Where should I go for info on volunteering opportunities in SE Asia?

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Artful

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Hi,

I am trying to find out whether it is feasible to travel around SE Asia and teach English on a voluntary basis, staying for maybe three months in one place and then moving on. The point of the teaching would be to integrate myself a bit into the community and possibly do something useful. I would be web-working a couple of hours each day and this would bring in enough money. I also have a couple of projects I am looking to devote some time to, but it would be great to teach or be a teaching assistant for one or two hours say three times a week.

I have some experience of teaching kids, although I wasn't teaching them English. I have no TEFL qualifications but have time to do whatever courses would be necessary before going out. I would be about 42 at that point.

I have seen that organisations like GVI offer volunteer programmes where you pay quite a bit for the privilege of teaching for free. Is this the right place to ask how to go about arranging something like this directly with a school (or possibly monastery), or if not, is there somewhere else I can ask? I am most interested in Laos and Vietnam. If the plan is a goer I would be looking to pick one and start learning the language.

Thanks in advance for any pointers
 

Tdol

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In Laos, there are places like this: http://www.eefalaos.org/projects/.

One thing- the internet can be very slow and drop off altogether - I am in Vientiane - and power cuts are not uncommon, so if your work online requires set times and steady connections with some speed, things may be a bit rough, even in the capital. I struggle a bit here with Skype calls and uploads/downloads as things can get cut off. It is, however, a lovely country.
 

Artful

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Thanks. I did wonder about the internet. I don't need to use Skype or YouTube or download lots of huge files but I do need to do open lots of pages of text and quite a few pdfs. A slow connection would be a frustration I could live with, but if I'm going to see 'timed out waiting for a response' every other time I try and download a 30 page pdf (text only), that is a more serious problem. Is it that bad?

That issue aside, EEFA looks ideal!

BTW is French widely spoken out there? I've read conflicting things.
 

Tdol

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My connection is good enough for that kind of work, though it does drop off sometimes. Occasionally, I have to wait for some time as there is no connection, but most of the time it is OK. Downloading PDFs of that size is fine. Big files are more difficult because it may drop in the middle. I have many text pages open a lt of the time and can use things like a CMS without too much difficulty. If you needed to be Skyping at a set time, it could be more difficult. If, say, I can't access the forum here, I can simply wait a bit, so it's OK for me.

Some people speak French- I've heard older people conversing in it with French people. I have heard that some university courses use texts in French, but I haven't been here that long. It's certainly worth trying French.
 

Tdol

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PS On a positive note with the internet- I did manage to download the new version of my Linux distribution today, which has a few thousand files. It took a long time, but we got there.
 
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