How can you ensure that you really are doing the right thing in your volunteer work? How can you know that the organization you choose is a good one?

While there is no 100% foolproof method, Ethical Volunteering has an excellent guide to how to choose an organization, how to question the organization and how to question yourself.

The first section, for example, recommends looking at how the organization represents the host country – do they mainly use pictures of children and present the host country as a place to “be helped” by the western volunteer, or do they show volunteers working with people of their own age? Look for an organization that represents the developing world in a positive way. Next, does the organization actually select volunteers, based on matching volunteer skills to local needs, or does it just send anyone who pays wherever he or she wants to go? “If you don’t know how to do something at home in your own country then you are unlikely to know how to do it in someone else’s.” Obviously the first one is a sign or a more responsible organization.

This guide also recommends asking for a job description including what you will do and how much time you will spend doing it – it is also possible that you will have less work to do than you imagined, which can be just as much a source of dissatisfaction. Find out if they have local partners and also how the finances work – what portion of the fees you pay goes to the local partner organization? Perhaps most important is that the organization you choose is upfront about its finances.

Finally, consider yourself – are you ready to inform yourself about your host country and its situation, and to be flexible?

“None of us become international volunteers for purely altruistic reasons. Rather we do it because it is exciting, because we might learn something, because we want to meet new people who live lives different to our own and because, just maybe, we might have something to offer. By acknowledging why we volunteer we tell our hosts not that they should be the grateful recipients of our altruism, but rather that they are people we can learn from and with. We ask them to be our teachers, not just tell them to be our students. The best volunteers are those who feel they have as much if not more to learn as they have to give. ”

For more insight, ideas, and tips in these areas, check out Ethical Volunteering.