I have to give credit to the links page at Independent Volunteer for pointing me towards Civil Service International.

CSI is a world-wide organization with branches in a variety of countries (43, to be exact) which helps coordinate both longer-term volunteer positions and short term/ “workcamp” -type opportunities. Potential participants should go to the website of their country to peruse opportunities abroad.

My informal read is that the work camps tend to fall somewhere between organized “volunteer vacations” and totally independent volunteering; participants pay some kind of placement fee for a two or three week project (€200 seems average) and basic accommodation is included. There are other international participants, and sometimes, in addition to the local organization, an additional group leader. Two or three weeks is of course rather short, but there are projects in quite a variety of countries (Albania, Denmark, Sierra Leone, to name a few), meaning that if you’ve got a few weeks only but would like to do something other than travel through a country, this might be an interesting and potentially useful alternative. Examples include working in a wolf sanctuary in the US, volunteering on an organic farm in Japan, and building a youth eco-camp in Tajikistan.

Longer-term volunteer opportunities are in different areas, including positions abroad volunteering as a coordinator for SCI itself – and while volunteers should again go through the listings on the page of their country organization, quite a few opportunities seem to overlap.

These projects also seem to incorporate an application fee as the short-term ones do, but in addition to including accommodation, some offer a small monthly stipend. Some projects are also part of EVS - the Europoean Voluntary Service.

Have a look around your country’s page of Civil Society International to get a better idea of what opportunities await.