Volunteering in Thailand
In the Netherlands there are numerous opportunities to do voluntary work in the broadest sense of the word.
Take an amateur football club, for example, where numerous people spend seasons arranging the club's ins and outs. The board, the "groundsman", staff in the canteen, the many fathers who take the children to away games every weekend, all people who are active without any compensation for the love of their club.
volunteers
Every club or association knows this kind of volunteers and then you also have the somewhat "professional" volunteers, who use their skills and knowledge in other organizations, such as the Red Cross, lunchtime mothers, ready-overs, hostesses in a hospital, etc. etc. You can easily make the list much longer.
Young people who have just left school often want to take advantage of the opportunities for voluntary work abroad before starting work or continuing their studies. Unite the useful with the pleasant, so to speak. Staying in a beautiful country for a while, where you go to work in a holiday atmosphere.
Thailand
Also in Thailand Is that possible. Look on the Internet and you will find many organizations offering volunteer work in this beautiful country. I'm not going to name those providers, there are too many. In addition to the Dutch providers, you can also visit the websites of English, American or German organizations. Most projects in this area in Thailand are related to help in children's homes, education, animal care and health care.
The organizations all claim that volunteering abroad is a unique way to help people and also enriches your personality. You gain experience and make great contacts with colleagues from all over the world, who can serve you well for the rest of your life. During your working period you will find yourself in all kinds of situations that you are not familiar with, from which you can learn a lot. You become more confident and independent. Volunteering also adds value to your CV, as it proves that you have perseverance, adaptability and a sense of responsibility. Good points if you apply for a job later on. Your language skills through contact with local people and fellow volunteers will also improve considerably.
Volunteering abroad is a good way to get to know a country and the local population with all their traditions and customs, it enriches your knowledge and by broadening your horizons you also get a different view of the Dutch lifestyle and habits.
If you volunteer for a certain organization, this means that you will not receive any wages or compensation for the work you do. Labor of love, so old paper! Volunteering abroad does not yield anything other than the aforementioned nice arguments, on the contrary, it costs money!
There are many volunteer providers that will claim to operate on a non-profit basis, but at least the prices you see give me the feeling that they are purely commercial companies. There are organizations where you can get a free volunteer job, but most of them still require compensation of various kinds, but 1000 Euros per month is no exception. I will not claim that they do nothing for it, all claim that you are well guided during the job, but - as said - profit is not a dirty word.
Work permit
With that 1000 euros per month you are of course not there yet, because you will have to buy the ticket and you will also have to take out all kinds of necessary insurance. An important point for volunteering in Thailand is the visa and a work permit. Especially about that work permit, which is simply mandatory in Thailand, people think easily, because many volunteers work without one. The chance of getting caught is small, but you still run a risk, see for this subject: www.wereldwijzer.nl/ I myself am fairly skeptical about volunteering. I am of the opinion that work should in principle be paid, if only for a minimal fee, but paying to clean elephant stables for a month seems a bit ridiculous to me.
Expanding horizons, getting to know strange people and environments, fine!, but many others do that too without working. It's nice that nowadays many backpackers go out, who travel through Asia with small budgets and certainly also visit Thailand. At a young age I did not get further than Germany.
Years ago I also looked for volunteer work in Thailand, and encountered the same problem.
You have to bring a decent bag of money to be able to do “volunteer work”.
Feel free to count on about € 500 per month for work and other permits, on top of what the organization asks, often about € 1000, but I have also encountered them much more expensive.
In addition, there is an amount for additional food (what those organizations offer you is not (nutritious) enough for us Westerners) and drinks (you only get water).
In short: Not very tempting to do.
I can still understand that volunteering in Thailand costs money, but I don't find it normal that this is also the case in the Netherlands.
My opinion on volunteer work is the following, it always costs the volunteer money.
In some cases you believe that you are helping a demented or disabled person, but you are helping an organisation.
Take the care farms in the Netherlands, for example, they are shooting up like mushrooms. They are trying to get volunteers for the transport who will pick up the people with their own car for 19 cents per km. A car costs more than 19 euro cents per km, so the volunteer adds money.
The care farms save money because otherwise they have to drive a taxi, so the volunteer takes someone's job and that person may need his job badly to support his family.
But this may be just my opinion.
Greetings
Henk this does not always apply to what you say about the Netherlands. I myself have been a personal assistant to a double handicapped person for several years. I went to swimming etc. with an adapted bus. Also helped in the care institution where she stayed. Always enjoyed doing this until I moved. So don't generalize as if this is always for the institution because this went from her PGB that her father had.
Volunteer work in Thailand. In the distant past, at the request of the principal of a school, I have met
3000 students. Assistance provided to the teacher who taught English.
Later, a new director (who did not speak English himself) came to tell me what I was not doing right.
Of course immediately stopped with such a weirdo. It was of course also known in the area where I live
that I had taught English. In Sattahip (I live close by) there was a school that wanted to teach English to people who were a bit older and often had a restaurant or just wanted to speak with falangs at the market. It was a big success. I later got an award for that.
Occasionally you meet people from that time. They are still very grateful to me.
If you then think afterwards that I was in serious violation and had the greatest difficulties about that
I could never have done that. Even work for which you do not receive a medal is punishable.
Cor van Kampen.