Volunteering in Asia forum

I've heard good things about VolunThai which arranges homestays and teaching positions in rural areas. Their fee is a much more reasonable $325 per month then only $150 per month if you want to stay... http://volunthai.com/

Some comments on Travel to Teach and the economy of volunteering:

The arguments that ends with 60 $ is rather ridiculous. Firstly you need to spread the cost over
the 14days involved secondly you’d need to look at least on an average volunteer stay. For a volunteer who stays 6 months on our program the per day cost is -7 Euro/day which makes it rather more worthwhile. Our service extends to 7 days per week and our participants stays averagearound 2 months.


For a person who stays 2 months the cost per day is 500 Thai Bath. This is around what you would have to pay for a decent guesthouse in Thailand and then you would only get a room. No special events of any kind and none of the social life among volunteers nor any of the
contacts to the local community, that is such an important part of how our volunteers describe their experience.

The fee consists of two parts, the application fee which is always 250
Euro and the other part which is supposed to cover the costs in the country.


The application fee covers all overhead costs: Keeping the website,
answering mail, all taxes, fees, transfer costs, maintaining the
website and database and keeping it up to date and not least, making
it show on search engines which includes keeping certain paid listings
and other promotional activities. Our Head Office salaries average half of what the person would earn as teachers here.

Our in-country costs are maintaining houses that can host 10-12
volunteers at all time throughout the year whether we have 1 or 22 volunteers in them.
The same thing goes for the In country staff; in Thailand we have two
full time and one part time coordinator working whether we have
volunteers or not.


There are organizations that work in a different way. Volunthai is one
of them. They only receive the volunteers and sends them
out to village home stays in Isan. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, on the contrary.
For volunteers who what that kind of experience this organization
absolutely to be recommended. If you are an experienced traveler, you
can actually just go on your own out to any school in any village in
Isan and they will host you and let you teach English (if you can make them understand that this is what you want)

The only thing to consider is that unless you use some organization
you will not make a difference at all. I don’t know much about
Volunthai so I cannot judge if they have enough volunteers to keep a
constant presence where they work, but I believe that is the absolute necessity for making a difference.

To illustrate what I mean look at the video


http://www.youtube.com/user/Travel2teach?blend=21&ob=5#p/u/14/oLDL1JrCysc

where the background is explained. After this, since our dorm was
right next to it, we taught at this school with a constant presence.
When we had done so for 2 years, this small, under privileged school
won the contest for English speaking for the whole province of
Nongkhai. This could only have been achieved by our constant presence
and that requires an organization to arrange and that takes some
costs.

Anyone who want to discuss this further I would certainly welcome.

I think your question is valid. However, we know that we can not make teachers of people in one, two, three days or even a week.

So we have a different definiton of the roles of the volunteers. The teacher should stay in the classroom and run the class in usual manner. The volunteeers role is to provide spoken English and conversation.

Our coordinators goes along every day to help out with translations and dicipline. They can not be in all classrooms all the time but they help out as much as possible.

We are also working to develop an online material that we can send volunteers and that will prepare them for the situations they will encounter.

If you are interested in staying in Beijing for a year, we are Beijing’s oldest professional tutoring service, and seeking advanced English tutors.

The right candidate should have a minimum of a B.A. in English literature, journalism, writing, or a related subject and at least two years of tutoring experience. Preference will be given to those candidates who have proven experience working with middle and high school students and those with experience in SAT prep.

Please send your resume to keikoh.tlc@gmail.com

Looking forward to hearing from you!