10 Organisations to Volunteer For in Ghana
Many people choose to combine their travel with humanitarian work and there is no end of opportunities to do this in Ghana. Throughout the whole country, there are projects and organisations that cover conservation, medical, construction, teaching and childcare, to name a few. Here’s a roundup of some of the organisations you can volunteer with and the interesting and useful activities you can get involved with.
Voluntary Service Oversees (VSO)
Humanitarian Aid Foundation
Building
Green Ghana Volunteers
International Volunteer HQ
Billing themselves as the world’s most affordable and trusted volunteer programme, International Volunteer HQ offers year-round projects in rural areas of Ghana including medical, teaching and construction work. They offer online training before programmes commence, as well as a massive amount of support to make sure that their volunteers are well looked after. Weekends are spent exploring the country.
Volunteer Projects West Africa (VPWA)
Teach on the Beach
Building, School
Premier Volunteers of Ghana
Unite For Sight
Working with villages to provide eye care throughout eight of the nine regions, Unite For Sight touches on a very real area that the majority of rural Ghanaians (and many city-based ones) don’t have access to: eye care. Volunteering can be from one week up to one year with a specific eye clinic and travelling by van with professional optometrists and eye nurses to rural locations. Their ‘global impact fellows’, as they like to call their volunteers, assist the nurses and optometrists, collecting medical histories, distributing medication and glasses, as well as providing eye-health lessons in villages and schools.
Agape Volunteers
Agape Volunteers invites you to choose between four volunteer programmes: teaching, music, orphanage or medical work. Accommodation is provided with a host family and there is a great emphasis on absorbing the culture, understanding Ghanaian life and idioms and the camaraderie you are sure to find a long way from home when sharing living quarters and working alongside many other volunteers, the majority of which are young people.
Projects Abroad
This multifaceted organisation has something to suit everyone’s tastes and talents: from wide-ranging medical-based volunteering in hospitals, pharmacies, and the areas of physical therapy, dentistry and HIV/Aids care (to name but a few) to volunteerships in law, journalism, sports, veterinary medicine and teaching. You can volunteer seasonally or for a longer period of time and there are also placements for everyone from high-school graduates to professionals willing to share their skills.