Programs to travel the world for free

She works at an American school in Abu Dhabi. It provides us both with round-trip flights home every summer, free upscale housing that includes a gym, pool, and jacuzzi, and comprehensive health insurance. Living in Abu Dhabi has allowed us to travel all over the world. We spent even less on nonstop round-trip flights to Cyprus. Every time we fly back to the United States, we make a stopover in Europe for a few days to enjoy gastronomy in Lyon, the Christmas markets in Munich, or the nightlife in Amsterdam.

There are thousands of international schools worldwide looking for qualified English-speaking employees, from IT specialists to administrators to teachers of all specialties. You can still potentially teach English as a foreign language with a TEFL teaching English as a foreign language certificate. Or keep it even simpler and research international positions for your existing skill set.

There are plenty of employers who provide free housing for short-term or even long-term stays in exchange for work. This arrangement is called a work exchange. Farming is primarily seasonal work, and farmers need seasonal help. And many hostels find themselves in a similar situation as organic farmers — with plenty of beds and rooms but short on labor. So they offer a free room and sometimes free meals in exchange for work. A few even pay a small stipend of spending money. Check out HelpX , helpStay , and Workaway for thousands of opportunities worldwide to stay for free in exchange for your services.

The Peace Corps offers incredibly rewarding opportunities to live for several years in a community that needs committed volunteers. While the Peace Corps is a large international organization, they do an excellent job of keeping their focus on the grassroots level. Volunteers go to the ends of the earth, living and working in the poorest communities on the planet. It requires a month commitment: three months of training, then two years in the field.

You may or may not have mobile phone service, and you may not have air conditioning in hot climates. Expect to crash with friends and family. In many cases, you will literally save lives. If your volunteer travel timeline is measured in weeks or months rather than years, try short-term volunteer placement services like Go Overseas or Idealist.

They offer global opportunities for work ranging from teaching English to building infrastructure. For a comfortable way to ease into international volunteering, try Diverbo. It hosts one-week English retreats in Spain and Germany to immerse non-Native English speakers in English-based activities. It pays for hotel stays and meals. All you have to do is get there.

There are endless ways to volunteer abroad for free travel and rewarding experiences in a new culture. You can also organize your own volunteer trip.

With crowdfunding websites like GoFundMe , you can raise money from your friends, family members, and colleagues and sometimes even strangers to cover the costs of your volunteer trip. But ensure your trip will genuinely change lives for needy people rather than serve as a cover story for you to persuade your friends to pay for your vacation.

It was an utter scam, as they have the same generous teaching package my wife does. Did you know there are entire websites dedicated to connecting house sitters with pet owners? But for animal lovers, it can be an easy way to save money with free accommodations anywhere in the world, often in high-end homes. But these opportunities are the exception, not the rule, and most house-sitting gigs do involve caring for pets.

Try TrustedHousesitters and MindMyHouse as starting points for free house-sitting gigs in many different countries. You live in Seattle and want to visit Berlin. Someone in Berlin wants to visit Seattle. If you constantly find yourself daydreaming and thinking of your next great escape, maybe you should just stop thinking about it and put some plans into action. The reason you might think time away is going to cost a fortune is because hotels, car rentals and activities come with a price tag.

But, there are many alternative ways to travel that not only save money but allow you to engage with local communities and people in ways that will absolutely immerse you in a whole new culture and outlook on life.

Plane tickets cost money, sure, but adventure and spirit-filled happiness is priceless. The following programs and websites offer some totally awesome ways to help lower your expenses and, essentially, travel the world for free. Websites like Work Away list hosts in all different countries around the world that let you stay with them in exchange for a few hours volunteering throughout the week.

One of the better-known free methods of travel is Couch Surfing where you can host or stay with people around the world. Some people may be worried about their safety when staying with a stranger, but use your best judgement and have some trust in fellow humans. Hello, month-long accommodation! While this is something that mostly benefits American travelers, credit card rewards programs offer benefits for everything from free fine dining to free hotel stays to free international flights.

While it can take some serious research and a bit of a mastery of rewards programs, travel hacking can help you use rewards points wisely and ultimately travel for free. Some of the biggest benefits are earning points to use for free flights and hotels. Plus, many cards offer additional points when making travel-related purchases.

Some cards also offer travel protection when you pay for a trip with the card. Check out my favorite travel reward credit cards! Simply pick a destination and see what opportunities are available! Western European countries like France and Spain have a great reputation for hitchhiking, as well as places like New Zealand, and people will get you places safely.

Use your best judgement and use helpful resources for hitchhiking tips and information on how to get started. For women, hitch-hiking will always have an element of risk, so never go alone.

There are so many ways to teach English all over the world where you actually get paid to travel! TEFLPros is an award-winning online certification course for anyone who is looking to teach English abroad or online and begin a life of teaching, learning and traveling to places that you can only dream of. TEFL certification is a requirement for most reputable schools and the TEFLPros course will not only make sure you are fully prepared to teach but also provides lifetime job assistance for all grads.

If you are interested to experience truly African life and culture from the inside, while doing valuable community service, we are looking for you. Just send us a quick note or visit our website below. We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Yours Sincerely Geoffrey Ndungu Email: info africanorphanage. ELEP's volunteer program is a life-changing opportunity for individuals who seek to make a difference in Ecuador. We offer customized volunteer placements in a wide variety of social organizations and ecological reserves and national parks throughout Ecuador. Living and volunteering in Ecuador for a short or long term, you could help enrich the lives of Ecuadorian needy people and make a real contribution to the betterment of Ecuadorian society and difference in this part of the world.

This is a more challenging and you as volunteer have the opportunity to contribute to the development Ecuadorian people. ELEP's volunteer program will match your skills and interests to local needs in order to provide you with an unforgettable cross cultural experience. Volunteers do not need to have any special skills. They just need a willingness to help. For someone who lives in the Philippines, there are actually limited options we have regarding volunteer work.

I hope you could also provide me additional info if you come across one. I also want to travel but have found it hard since i live on a budget. A good source of volunteer work in Africa is Volunteer 4 Africa. I am so glad to have found this page. I am currently doing a project with Winrock in Nigeria, which has given me an opportunity to make a tremendous impact as well as gain practical field experience to boost my career potential.

Thank you so much for this very valuable information! Guess what? Oh yeah, I volunteer and help the local economy, as well as serve my own country at the same time. You know what, I don't have to pay some NGO for the pleasure to do it also. There's no sweepstakes here. Just plain old working for Uncle Same. I've been to the Philippines.

Why you fools pay money to go to these places. It's free for me. It's free for me to volunteer. I don't sit there and read the Huffington Post and wish i volunteered. I DO IT. Well I think the point of traveling and volunteering abroad is to gain and provide consideration and kindness to others.

With the way you talk to people, I don't care how much you traveled or what it cost you, you have obviously missed the point. You know there are some other really great places the military will take you Or Afganistan. You're right, we're all idiot libs for choosing a different path. There is absolutely no draw backs to joining the military. It's cake. Super easy and fun all the time.

Woo hoo! This comment embarrasses me as a service member. I'd like to apologize on behalf of everyone in the military that isn't a toxic, close-minded Philistine spewing vague patriotic and political rhetoric, picking fights for no apparent reason. Ikando in Ghana has some free volunteer and intern placements available. Check out www. I am new at this totally. My interest is in going to Ghana and performing services in a vast range of subjects: welding, farming, field engineering within the telecom industry.

I am retired military and have a special interest in serving Ghana. I have read about the Volta region and it's needs. Somehow I feel that my qualifications lack their needs.

Maybe you could assist me, enlighten me as to how I too may serve. Thank you. For affordable ways to help abroad visit WorldHelpLink. This website has links to great opportunities to volunteer, travel, teach, intern, learn, work, and more abroad. I contact you because we are both travel bloggers and probably have an overlapping audience.

We could share that audience. Are you interested? My journey From October - October I will travel around the world and find and support deserving causes such as orphanages, streetkids projects, refugee camps, ngo's by working for them, offering publicity and donating some money.

I organize it primarily through couchsurfing and understand Charity Travel as a humanly rewarding way of traveling while helping the needy people on the planet. I hope you like this idea - you are welcome to read more about it on. I hope to globalize humanitarian aid by proving it is perfectly possible to remain independent of large bureaucracies - because the internet allows us to establish the right contacts.

HHF is an organization that strives to materialize the warmth between the Nepalese and their foreign guests and use the goodwill to bring smiles in the faces of both the underprivileged children of Nepal and their foreign admirers. It aims to work toward bringing happiness and security in the lives those children of Nepal who were forced to lose their innocent by poverty as well as familial and social conditions. We all have high ideals.

But we also wish to prove our ideals through our work. We also focus on health and hygiene sector, as Nepali kids suffer immensely due to lack of basic healthcare opportunities. Our main objective is to reach out to the underprivileged and destitute children who can not realize their potential because they can not get adequate attention at the familial, societal, and even at the government level policies.

Just wanted to plug my website which lists the free and low-cost volunteer opportunities in South and Central America:. Hey Steve, love your site, just quoted it as a resource in an interview actually! Ill plug another site too, set up to help volunteers side step ridiculously expensive volunteer agencies, its www. I am a medical student in china and a Kenyan by nationality. I would like to get some free volunteer slots anywhere in the world during my winter break in feb-march and summer,july to september.

Volunteering to Learn is a non-profit, non-governmental organization providing rich volunteer and learning experiences in Nepal. Our organization builds on the belief that mutual understanding is at the heart of improved relations across communities, cultures, nations, and religions.

Our goal is to provide volunteering opportunities in Nepal that make it possible for both hosts and visitors to learn. Volunteers gain a sense of satisfaction from contributing to Nepalese communities, but they also learn language and gain insights into culture, ecology, history and geography. Host families and communities benefit from enthusiastic helpers, teachers, and organizers, but they also learn about diverse cultures and perspectives that help them see beyond stereotypes.

Whatever your interests — language, culture, economics, agriculture, forestry, flora and fauna, history, sustainability, appropriate technology, community organization, leadership, entrepeneurship, children, women, human rights — we can place you with organizations, communities and families that will enrich your understanding of Nepal while also giving you opportunities to learn more specific skills and knowledge.

Another great Volunteer abroad opportunities provider is Disaster Volunteers of Ghana. Check them out also. They have very cheap projects in areas of orphanage and child care,construction,IT and computes and programs for families as well.

I was searching through the internet and i came across your program me wish am very interested in it and i will like to participate in your program mes worldwide, i will like you to get back to me so as to know the requirement. Thanks and God bless. With great regard, Adedeji. Looking for your next ski holiday to a ski resort on the other side of the Planet?

Then go no further. But imagine a site where you can locate, learn about, and book into one of hundreds of ski resorts anywhere in the world. A complete online directory for the greatest-ever ski holidays, the highest lifted points in the world, exotic snow terrain, facilities, snow towns, first hand accounts - and everything in between.

Providing travel options to ski resorts in Canada , The U. And having recently launched travel package options, Fresh Peaks is now working in conjunction with leading travel wholesalers throughout Asia Pacific to provide you with the best winter holiday packages on the market.

With holidays to all the winter favourites, Fresh Peaks also strives to provide packages to some of the worlds more adventurous winter destinations, full of rich culture and history. Visit www. Volunteer and Explore Nepal VEX Nepal , a not-for-profit and non-governmental organization, is to provide volunteering and traveling opportunities in Nepal that make it possible for both hosts and visitors to share, discover, teach and learn with respect.

Volunteers gain a sense of satisfaction from contributing to Nepalese communities, but they also learn language and gain insights into culture, ecology, history and geography while exploring the country.

We offer the most affordable and exciting travel and volunteering programs in Nepal for the betterment of local communities in need and to enrich the lives of travelers around the globe. Its unique and innovative ways of working make it a highly competitive and popular travel and volunteer placement in Nepal, providing a truly satisfying and fulfilling experience for all travelers.

Whatever your interests — language, culture, economics, agriculture, forestry, flora and fauna, history, sustainability, appropriate technology, community organization, leadership, entrepreneurship, children, women, human rights — we can place you with organizations, communities and families that will enrich your understanding of Nepal while also giving you opportunities to learn more specific skills and knowledge.

For a cheap, fixed fee volunteer linking service, including support from initial linking to completion of a placement, check out www. They do not run their own placements but link volunteers with the need of organisations around the world. Placements are available worldwide and you can choose where, when and for how long you want to volunteer, all for one fixed price. They do not discriminate because of skills, experience, age or disability. This enterprise offers a comprehensive service with as much or as little support as required.

Not only does the organisation offer fantastic customer service and support but also offers the added reassurance that if, for whatever reason, you are not entirely happy with the placement, they will work to find you a new placement option for FREE availability dependant.

Thanks for providing really nice tips to short out the cost of traveling. Here you can also get innovative ideas, ways to travel, how to make your travel budget friendly on a single click. This is a great resource. Also really important to note that volunteers should always try to ensure that when working abroad the projects they are contributing to are sustainable and genuinly benefiting the communities and environments they are operating in.

Check them out also if you're thinking of volunteering abroad. Thanks for the great article! Some people may find the holidays stressful because they may have family problems, but I love them. I always get along with both sides. We are from Nepal, the Himalayan Country where the world highest mountain Mt. Everest is situated and we are the people of himalaya living below the Mt. Everest known as a Sherpa.

We have established a club to promote sherpa youth living in Nepal which is called Sherpa Youth Club, which is situated in Kathmandu valley. Have you personally volunteer with Volunteer for Peace? The price is definitely reasonable compare to other ones on the web. It's difficult to screen out which one is legit and which one is not.

I'll love to hear from you more about this. Thanks for posting this up too. Really helpful! This is a good list, though it focuses on pretty main-stream kind of volunteering, I would imagine a lot of these have less than 5-star living situations..

I put together a list of the top 6 resources for free or cheap travel , and a lot of them incorporate nice living arrangements, even ways to get paid while traveling. Jacqueline - I looked at your link and it takes me to a "basic" list of 18 affordable 'vacations' with no specific links or anything like that. It's just "here are some ideas run with it". I really like David's thorough information. Hi David, this is great, thanks. It's a great site if you want to stretch your travel dollars, work exchanges in return for food and accommodation.

Do check it out. I was doing so story research and came across your story. Very comprehensive. I have a thought to do a story for our non profit video series Traveltelevision.