let me ruin volunteering abroad for you
is traveling the world for free really a thing?
If you’re a traveller with internet access, you’ve seen at least one video like this:
A young girl from a Western country looks into the 0.5 camera lens and says, “Let me show you where I’m living for FREE in *insert a popular destination*”, followed by a montage of aesthetic aspirational shots.
You are intrigued. Who wouldn’t want to stay for free in Thailand, Costa Rica, or Tenerife? She offers you a discount code to sign up for a platform so that you can live out the adventure of your dreams, just like her.
Now, let me ruin it for you. She is, in fact, not living for free in a tropical paradise. She is receiving accommodation and maybe food in exchange for her labor—a practice otherwise known as working. She works there, even though in the travel community, this arrangement is typically referred to as “volunteering” or “work exchange”, and is more often than not facilitated by a 3rd party platform like Worldpackers, Workaway, or HelpX.
This type of volunteering is a bit different from classic white savior voluntourism. People aren’t doing it to save the world or to feel good about themselves. It’s a transaction in which you pay for your stay abroad with work rather than with money. Kind of like the joke about washing the dishes if you can’t pay at a restaurant, taken literally.
When you’re a young, broke backpacker and all you have is time, staying in a vacation destination in exchange for only a few hours of work per day might as well feel like it’s free. It sounds like a great deal, and for those rich in time, poor in money, and hungry for experiences, it can be. The benefits will be thoroughly explained to you in every promotional TikTok.
Doing a work exchange allows you to slow down. To truly get to know a place and become a part of the community for a moment. You may work with like-minded people and create long-lasting bonds with your hosts or other volunteers. Your travel budget will stretch out for longer since you’re saving on accommodation. You can improve your language skills or gain work experience in a new area.
The sunshine and lollipops side of volunteering is well documented in the hundreds of travel vlogs uploaded daily on the internet. There is a certain kind of beauty to it, and after doing a few work exchanges myself, I would recommend it to everyone in the same way I would recommend taking on a hospitality gig—to build character.
In this article, however, I want to dive into the darker aspects of volunteering that often get left out of the conversation.
math isn’t mathing
The first problem I have with work for accommodation arrangements is purely practical: sometimes it’s not even remotely worth it if you stop and do the math.
A French girl I befriended in a popular hostel in Sydney was considering volunteering there. We ran the numbers together, et voilà—it turned out that if she worked the same hours for minimum wage and then paid for accommodation at the same hostel, she would be better off. Not to mention that employment grants you certain rights that volunteering simply doesn’t.
And if you can’t get a paid job because you don’t have work rights in the country? Then you probably can’t legally volunteer there either. More about that later.
In most cases, hosts will have you working 4 hours per day, five days a week (or at least advertise that and then let you figure out the reality in person). But a quick look at the Worldpackers listings will reveal that it can go all the way up to 30+ hours weekly. Work exchange is an arrangement that both parties need to benefit from, and I don’t quite see the benefit of doing nearly fulltime hours of free labor.
stealing jobs
In an ideal world, work exchanges are all about sharing cultures between the host and the traveller. But since we live in a capitalist hellscape, it often comes down to the money.
The overwhelming majority of hosts are businesses like hostels, farms, or retreats, who would much rather provide a bunk bed and a bowl of cereal to a backpacker than pay a fair wage to a local worker.
All around the world, I’ve seen establishments run entirely by volunteers. And though these can be some of the most fun places to be at (because nobody there has a real job), it’s important to realize that this fun might come at the expense of local communities.
Volunteer positions are often located in rural or remote places where employment is already scarce. By taking up temporary volunteer work, we’re devaluing the cost of labor to literal zero and possibly leaving the locals underpaid or jobless.
Like most things in life, it’s not black and white, and there can be a valid reason to take in volunteers. Some hosts genuinely can’t afford to pay and appreciate the help, while others might need special language or occupational skills. But we absolutely should dig a bit deeper and have our impact on local communities at the forefront of our minds when considering volunteering.
exploiters & creeps
The host is often portrayed as a good samaritan who takes care of broke travellers, but make no mistake. Sometimes the host can be great, sometimes they’re weird, sometimes they’re absent. Every time, the host is your boss.
Like bosses, hosts can be great or terrible. But from what I have both experienced and heard about, hosts are almost always people who feel and act like they’re somehow above the volunteer. There are more volunteers than hosts on the platforms, so there’s no need to treat the volunteers well—they’ll be gone soon anyway, and if they cause trouble, it’s easy to kick them out and invite someone new.
In the worst-case scenario, the host can be a full-on predator. I haven’t had any personal experience with that, but harassment stories sadly do exist, and they’re more common than one might realize.
Some things I, however, did experience throughout my volunteering days were not limited to the following:
Kicked out of a hostel after 2 days for not acting excited enough to work there without ever meeting the actual host. Things were going missing and I (a 22-year-old solo female backpacker) was made to evict the suspected thief (a local man in his 40s). Would you be excited?
Scolded for getting bad reviews for things completely out of my control, such as someone being cold at night.
Accused of “not having the workaway spirit” because I wasn’t doing any extra work from my own initiative, and—gasp—was eating breakfast cereal outside of breakfast hours.
To some hosts, “the workaway spirit” is keeping your head down and being grateful for what they “provide”. Entitlement is common, and the only thing volunteers can realistically do about not getting along with their host is to leave. Still, I find that people are sometimes hesitant to do so, either because of money, or they don’t want to cause issues for the other volunteers, or they simply don’t realize that it’s an option.
Volunteering is a voluntary transaction between two parties that should treat each other as equals. Nobody is doing you a solid by letting you work for them for free, and you are by no means obliged to stay in an arrangement that doesn’t work for you.
is it even legal?
With the normalization of work for accommodation among travellers, few people seem to question its legality. That’s how some travelers find themselves detained and deported.
No matter how much you’re being sold the idea of getting something for free, unpaid work is still classified as work in most places around the world. This means that to take on a volunteering position, you are legally required to have the right visa that grants you working rights. A regular tourist visa is not that.
This is true for more countries than you would probably think, and even though most people end up fine as long as they don’t get into other problems with local law, everyone should at least be aware of their legal (or illegal) status and understand the potential consequences of their actions.
the platform
Third-party platforms facilitating work exchanges are gaining popularity daily. Workaway was the top choice during my volunteering days, and lately, Worldpackers has become the name of the game thanks to their genius UGC-powered marketing strategy. People argue which platform is the best all the time, but they all do the same thing—connect hosts with travellers who want to volunteer. Simple enough.
These platforms present themselves as the coveted “way to travel for free”, “cultural exchange”, or “making friends from around the world through shared experiences” providers, depending on what you’re looking for. Some of the ways in which they operate are, however, quite shady.
Both of the top platforms are known to censor reviews and not allow people to describe their negative experiences to create an illusion that nothing ever goes wrong. Any review that’s not strictly positive will be hidden or removed to prevent “accusations”, rendering the rating system pretty useless.
The Worldpackers subreddit has many horror stories, and so do I.
Platforms need to make money to keep the lights on, but the operation is very one-sided. Travellers have to pay for membership, while hosts sign up for free. But not only are you paying the platform—some opportunities on Worldpackers now ask for additional fees to cover your stay, so you have to both pay AND work. Unless you want to be the reverse Hannah Montana and get the worst of both worlds, this should be a hard pass.
Another problem is the famously low level of protection these platforms offer to their users. There are safety policies now on the platforms, such as WP Safeguard, that guarantee volunteers some sort of escape plan should things go sour. However, they are very limited, and I couldn’t find many accounts of people actually using them, so my suspicion is that they mostly exist to give people the feeling of security.
to conclude
My main problem with work for accommodation boils down to how it is advertised by the platforms and influencers promoting the lifestyle. It’s not a free vacation, it’s not a cultural exchange. It is a legally grey barter arrangement at best, and shameless exploitation of vulnerable youth at worst.
Despite all that, it’s not all bad; the benefits do exist, and I would probably still give volunteering another go one day, now that I’m older, wiser, and less tolerant of bullshit. Here’s what I would do differently next time around:
Thoroughly vet the host. This includes reading the fine print, asking the right questions, going through their social media, and talking to previous volunteers directly instead of relying on reviews.
Talk to the host to firmly set our respective boundaries and expectations. If we don’t click, I won’t come. If you start changing the rules later, I leave.
I would only volunteer in an ethical establishment that isn’t a burden on the local community. I know this is hard to verify without physically being there, but I would try my best, and if I see red flags, I leave.
I wouldn’t commit to staying for any longer than 2 weeks right off the bat. If you like a place, you can usually extend your stay.
Make a plan B. What would I do if the arrangement doesn’t work out and I have to leave early? How would I leave, where would I go, how much would it cost? This is crucial for safety and peace of mind. Relying on shitty built-in safeguards is irresponsible.
I would probably do it alongside a job or some source of income, not instead of it. Many people who work remotely also volunteer to cut costs and be part of a community, and in my opinion, it’s the best way to do it.
I would never, under any circumstances, plan a whole trip around volunteering and travel without sufficient funds to get me out of a failed work exchange. Broke and naive people are the easiest to exploit. Work exchanges should enrich your trip, not facilitate it.
I wanted to add a red flag checklist here, but I came up with too many.
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fialka
Former Workaway host here. I always took the view that it had to be fun, and an opportunity for volunteers to see a side of life in Spain they might not have access to as simple tourists. We were pretty laid back about the hours thing, so long as everyone felt like it was a fair exchange. We got things done we simply didn’t have the money to pay for and made lifelong friends along the way.
That said, some hosts (around here) see it in raw economic terms, one charmless S.African lady who called me to ask about Workaway said, horrified, ‘Oh no, we don’t want them coming near the house!’ as if the volunteers were..slaves. Some people are just cold-ass socipaths I guess. I don’t think businesses like hotels should really be able to use Workaway, tbh..but where do you draw the line?
Work exchanges are SOOOO romanticized in the backpacking world and its not talked about often enough. I've done two 'volunteer' experiences while traveling and although I've loved them and gotten very lucky with my hosts its such an exploitation of labor. Like why am i working 5 hours a day just for (shitty) accommodation and one meal! Also didn't realize was i was doing was illegal until I was well into the volunteering....