Family volunteering in Sri Lanka (offline)

Planet

Our volunteer placements in Sri Lanka are designed to immerse you in a different culture, living and working with local people. There’s plenty to gain personally from this. But we make sure that local people benefit too by choosing projects that bring tangible improvements to their lives. Our local partners are leaders in sustainable tourism. All activities and itineraries are designed in collaboration with the villagers themselves, based around the principles of community-based tourism. We are committed to providing local people with a complimentary source of income while still continuing their traditional way of life.

All of our participants receive pre-departure guides. This covers topics on how to be culturally sensitive, how to best look after the environment when in the country and how to stay safe as well as providing up to date information on the political situation.

We send out comprehensive pre-departure briefing, which includes a section on protecting the local environment. In particular we advise participants to take care with water, which is an issue in many of our destinations. We recommend they avoid unnecessary washing, using hand wash gel where they can. We also instruct them on how to dispose of waste properly, not to litter and, where possible, to avoid using plastic water bottles which are not easy to dispose of environmentally.

People

All our volunteer programs are designed in collaboration with the community and based around the principles of community-based tourism. We are committed to providing local people with support while still continuing their traditional way of life. All our volunteers are housed locally in homestays that support the local community.

Volunteer time, effort, and attention are of great value to our local partners such as NGOs, schools, and children’s homes that we serve. We make sure that whoever we are partnered with are operating with our values in mind and are for the improvement of life on ground.

We emphasise the importance of showing respect for local people and their customs in our briefing material. Participants will work alongside permanent staff, forming close bonds and getting an insight into real life in Sri Lanka. Our policy is to send people to the developing world in small groups or individually. This minimises the environmental and social impact that the participants have on the destination and helps them to integrate into the local community.


This trip has been screened against Responsible Travel's policy for volunteering in schools.