Volunteering in Africa

Hi, I’m going to sit my A-levels in the next couple of months and want to take a gap year from september 2010 before uni. I would love to work in Africa for pretty much the whole year, 10 months or whatever. I have been researching for a while and all I can find is companies that ask you to pay hundreds or even thousands of pounds plus your travel costs to go and build something for two weeks. This seems ridiculous to me. I am genuinely interested in working with poor comunities, conservation, language teaching or anything else useful and I could dedicate myself for a long length of time. Are there any charities or organisations that can give you a contact to eg. an African orphanage which I’m sure would be happy for you to help them for free? 
I would really appreciate any help and advice, thankyou.

I agree, I don’t understand how companies like real gap can charge £1000 for a fortnight and the like!!

If you want to volunteer at an orphanage check out www.orphanage.org and then you can get the links to contact the orphanages directly. From these maybe you will get other links for work with poor communities, language teaching etc. Maybe you won’t find anything free, but certainly at a much lower cost that those companies you have been looking at. Also check out www.kidsworldwide.org - never used it but looks pretty good.

Can’t help but give you this link: www.foreverangels.org an orphanage I have volunteered at in 2008 and 2009, and am heading back to in June for 8 months! Amazing place!!

Hi, I work for a special needs school in Arusha, Tanzania which is looking for people to volunteer for 3, 6, 9, or 12 months. We are not a money making organization and we are not interested in personal profit, therefore we only charge $400 a month which covers the cost of living.

Feel free to check out our website www.dymphnaspecialschool.com for more details or to email me at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Ellie