the payroll- which means you would be putting somebody out of work.
Costa Rica is not really a good place to find and help people in need. In the end almost all organizations only want help in getting money.
SOme of that money will be well spent. Privatizing volunteerism has definitely been a bad idea. Every other Central AMerican country could use you more.
Home Stays in Costa Rica-World Endeavors