I had really wanted to volunteer for a long time but I’m sure I can’t be the only one who could only find ridiculously expensive programs. If I had $3000 to spend I would donate it rather than give it to a company that seems to make money taking advantage what I can only assume is the niche market of philanthropic lottery winners. When I decided to spend a month in Nepal volunteering this summer I had to spend some serious time online searching for places that actually seemed like they allowed their volunteers to make a genuine positive impact, but that also fit into my already depleted student budget.
I know people who had volunteered in Nepal before so my first step was to mine them for information. Past volunteers can often give you the contact information of the places they worked at so you can contact them directly and skip the (expensive) middleman. I contacted the people I knew who volunteered, but thanks to my technologically un-savvy family & friends I ended up using the Internet for the brunt of my search. I relied mostly on forum posts because smaller organizations that have the price tags to match may not have the money for a fancy, well publicized website, especially if they’re in a developing country.
Choosing one required a little luck and faith, as you can’t really be sure what you’re getting until you land in the country. As a rule of thumb I would stay away from anyone who wants any money up front, especially if it’s a significant amount. One of the main things that gave me the confidence in where we chose was that the money wasn’t due until a few days after we’d arrived and gotten settled in. so even if they were scam artists, they didn’t seem very adept at it! You can also find people who have said they’ve volunteered there on blogs or on forums and ask them for more details personally, people usually love talking about their experiences. We settles on Nepali Host Family because it seemed as legitimate as we could hope for and was only $300 for the month including all food, housing, program fees AND included a donation to the organization. It may not have been as fancy as some of the bigger organizations but it definitely felt more authentic and we had an amazing time.
http://nepalihostfamily.org/
http://buddhistchildhome.org.np/volunteer.php