Volunteering Projects in Uganda

Village Teaching and Outreach Placement:

Our partner works with a number of small community based organizations that provide counselling, care, and education for rural people and orphaned and underprivileged children. Some of these placements focus exclusively on teaching primary or secondary school. Others include both teaching and community outreach components. Please inform us if you wish to teach, do outreach work, or a combination of both, so we can best choose your program.

Village teaching placements can include arts and crafts, structured play, music/singing, sports, health, and academics. Volunteers can teach primary or secondary students. Volunteers choose which subjects and age groups to teach upon arrival. They work independently to plan lessons using government curriculum and textbooks. Please be aware that there will be few (if any) resources available at school. Volunteers should bring any supplies, teaching materials, or instruments they wish to make use of. The main focus is to provide children with a loving, creative and interactive environment in which to flourish.

Village community outreach placements can include youth mentoring, team building, HIV prevention and AIDS care, sanitation and hygiene, and general public health. For volunteers with a medical background, placements can include working with health-based organizations. Volunteer activities may include home visiting, designing education materials, conducting seminars, and maintaining wells and other village infrastructure.

A village placement is particularly appropriate for volunteers with great ideas and enthusiasm for grassroots development. This is a real opportunity for deep cultural exchange.

For all village placements, accommodation and daily meals will be provided within the village of placement, and will range from private apartments to rooms in private homes. No more than 2 volunteers will be placed together in any village placement.

Apply for this program

Mukono Town Teaching Projects:

Our partner works with four private primary schools in Mukono town that cater exclusively to the education, housing and feeding of needy children and orphans. Volunteers are involved in arts and crafts, structured play, music/singing, sports, health, and academics. The main focus is to provide children with a loving, creative, interactive environment in which to flourish.

Volunteers choose which subjects and age groups to teach upon arrival. They work independently to plan lessons using government curriculum and textbooks. Please be aware that there will be few (if any) resources available at school. Volunteers should bring any supplies, teaching materials, or instruments they wish to make use of.

Volunteers may also choose to work in a local residential home for special needs children. Main activities include structured play, story time, feeding, basic colours and numbers.

All volunteers working in Mukono Town Teaching (up to 5 at one time) will be housed together in shared accommodation in a large apartment in Mukono Town, a semi-urban area.

Apply for this program

Organic Farming Project:

Volunteers with a green thumb, or those who just want to plunge their hands into deep, rich, African soil, will be interested in an organic farming placement. This village based placement teaches and promotes modern methods of organic farming in rural Ugandan communities.

Volunteers work along side Ugandans digging and maintaining demonstration gardens. Activities include raised bed and double-dug farming to best utilize soil and make planting, harvesting, and fertilizing easier. Volunteers also teach water conservation by lining large pits with plastic bags to collect and store rain water. The organization composts garden refuse and spreads it as fully organic fertilizer, and shows how to create pesticides by mixing ingredients such as tobacco, chilli pepper, and onion. Volunteers will be given basic training upon arrival.

A small nursery school is a recent addition to the placement, and can be a refreshingly shady place to volunteer after a morning of digging. It benefits the severely rural poor and orphaned children of the area.

Volunteers are given a private room at the organizations headquarters, with their door opening directly onto a lush, green farm.

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Remote Orphan Care Project:

For volunteers wishing to work in a very remote area with HIV affected orphans, our partner works with a project in western Uganda, about 5 hours away from its other host organizations. This is the area where HIV/AIDS has most devastated Uganda. The organisation is focused on bringing aid, education, and love to the orphans of the area, many of whom have lost their parents due to AIDS related illnesses.

Volunteers help with basic academics, feeding, organizing play, arts and crafts, hygiene and HIV/AIDS education appropriate to the childrens' age level (3 to 12 years). Volunteers may be asked to help with administrative work such as budgeting, updating paperwork, writing proposals, and maintaining personal files on the children. This is a challenging but amazing program for volunteers with experience organising children, such as camp counsellors, day care workers, and people who love children. Bring your games, songs, and enthusiasm to the village!

Volunteers are given a private room in the home of the host organization’s director, 3km from the project. Volunteers are expected to walk to the project each day.

Apply for this program

Public Health Improvement Project:

This is a project promoting general public health improvement in Uganda. Volunteers travel with and work alongside Ugandan counsellors in a variety of programs, directly benefiting 10 rural communities and 7 secondary schools. Volunteers will be engaged in a combination of the following activities:

Village outreach: Public speaking and mentoring in various rural communities respecting HIV/AIDS, malaria, hygiene, family planning, reproductive health, nutrition, early childhood feeding, sanitation, women's rights and domestic violence. This is the most important and most common activity undertaken by volunteers. Volunteers travel to a variety of villages on a weekly basis. They design their own seminars based on that week’s subject matter. Basic training and educational materials are on site, but volunteers are encouraged to bring new materials as well.

Secondary School outreach: Public speaking and mentoring of youth about teen issues. These may include drug abuse, pregnancy, STDs, sexual education, and decision-making. Volunteers may visit 1 or 2 schools per day speaking directly to students about issues affecting them. Again, volunteers will design their own speeches, but will be given basic training and access to educational materials in order to prepare themselves.

Volunteers will take part in a flexible schedule, which includes some or all activities offered by the program. The exchange of ideas, experiences, and culture is encouraged. This project requires walking long distances in the sun. Volunteers are encouraged to bring a sleeping bag, and protective clothing and shoes.

Volunteers will be given a private room at the headquarters of the host organization as their home base. When work is done in surrounding villages, volunteers will be billeted short-term on site.

Apply for this program

The Application Process

Your application process is free and seamless, and if you are successful we will provide you with a choice of application fee payment options that include a secure online service. We also are one of the few organisations that allow you to transfer your application fee to another program at no extra cost.

Communication & Support:
Throughout the process, we are committed to working with you to answer any of your questions or concerns. During your placement we are also available as a form of support to you as a volunteer and will email you while in country to discuss how the program is going.

Volunteer Diaries

We would like to thank these volunteers for taking the time to write about some of their experiences on the Mukono project.

• James Bousquet
• Jeff Smith
• Tina Meredith

Volunteer Feedback

Linda

"The townspeople are very welcoming. They are getting used to Muzungu folk at this stage and are usually eager to say hello. And the children-be it in your school or on the street-you just want to bring them all their Christmases at once. They are eager, adorable and genuinely unspoilt in their nature and they can dance like no one you know.

As soon as we applied, the correspondence and guidance kept coming and even when nothing was actually required anyway and it was just the countdown to take off, there was still communication in the way of 'how are you getting on' which is very reassuring to have. GVN is a serious business and although they get the job done, it’s not without the personal touch -- a great combination."

Click here to read more volunteer feedback

Volunteer Journals

Church, Parachutes and Nigerian Movies

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Hey guys! Thanks to everyone for sending support my way! I’m 4 weeks in and feeling really comfortable now. I’m riding the boda taxis (motorcycles driven by men with no licenses or clue about rules of the road) side saddle (how the women ride because they always wear skirts). I was not loving the idea of boda when I first got here so I count this as a huge accomplishment. The past two weeks have been a huge lesson for me. Just really settling in, accepting that things are done differently here and trying a lot of new things. The work load [...]

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Jinja bound!

Thursday, March 04th, 2010

Hey everyone! I’ve arrived in Jinja for the weekend, the touristy area in Uganda. Lynn and I are staying in a backpackers hostel for two nights, the views are amazing overlooking the Nile and Bujagali Falls. The trip here was a little risky, however, as we had to take bodas (motorcycle taxis) for 15 minutes on sketchy dirt roads without helmets. You hang on the backseat  you aren’t supposed to hold the driver. But anything for a $7 a night room. We’re here until Saturday evening. Today we’ll visit the town, shop in the market and get some mzungu food (pizza!) [...]

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Craving veggies and dip

Sunday, February 28th, 2010

Oli Otya everyone! This week has been nose to the grindstone for my placement work. Teaching is getting much easier and building is like a little adventure everyday, but still hard work. Monday was sad. Katie left with Leslie to  fly home. The family was devastated and I was super bummed because it was nice to have a fellow mzungu around the village. She left around lunch without getting to say bye to the kids – it was raining to hard to go to school. When it pours, the noise from the rain on the tin roofs at school makes it impossible [...]

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Please visit volunteerjournals.org for more journals and feedback from past volunteers

Articles

Paper into Pearls (Uganda)

Some come out to volunteer to see what the tourists never get to or simply don't want to. Others dig in to join in the chorus that is singing Jeffrey Sachs' line, 'The End of Poverty,' and yet for a few others volunteering goes so deep they turn their lives inside out to work for months on end. New Zealander, Malcolm...

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Mother to Mother, Child to Child

Mother to Mother, Child to Child: How an Understanding of Loss Connected Families Across the World The give-away pile of toys in the living room doubled in size. Josh turned over another plastic wonder is his hand and decided to sleep on whether he could give it away. In the morning, the toy was always there, placed proudly on top of the mound...

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Checking Expectations at the Door in Uganda

Had she approached the trip differently, she might have come back disappointed. But Amber Burridge, a resident of Calgary, knew that to travel and work in Uganda any other way would spell disaster. In fact, she had been warned. "I had a friend that had gone to Malawi and she told me to expect the unexpected when I was in Uganda," Amber said. "I...

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Working Together to Make a Difference

This article was first published in Hackwriters and Life Starts At. Sad expressions of sympathy arise as another charity appeal screens...

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The Spirit of the Modern African Woman

She puts on her jacket of pride and buttons it up with confidence taking slow steps, moving her hips from left to right, with the expression of a lioness in her own land her eyes roar to the crowd as her stare explains to the judges, she is proud to be an African Woman. The village women in Uganda start work when the moon is still present; their...

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