Doing some volunteering and experiencing the beauty of Fiji

Hi guys!

I'm looking to go to Fiji right after new years to stay for about a month. I'm travelling by myself, and my goal is to be able to do 2 things:
1) Do some REAL volunteering, e.g: teach english to schoolkids, help out at a orphanage, build houses, etc. I really want to do work that is going to make a difference to someone, but I'm not too keen to join any of these programs where you pay x amount of hundreds of dollars to some organization to be able to come and help out. There must be some place to go and offer your help where they would be interested in this without charging you much for it.

2) I want to see some of the most beautiful places in Fiji, and some of the most cultural places. Not just typical tourism places. Right now I'm trying to book my flights tickets (flying from Australia), and so I also need to know which airport to book to go to.

If anyone has any input for any of these, it would be highly appreciated.

Cheers
Charlotte

Generally, the x amount of dollars would be paying for your food and lodging, as well as transport to wherever you work. Most volunteer organisations will pay a living allowance for people going for a year or more, but expect short-term volunteers to fund themselves.
January is not a suitable time to volunteer in schools, as it is summer holidays.
Do you have any qualifications or experience in the fields you want to work in? - inexperienced, untrained "volunteers" can actually be more of a liability than an asset.
If you seriously want to volunteer, look at the Australian Volunteers website, or if you are the right age, Youth Ambassadors

Hi Charlotte

re Fiji- we flew into Nadi which I think is where most flights go. We found that island a bit disappointing (black sand...although didn't go to the south coast beaches which may have been better). We got a boat called the Yasawa Flyer which takes you to loads of islands- its a hop on hop off sort of ferry so you can stop at a places and carry on on teh same ticket. The best place we stayed was a resort called the Oarsman. i don't rememember which island this was but I'm sure you can look it up. It was a bit out of our backpacker range at the time so we treated ourselves to a private room but they did have dorms there too. It was amazing. We stayed at some bungalows on the other side of this island too which weren't great which is why we ended up at the Oarsman. Once on that boat we found that the further away from the main island you get, the more like the Fiji we had expected it became.

Good for you wanting to do some voluntering, I hope it works out. It's a shame to have good intentions which you can't put into practice.

Good luck
Hannah

Hi Charlotte.
Probably need a couple of months to organise this well rather than a couple of days.
Rotary International are building a village in our area. I can probably get you a contact here in Lautoka in a few days if you PM me.
We are also volunteering here in Lautoka via Australian Volunteers International for 2 years with a daycare centre for children 3 - 6 years.
As has been said, your qualifications and experience are critical and it is hard to "make a difference" in just a couple of weeks.
You also need to be aware of the restrictions of your visa. Short term may be OK, but longer term volunteering needs a work visa. Even volunteers are seen as potentially putting a local person out of a job.

Cheers and good luck,
Peter

There is plenty of need here in Fiji for skilled volunteers in teaching English and other transference of skills. It may be difficult to organize from overseas without infrastructure support from some NGO.

However, once you are here in Fiji, you will have little problem introducing yourself to local educators and others who might place you.

If you have agricultural skills, I may be able to help with connecting you to an appropriate organization here.

John (Rakiraki, Ra, Fiji)

I think I know you Charlotte :-) Hope you enjoyed your volunteering experience.