There are a LOT of volunteer opportunities across Asia, everything ranging from bona fide hippie communes to large-scale government-run projects that ship in western university students by the plane-load. I’ve hit up a few volunteer opportunities along the way, and although it’s always been interesting, I can’t say that I would recommend every place that claims to be an organic farming project or NGO school.
(Saphal Babu {babu means “little boy” in Nepali}, aka Mr. Poopy Pants, lookin’ cute with his face all covered in colors for the Hindu Holi festival)
For instance, in Cambodia I cycled into the middle of nowhere to a place that will remain unnamed, to find out that what I had been told was a working organic farm with an ongoing composting toilet construction project, was just a mostly empty plot of land filled with nothing more than one expat’s dreams of building something there…eventually…with free labor. It took me a few days of giving the benefit of the doubt and doing nothing but carrying water from a giant hole in the ground to water a few plants before I hit the highway.
Before my tangent strays too far, I want to say that Maya Universe Academy is not such a place, and that I can whole-heartedly recommend people to go volunteer there. For all its flaws, Maya (means love in Nepali) is a very successful free educational alternative to Nepal’s government-run school system, which I understand is not particularly adept at serving rural communities. Unlike other private schools, Maya aims to be a holistically sustainable community, whereby students’ parents keep the school running not by paying tuition, but by working a couple days a week or month at the school, on the school’s farm, or in other capacities such as making bracelets or handmade books for sale. The school is then able to sell its handicrafts and produce in order to acquire funds for operation in lieu of tuition fees. And volunteers like me pay a small daily fee for accommodation and food.
The view of the farm and valley beyond from the school’s kitchen and dining hall. Can you see the baby ducks swimming in the pond?
My class, posing for a photo outside our “classroom,” which is just a bamboo and thatched roof gazebo. When the kids ask for permission to go use the bathroom, they just run off into the jungle, relieve themselves, and then come back. Also, when they come to class, they must ask, “Sir, may I please come in?” even though there are no doors and the boundary between inside and out is very indefinite.
Liz (left), and Claire (right) paint one of the benches that I worked on for much of my time at Maya.
Lasse (Danish), Me (‘Murica), Claire (Canadian), Rick (Dutch) standing on bench number 2 after completion. Lasse and I did most of the work building benches out of recovered bamboo and wire. At first our tools included nothing more than crappy handsaws and pliers, but then we discovered a power saw and drill laying around that made things much much faster and easier! Claire painted the benches, and Rick played his flute for us while we worked.
Building these benches (after I left, Lasse continued and built one more, and a shelf made of bamboo) was really rewarding because it increased the amount of seating in the dining hall to meet the demand (number of kids and volunteers), so everyone had a place to sit at meals and the kids had seating that was an appropriate height for them to reach the table. Seems like a trivial thing, but as soon as we put the first bench in the dining hall, the kids showed intuitive preference for it over the existing seating, which was a jumble of plastic chairs and tiny classroom benches.
Also, I got to learn a new skill! Lasse and I had never worked with bamboo before, but people all over Asia make just about EVERYTHING out of the quick-growing tree, so we consulted a local who also does a lot of construction work for Maya, got some tips, drew up a plan, and learned as we went. It was a great feeling to have made something useful for someone, and to have designed it ourselves.
In addition to building these benches, I also helped construct a chicken farm (an ongoing project that will eventually provide a great source of revenue for Maya), and continued construction on a methane capture system for the students’ dormitory. Basically, it’s a toilet with a big dome-shaped underground tank and a nozzle on top. The kids poop into it, and all the methane rise to the top of the dome, out the nozzle, and into the kitchen where it provides fuel for cooking food. I was told that the dozen or so children who live in the dormitory should be able to produce enough methane to cook their own food. Pretty cool!
Below: Portraits of some of the other volunteers.
There were more too. People come from all walks of life and many countries. Before I arrived, there was apparently a big Korean contingent.
In addition to the teaching and construction work, we also had a lot of fun at Maya. Fortunately, I was there for Holi, the Hindu New Year festival. It’s kind of like Thai Songkran, held when the dry, hot season begins, and everybody runs around throwing water on everyone else, except during Holi, you also get to run around smearing colored goo all over your friends too.
Mary Moss, who lived in a redwood in Oregon for several months to protect it from destructive logging.
Left: Ian and Leah smearing paint. Right: Kritika and one of the students pose for a photo.
Dikla and Ian get their paint on.
Even Jackie the dog got in on the action! Jackie was the best guard dog ever. He would bark at stuff and then run away, and followed us everywhere and would just sit and watch while we worked. He was so loyal and easygoing, especially once you found his special tickle spot.
Claire’s colors have melded into a creepy crimson. She looks like she’s going to go all Las of the Mohicans on someone.
Above: This is the only photo I have of Manjil, Maya’s founder, here having a great time with one of the teachers.
Ujwal! I miss you bro! Right: a huge table full of noodles to placate the hungry holi-ers.
First-person perspective on the water-spraying action. Check out the facial expression on that person in the mirror at the bottom of the pic.
Shawn and Sunil, BFFs.
Lasse and some hungry kids.
Nitesh, Pranil, and Siddarth work on the mutton stew to ladle over the noodles.
Below: Too much random cuteness to share, too little time. Some (all?) of the kids were freakin’ adorable.
Above: Samjana (mom), Saphal (babu), and Saphana (nani) are a family who live near the school. Samjana is our shepherdess, who herds the goats far and wide through the jungle, leading them to good pastures and protecting them from leopards (alas, one goat was killed by a leopard while I was there, but hey, free meat!). While she’s at work, she either leaves Saphal with the other pre-schoolers in class, or straps him to her back in a cloth sling and carries him around all day. Her duties are especially hard since she is a single mom (father is in jail for a long time), but she somehow manages to raise two super cute kids and be a beautiful person at the same time.
Below: On the weekends, there were lots of opportunities to go on short outings. I went to Bandipur, a nearby historical town with old buildings and great views.
Leah, Liz, Lasse, Dikla, and I did a day hike to a nearby village…
Came across this ancient, ancient, elderly old man…
And bushwhacked through the jungle and over a mountain semi-intentionally, having an awesome mini-adventure in the process!
On my last weekend, I managed to get my butt out of bed pre-dawn (this does not happen often) to try to catch the sunrise on top of the mountain Maya is situated on. Ian and Becky were nice enough to accompany me, but alas, it was cloudy, and even rained a little, but hey, still a nice hike.
This is rajapani, the king’s tap, where the king of this valley used to get his water.
There are stone staircases and well-worn pathways like this all throughout the valley. Even though this is mostly rugged, roadless country, people have been living here for thousands of years, and there are little farms and hamlets in every nook and cranny of the mountains, all the way up until the elevation makes it pretty uninhabitable for humans.
Two more photos and I’ll let you go. Below: Becky, Goma, and Goma’s little brother fill water containers from the “tap", which is a 5 minute walk from Maya. This is where everybody at Maya as well as the surrounding villages comes to get drinking water, from this naturally pure spring. When there is water in Maya’s local stream, it can be pumped up into the kitchen and filtered, providing drinking water without the need to walk. But during the dry season (when I was there), that stream would often run dry, and we would have to carry these containers, each weighing more than 20lbs, on our shoulders, back and forth between the tap and the kitchen. This was difficult enough for me, but the kids can all also do it, with better balance and without spilling a drop.
This tap also doubles as the “shower.” If you want to take a bath, you show up here with your soap, shampoo, and towel, strip down to your undies (for boys), or drape yourself in your sarong (girls) and shower right in front of everyone else, who is filling up water, washing their clothes, or just chitchatting. One time I showed up to bathe and five women watched me curiously, giggling from time to time, perhaps because of my freakishly white skin, or abnormally hairy habitus?
Finally, it’s farewell time. The mustachioed Korean guy on the left is Yoon, co-founder of Maya, and a super cool dude who gave me a bunch of Korean ramyeon on the way out! Thanks man!
Thoughts on volunteering:
There are so many interesting projects out there, there is absolutely no reason to pay money to an agency to organize a volunteer experience for you. When you pay money to an online or home-country organization that connects you with a volunteer opportunity abroad, the vast majority of your money goes to that organization, and not the organization that you’re volunteering for. You may think that these ‘recruiting’ agencies have vetted potential orgs abroad and only work with ‘good’ NGOs and projects, but that is not necessarily the case. So many websites, like idealist.org, helpx.org, WWOOF.org, and many others provide a free or near-free connection with quality volunteerable organizations abroad. So do the research yourself, find a reputable organization, and go there under your own logistical steam, rather than wasting money on a useless matchmaker.
On the other hand, I’ve had people tell me that “You should never have to pay money to volunteer.” This is just naïve and kind of selfish. Let’s face it, when you’re volunteering, you are unlikely to work as hard or as professionally as when you are being paid. It’s not a job. Moreover, unless you are volunteering in some specialized capacity for a really long time, say, as an English teacher or PR person working for six month or a year, for example, you are getting much more than you are giving. At Maya, although I worked hard building benches and teaching classes, those benches could have been build using local, paid labor, and those children would have been much better served by a paid, or at least long-term teacher who would stick with them for a year or more. What organizations really need is your money, and by paying a small fee per-day that goes directly to the project you are working for, that is where you are providing the most benefit. Many organizations I’ve visited or heard of had to start charging volunteers a small fee for room and board because many volunteers would just use their project as a free place to sit around and do nothing. Money can be a great incentive to produce hard work, even if it is the worker who is paying to work rather than getting paid. If you know your time is costing money, you will be more likely to use it productively, and you will only volunteer at a particular place if they are doing something you are keen on participating in.
Finally, and this is a bit of a touchy subject, but a big problem I see with many small NGOs and other projects, such as Maya, is management. Case in point. Maya is basically the fruit of one man, Manjil’s labor, his dream and motivation for getting up in the morning. He’s also the only person at Maya, other than the local teachers he employs, who is there permanently. So he’s the management, which means he has to be both the big picture, long-term strategy guy, as well as the day-to-day running the show guy. This is impossible for one man to do at once, and it shows at Maya. Volunteers do their best to manage things like: volunteer recruitment and placement, sanitation, teaching schedules, maintenance and meal prep, etc., but because most volunteers are only at Maya for a few weeks to a couple months, there is no contiguity, and each new volunteer has to learn from scratch, repeating many of the same mistakes and leaving certain much-needed tasks unfilled. For example, when the volunteer who normally cooks meals left for a couple weeks, the guy who cooked in his stead had little knowledge of nutrition, and the volunteers and students were left eating nothing but rice and potatoes for an extended period of time. When the regular cook came back, the food became awesome again. Also, one could make the case that Manjil’s dream has gotten too big for its britches. I volunteered at Maya #1, but there is a Maya #2 in eastern Nepal, and a Maya #3 in the works. However, Maya #1 has huge gaps in operational management, such as, there is often no soap in the kitchen or toilet. There is one poorly conceived toilet for the entire school (80 kids plus volunteers), so much of the time, people end up pooping in the surrounding jungle. This is not a huge problem…yet, but it will be. There is also not a sustainable trash-disposal system, and the curriculum in Maya classes changes often depending on who is available to teach. These issues could all be fixed if there were two or three more permanently available (employed) people on an executive leadership team, working with Manjil to oversee the day-to-day logistical operations.
But in the end, even though Maya and other similar projects have their issues, they manage to get the job done, don’t they? Maya is providing excellent quality education to students for free, some of whom may not have had the opportunity to go to school otherwise. Because of volunteer participation, Maya’s students tend to speak English much better than their public-school counterparts, and the unique educational environment (outdoor classrooms, modern educational techniques) probably means that they will become much more well-rounded adults with more opportunities to better their futures.
Final Photo: Dikla Jr., the one-legged chicklet. One of the dogs ate this little guy’s leg when he was a baby, and now he just has one massive leg and foot combo to compensate. Gets around pretty well.
(Saphal Babu {babu means “little boy” in Nepali}, aka Mr. Poopy Pants, lookin’ cute with his face all covered in colors for the Hindu Holi festival)
For instance, in Cambodia I cycled into the middle of nowhere to a place that will remain unnamed, to find out that what I had been told was a working organic farm with an ongoing composting toilet construction project, was just a mostly empty plot of land filled with nothing more than one expat’s dreams of building something there…eventually…with free labor. It took me a few days of giving the benefit of the doubt and doing nothing but carrying water from a giant hole in the ground to water a few plants before I hit the highway.
Before my tangent strays too far, I want to say that Maya Universe Academy is not such a place, and that I can whole-heartedly recommend people to go volunteer there. For all its flaws, Maya (means love in Nepali) is a very successful free educational alternative to Nepal’s government-run school system, which I understand is not particularly adept at serving rural communities. Unlike other private schools, Maya aims to be a holistically sustainable community, whereby students’ parents keep the school running not by paying tuition, but by working a couple days a week or month at the school, on the school’s farm, or in other capacities such as making bracelets or handmade books for sale. The school is then able to sell its handicrafts and produce in order to acquire funds for operation in lieu of tuition fees. And volunteers like me pay a small daily fee for accommodation and food.
The view of the farm and valley beyond from the school’s kitchen and dining hall. Can you see the baby ducks swimming in the pond?
My class, posing for a photo outside our “classroom,” which is just a bamboo and thatched roof gazebo. When the kids ask for permission to go use the bathroom, they just run off into the jungle, relieve themselves, and then come back. Also, when they come to class, they must ask, “Sir, may I please come in?” even though there are no doors and the boundary between inside and out is very indefinite.
Liz (left), and Claire (right) paint one of the benches that I worked on for much of my time at Maya.
Lasse (Danish), Me (‘Murica), Claire (Canadian), Rick (Dutch) standing on bench number 2 after completion. Lasse and I did most of the work building benches out of recovered bamboo and wire. At first our tools included nothing more than crappy handsaws and pliers, but then we discovered a power saw and drill laying around that made things much much faster and easier! Claire painted the benches, and Rick played his flute for us while we worked.
Building these benches (after I left, Lasse continued and built one more, and a shelf made of bamboo) was really rewarding because it increased the amount of seating in the dining hall to meet the demand (number of kids and volunteers), so everyone had a place to sit at meals and the kids had seating that was an appropriate height for them to reach the table. Seems like a trivial thing, but as soon as we put the first bench in the dining hall, the kids showed intuitive preference for it over the existing seating, which was a jumble of plastic chairs and tiny classroom benches.
Also, I got to learn a new skill! Lasse and I had never worked with bamboo before, but people all over Asia make just about EVERYTHING out of the quick-growing tree, so we consulted a local who also does a lot of construction work for Maya, got some tips, drew up a plan, and learned as we went. It was a great feeling to have made something useful for someone, and to have designed it ourselves.
In addition to building these benches, I also helped construct a chicken farm (an ongoing project that will eventually provide a great source of revenue for Maya), and continued construction on a methane capture system for the students’ dormitory. Basically, it’s a toilet with a big dome-shaped underground tank and a nozzle on top. The kids poop into it, and all the methane rise to the top of the dome, out the nozzle, and into the kitchen where it provides fuel for cooking food. I was told that the dozen or so children who live in the dormitory should be able to produce enough methane to cook their own food. Pretty cool!
Below: Portraits of some of the other volunteers.
 Nitesh, from Kathmandu |  Dikla, from Israel |  Liz, from ‘Murica, with Cow Dog |
 Lasse, my Danish bench-building buddy |  Leah, also ‘Murica, and a fellow southerner to boot! |  Ian, another ‘murican |
 Milan, Kathmandu |  Paola, Germany |  Helena, Spain, with Saphal Babu |
 Arjun, Kathmandu |
In addition to the teaching and construction work, we also had a lot of fun at Maya. Fortunately, I was there for Holi, the Hindu New Year festival. It’s kind of like Thai Songkran, held when the dry, hot season begins, and everybody runs around throwing water on everyone else, except during Holi, you also get to run around smearing colored goo all over your friends too.
Mary Moss, who lived in a redwood in Oregon for several months to protect it from destructive logging.
Left: Ian and Leah smearing paint. Right: Kritika and one of the students pose for a photo.
Dikla and Ian get their paint on.
Even Jackie the dog got in on the action! Jackie was the best guard dog ever. He would bark at stuff and then run away, and followed us everywhere and would just sit and watch while we worked. He was so loyal and easygoing, especially once you found his special tickle spot.
Claire’s colors have melded into a creepy crimson. She looks like she’s going to go all Las of the Mohicans on someone.
Above: This is the only photo I have of Manjil, Maya’s founder, here having a great time with one of the teachers.
Ujwal! I miss you bro! Right: a huge table full of noodles to placate the hungry holi-ers.
First-person perspective on the water-spraying action. Check out the facial expression on that person in the mirror at the bottom of the pic.
Shawn and Sunil, BFFs.
Lasse and some hungry kids.
Nitesh, Pranil, and Siddarth work on the mutton stew to ladle over the noodles.
Below: Too much random cuteness to share, too little time. Some (all?) of the kids were freakin’ adorable.
Above: Samjana (mom), Saphal (babu), and Saphana (nani) are a family who live near the school. Samjana is our shepherdess, who herds the goats far and wide through the jungle, leading them to good pastures and protecting them from leopards (alas, one goat was killed by a leopard while I was there, but hey, free meat!). While she’s at work, she either leaves Saphal with the other pre-schoolers in class, or straps him to her back in a cloth sling and carries him around all day. Her duties are especially hard since she is a single mom (father is in jail for a long time), but she somehow manages to raise two super cute kids and be a beautiful person at the same time.
Below: On the weekends, there were lots of opportunities to go on short outings. I went to Bandipur, a nearby historical town with old buildings and great views.
Leah, Liz, Lasse, Dikla, and I did a day hike to a nearby village…
Came across this ancient, ancient, elderly old man…
And bushwhacked through the jungle and over a mountain semi-intentionally, having an awesome mini-adventure in the process!
On my last weekend, I managed to get my butt out of bed pre-dawn (this does not happen often) to try to catch the sunrise on top of the mountain Maya is situated on. Ian and Becky were nice enough to accompany me, but alas, it was cloudy, and even rained a little, but hey, still a nice hike.
This is rajapani, the king’s tap, where the king of this valley used to get his water.
There are stone staircases and well-worn pathways like this all throughout the valley. Even though this is mostly rugged, roadless country, people have been living here for thousands of years, and there are little farms and hamlets in every nook and cranny of the mountains, all the way up until the elevation makes it pretty uninhabitable for humans.
Two more photos and I’ll let you go. Below: Becky, Goma, and Goma’s little brother fill water containers from the “tap", which is a 5 minute walk from Maya. This is where everybody at Maya as well as the surrounding villages comes to get drinking water, from this naturally pure spring. When there is water in Maya’s local stream, it can be pumped up into the kitchen and filtered, providing drinking water without the need to walk. But during the dry season (when I was there), that stream would often run dry, and we would have to carry these containers, each weighing more than 20lbs, on our shoulders, back and forth between the tap and the kitchen. This was difficult enough for me, but the kids can all also do it, with better balance and without spilling a drop.
This tap also doubles as the “shower.” If you want to take a bath, you show up here with your soap, shampoo, and towel, strip down to your undies (for boys), or drape yourself in your sarong (girls) and shower right in front of everyone else, who is filling up water, washing their clothes, or just chitchatting. One time I showed up to bathe and five women watched me curiously, giggling from time to time, perhaps because of my freakishly white skin, or abnormally hairy habitus?
Finally, it’s farewell time. The mustachioed Korean guy on the left is Yoon, co-founder of Maya, and a super cool dude who gave me a bunch of Korean ramyeon on the way out! Thanks man!
Thoughts on volunteering:
There are so many interesting projects out there, there is absolutely no reason to pay money to an agency to organize a volunteer experience for you. When you pay money to an online or home-country organization that connects you with a volunteer opportunity abroad, the vast majority of your money goes to that organization, and not the organization that you’re volunteering for. You may think that these ‘recruiting’ agencies have vetted potential orgs abroad and only work with ‘good’ NGOs and projects, but that is not necessarily the case. So many websites, like idealist.org, helpx.org, WWOOF.org, and many others provide a free or near-free connection with quality volunteerable organizations abroad. So do the research yourself, find a reputable organization, and go there under your own logistical steam, rather than wasting money on a useless matchmaker.
On the other hand, I’ve had people tell me that “You should never have to pay money to volunteer.” This is just naïve and kind of selfish. Let’s face it, when you’re volunteering, you are unlikely to work as hard or as professionally as when you are being paid. It’s not a job. Moreover, unless you are volunteering in some specialized capacity for a really long time, say, as an English teacher or PR person working for six month or a year, for example, you are getting much more than you are giving. At Maya, although I worked hard building benches and teaching classes, those benches could have been build using local, paid labor, and those children would have been much better served by a paid, or at least long-term teacher who would stick with them for a year or more. What organizations really need is your money, and by paying a small fee per-day that goes directly to the project you are working for, that is where you are providing the most benefit. Many organizations I’ve visited or heard of had to start charging volunteers a small fee for room and board because many volunteers would just use their project as a free place to sit around and do nothing. Money can be a great incentive to produce hard work, even if it is the worker who is paying to work rather than getting paid. If you know your time is costing money, you will be more likely to use it productively, and you will only volunteer at a particular place if they are doing something you are keen on participating in.
Finally, and this is a bit of a touchy subject, but a big problem I see with many small NGOs and other projects, such as Maya, is management. Case in point. Maya is basically the fruit of one man, Manjil’s labor, his dream and motivation for getting up in the morning. He’s also the only person at Maya, other than the local teachers he employs, who is there permanently. So he’s the management, which means he has to be both the big picture, long-term strategy guy, as well as the day-to-day running the show guy. This is impossible for one man to do at once, and it shows at Maya. Volunteers do their best to manage things like: volunteer recruitment and placement, sanitation, teaching schedules, maintenance and meal prep, etc., but because most volunteers are only at Maya for a few weeks to a couple months, there is no contiguity, and each new volunteer has to learn from scratch, repeating many of the same mistakes and leaving certain much-needed tasks unfilled. For example, when the volunteer who normally cooks meals left for a couple weeks, the guy who cooked in his stead had little knowledge of nutrition, and the volunteers and students were left eating nothing but rice and potatoes for an extended period of time. When the regular cook came back, the food became awesome again. Also, one could make the case that Manjil’s dream has gotten too big for its britches. I volunteered at Maya #1, but there is a Maya #2 in eastern Nepal, and a Maya #3 in the works. However, Maya #1 has huge gaps in operational management, such as, there is often no soap in the kitchen or toilet. There is one poorly conceived toilet for the entire school (80 kids plus volunteers), so much of the time, people end up pooping in the surrounding jungle. This is not a huge problem…yet, but it will be. There is also not a sustainable trash-disposal system, and the curriculum in Maya classes changes often depending on who is available to teach. These issues could all be fixed if there were two or three more permanently available (employed) people on an executive leadership team, working with Manjil to oversee the day-to-day logistical operations.
But in the end, even though Maya and other similar projects have their issues, they manage to get the job done, don’t they? Maya is providing excellent quality education to students for free, some of whom may not have had the opportunity to go to school otherwise. Because of volunteer participation, Maya’s students tend to speak English much better than their public-school counterparts, and the unique educational environment (outdoor classrooms, modern educational techniques) probably means that they will become much more well-rounded adults with more opportunities to better their futures.
Final Photo: Dikla Jr., the one-legged chicklet. One of the dogs ate this little guy’s leg when he was a baby, and now he just has one massive leg and foot combo to compensate. Gets around pretty well.
