Volunteer Abroad in Zanzibar: Go Volunteer Africa

Traveling to Stone, Zanzibar was a life-changing experience. Go Volunteer Africa gave me the opportunity to take a career break. I worked on a vulnerable children caring project in Zanzibar to help an Educate centre (an early childhood school) with its daily activities. I got to do what I love and the experience was amazing. The opportunity was simply what I was looking for! Not only did my work help young children in need but I forged lasting relationships with the school staff, Go Volunteer Africa staff, other volunteers, and my host family. I definitely recommend this project.

All we could say about Go Volunteer Africa is wow and thank you for making our Christmas holiday memorable and awesome! As a family, we were so confused in the beginning, we had lots of interests and we wanted to volunteer in Rwanda, see gorillas in Uganda, go to the coast in Kenya and spend some time in Zanzibar too. We wanted to use various companies and we didn’t want to put all our eggs in one basket. Although GVA offers products and services in all the countries, we had not used it before and since its African based, we had some doubts. We were skeptical due to the fact some offers were extremely too low-cost compared to other providers, for instance Mombasa and Zanzibar. However we gave them a benefit of doubt and decided to book the first 2 destinations with them and that is Rwanda and Uganda Safari. Once we booked their program to Kigali. We received all information within three days and they gave us access to talk to local coordinator in Kigali who was awesome and helpful. Our experience in Rwanda was excellent and rewarding, the challenge was the language barrier with locals who some still use French (the country has just transited to English), but my brother Allen who speaks French was always at hand to help out and our Coordinator. After the one week, we proceeded to Uganda, the road trip was one of the best, multiple stops as we requested, our guide James was also very professional and knowledgeable and this was life assuring. Our week in Uganda was also good and full of experiences; although Rwanda seemed more organized than Uganda but it was no doubt that we wanted to travel with them to Mombsa (Kenya) at the coast and Zanzibar (Tanzania) for our sisters’ birthday. They arranged the bus tickets for Kenya from Uganda, train trip from Nairobi city to Mombasa, arranged all our hotels, sightsee activities and we were glad to be offered a night at their guest house for free when we missed our train back to Nairobi to catch the Arusha bus. These guys are awesome- Jim and your team at Go Volunteer may God bless you. Although we had not planned to spend a full day in Arusha, “OPP” the “GVA Man of Arusha” as he prefers to call himself, who received us in Arusha advised us to spend a day in the city and also visit Moshi town, where we got the bus to Darasalm and then Zanzibar. At every stop, these guys had someone to meet us, greet us, arrange stuff and wish us a safe trip, they are well connected throughout. Zanzibar and Rwanda were a little more expensive than earlier anticipated, but everything went well. As a family, we highly recommend them and our parents are looking forward for their trip to Mauritius. On a personal note, I will be joining their program to Senegal next summer! The experience we had volunteering and traveling around East Africa with Go Volunteer Africa far exceeded our expectations. Kudos!