Volunteer Latin America brings together contact information on organizations offering volunteer opportunities – mainly environmental projects but also a smaller number of others like community aid - in a guide for potential volunteers. You can peruse brief descriptions of some of the possibilities; if you’d like to find out more, you need to order a guide for just under £25. They report that there will be at least 20 organizations currently offering volunteer positions in the online guide, selected by criteria you define (country, type of project, etc.).

The largest number of projects are in Ecuador and Costa Rica, and most are low cost or free, with the volunteer paying his or her own day to day expenses. Some projects do have a language requirement and they report others – most typically those in the humanitarian category – include a possibility for the volunteer to improve or start learning Spanish language skills. They also include information on Spanish schools, all of which “either directly sponsor or can arrange volunteer work/internships.”

I have to admit I am naturally skeptical about paying money for information which is available, to some extent at least, online for free, and when you don’t really know exactly what you will be getting. Volunteer Latin America does, however, make the valid point that it is time-consuming to keep track of such opportunities – and the fact is, different websites and organizations use different methods for securing income and have different motives for that. It is also certainly not lost on me that people also pay in advance much larger sums of money to placement organizations for volunteer trips…so explore what Volunteer Latin America makes available on its site for free and use your discretion as to whether or not to order a guide.