Environment Volunteering in Siem Reap, Cambodia

Had a great trip to Italy. I met a ton of people from all over the world and we worked together educating about issues around refugees. We worked during the day and had fun at night and on the weekends. I am still in touch with many of the people I volunteered with. Thanks

I love helping the old people , and I love those who do this because it gives them a spirit of life and enhances their psychology for the better. I also love animals and playing with them gently and I hope that I will enjoy this volunteering because it will have a great impact on my psychological state

My experience with VFP way back in 2009 was remarkable. Living in Germany and building a labyrinth at a World Heritage Site as the only native English speaker in my group was a truly immersive experience. I didn't feel like I was coming into a place from the outside so much as I felt part of a community. Our group really bonded and while we had a primary task, many of the day to day decisions were made by the group, one of my first experiences with really being responsible for myself.

As some who needed a year off between high school and college, Carpe Diem was the best fit for me. As part of the Southeast Asia gap year program one of my favorite things was our partners and host families. At Punpun, a greenhouse building and seed saving organization, I’ve never felt more exhausted, but loved. The people there were so kind and caring as well as invested in educational and experiential learning. While there, I met people with similar interests who showed me that I can do exactly what I want to do in life.

If you’re thinking of taking a gap year, this gap year semester is amazing! I really got to develop as a person and had incredible experiences (and food). I also met really kind and down to earth people on this program, made such great memories, and friends! You really get the best of both worlds on this program - rugged nature adventures and city life activities, which I didn’t know about prior. My favorite part of the trip was going to IWP, which was a Buddhist feminist retreat. 10/10, would recommend this trip.

Carpe Diem is 100% an experience I would recommend to others. The mix of volunteer service work with explorative more touristy activities was excellent. A highlight of my trip was our experience at Pun Pun farm in northern Thailand. We spent a day helping build mud bricks for a community member’s house. The work was tiring but extremely rewarding. Tiring but very rewarding sums up the whole of my semester perfectly. I now have built great friendships with my fellow group members and wonderfully relationships with our various host families and organizations.

I had the absolute best time in Cambodia. I have only been outside of Europe once before this in my life and Cambodia was definitely the best choice. I loved all of the other volunteers and all the kids at the school were amazing. We had really good staff there that really cared about the well-being of us volunteers. Truly the best trip of my life.

My week spent in Cambodia was a hugely eye opening experience and allowed me to gain a real life insight into how clothes are made on a fast fashion and slow fashion scale. As a consumer, it has further encouraged me to make more conscious decisions about buying clothes after seeing for myself the conditions factory workers live in and having conversations with them about their work environment. I would recommend this to anyone - it is a great way to educate yourself and others on sustainable fashion.

Going into the school and meeting the kids was incredible. everyone there was so friendly, kind and would go out of their way to help you. seeing how different the kids classrooms and schooling environment to mine was eye opening. for anyone who has a passion for helping kids, or is happy to make a change for the better, i can’t recommend my experience more.

My Projects Abroad experience was such a well-organised, enlightening trip where I not only got to make a genuine impact on the local community but also got to meet other volunteers from around the world. There was a perfect balance of construction work, teaching, and even tourism, definitely something for everyone! I also loved Cambodia as a place. The culture and history there were amazing to be immersed in. Even if you go into the program with no prior knowledge of the location, I can assure you will go home begging to go back.

The best 3 months of my 21 years of life has to be the most to the point way to describe my time in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam with Carpe Diem Education. I am 21 and finishing up my college sociology degree this year. For fall term of my senior year, I wanted to do something different, and experience true hands on learning outside of the traditional classroom lecture setting. This trip to South East Asia truly went above and beyond what I could have ever expected to get out of my time abroad. From week one in Thailand when we each got placed in our own homestay with the most amazing and sweet host moms, to the last week of the trip directing our own student travel through vietnam, each experience I look back on with so much gratiude, knowlege, insight, and a smile. Carpe Diem truly does give you the ability to have such unique and amazing experience, and there is also such a good balance of volunteer work, weeks in homestays, and life off the beaten path, to city days for self care and relaxation. One of my fondest memories from the whole trip that I think about daily was out treck in Thailand. We went on a 3 day treck in Thailand led by 3 amazing locals who know the area and land so well. They led us through dense bamboo forests, that would open to the most amazing views on the hillside of a rice patty field. We stayed the night in village leaders home in a small Lahu village. The full day we were there was my favorite day of the trip. We got up and walked 30 mins through the village and into a rice patty field where to the left of the path was vegetables growing, ahead was a bamboo forest, and down the hill was a stream. We brought 2 chickens, a sack of rice and some eggs. We collected water form the stream, picked vegetables from the field, made a fire with bamboo and cooked the rice, chicken, and eggs in the bamboo logs over the fire. We also learned to carve spoons, chop sticks, bowls, and cups. We ate the meal we made on the beautiful hillside in Thailand. Something about that day was so special, peaceful, and such an amazing learning experience. Carpe Diem allows you to get to experience and connect with others so different from you. Each homestay family I stayed with showed me such kindness, love, and were so welcoming despite language barriers. I have shared so many laughs, hugs, and amazing homecooked meals with my host famalies. Most homestays are with at least two others in the group which is nice and comfortable. A quick trip recap of everything amazing Thailand: A week learning Thai, and homestays with sweet host moms. 10 days volunteering and staying off the beaten path in an amazing Akka village. 4 days of trecking through beautiful Thailand rice/ pineapple field hillside. Some amazing hostels and city days to explore beautiful tempels. A week on an organic permaculture farm learning about sustainability. 5 days of silent meditation with monks learning about buddhism, and mindfullness. A quick trip recap of everything amazing Cambodia: Days in Phnom Phen learning about the genocide, killing fields, and the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. Angkor Watt of course. A week on a village off the Mekong river working on a clean water project homestay living. A quick trip recap of everything amazing Vietnam: Days to explore the amazing city of Ho Chi Minh. A week with very funny Tan Tao University students staying in homestays, english teaching at primary schools, and a school for the deaf and disabled, picking pineapples, cooking, and singing a lot of karaoke. 5 days on the beautiful beach in Nha Trang getting suba certified, and tanning on the beach. Days in the city to go to museams and learn about the Vietnam War. And lastly student directed travel. Student directed travel is where we got to plan how to get from Nha Tang to Hanoi which was 800 miles in 1 week. We got to plan where we wanted to go, stay, forms of transportaiton, activites, and had to stay within a budget. It was so amazing. So there you have it, the best 3 months of my life by far! The guides for Carpe Diem are also amazing, and really made the trip flow well. They handled the tough situations with ease and are such wonderful, and positive people. Having 10 students and 2 guides total was also great! All Carpe Diem trips have 15 people or less. I would highly reccomend going abroad with Carpe Diem whether you have just graduated high school or are about to graduate college. I feel refreshed, and have a new motivation, and goals for my life becuase of my time abroad with Carpe Diem Education!!

I've been always active with many local associations . And i would love to experience something new abroad . France can be 1 grear chance for me to deal with the local community and to help in any kind of project

Traveling with a cohort of students was the best thing I have ever done. I learned more about myself in 3 months than I have my whole life. I learned how to live independently and how to travel independently. I got to experience a culture that was close to mine in the textbooks but in the real world it was different and very eye opening.

I guess we just take clean water for granted but in Cambodia, many people do not have access to clean drinking water. We made the water filters at the project and then distributed them to villages. The clean water project is really making a big difference, you can see the results of your work and the filters last for years. Had a great time in Siem Reap and made some great friends!

VFP made the travel and volunteer process very simple and it was very easy to communicate with them when additional information was needed. They worked with an agency in Nepal called VIN (Volunteers in Nepal) which was also excellent. Our host family made the experience really incredible. They were kind and very concerned for our safety and well-being. My partner and I remain in contact with our hosts and VIN through Facebook and have made life-long friends. Through VIN we were also able to feel involved and contributed to the reparations after the massive earthquake last year. I would recommend Volunteers for Peace to anyone.

This trip was amazing and Volunteers for Peace was an excellent organization to go through for my first international volunteer experience. Living and working with such amazing people, from our hosts to other volunteers, the project was enlightening and exciting and allowed all of us outsiders a chance to be welcomed into a vibrant, warm culture.

My time spent in Haiti has forever changed my perception of what's important in life. Volunteers for Peace, VFP, allowed me to experience life in a society where things we take for granted are not readily available and are scrounged for daily. Mere existence in Duchity, Haiti involves foraging for food, hunting for wood or charcoal to cook with, collecting water at a community water source, and cleaning clothes in an overused creek. I was overwhelmed with the opportunity to witness and live (if only for a short time) the joy and rhythm of Haitian life. Immediately upon my arrival, I found myself immersed in Haitian culture; for this I am forever grateful. I was able to witness the dangers of idleness and feel the uncertainty of tomorrow that brews in the youth of Duchity. The residents of Haiti lack opportunities to better their situation, but VFP has joined forces with a local energetic resident to help establish an adult vocational school to empower the Duchity residents with trade-skills that can be used to earn income and better lives. Volunteers for Peace has a strong commitment to empowering local residents. They understand that meaningful help for a person, group, community, or nation must come from within that person, group, or nation. They embrace this concept fully. Their affiliation in Duchity, Haiti is helping to assure residents learn to help themselves. I was honored to have been a part of their exceptional program.

My VFP trip to Alaska took place several years ago, but it's still worth reviewing here, because I've done additional VFP trips since. VFP has always impressed me with its customer service, affordability, and attitude that "Peace begins one friendship at a time." Our work in Sitka, Alaska, was varied, thanks to our excellent local hosts. We did everything from working with injured eagles at a raptor center to painting tiny furniture at a preschool. During our free time, our hosts took us fishing, camping, hiking, and kayaking in some of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Our lodging was simple but comfortable (mattresses on the floor at a large church) and groceries were plentiful. While I doubt that those particular hosts are still organizing projects like this one, I highly recommend working with VFP if you want a meaningful and affordable volunteer travel experience!

One of the unique features of traveling with VFP is that they partner with a few organizations that will accept entire families to volunteer -- and most importantly, these programs are very affordable compared to others I've researched. A few summers ago, my husband, 10 year-old daughter, and I went to Sardinia to volunteer with Legambiente, a large environmental agency in Italy. We lived and worked with three other families from three different countries. Our lodging was in a former boarding school in a tiny village. There was a huge, modern kitchen, shower facilities, and a washing machine. The hosts brought plenty of groceries to us on a regular basis and we shared the cooking and cleaning duties. Our actual work was simple -- cleaning up trash from Sardinia's beaches, planting some trees, etc. (Children didn't have to do the physical labor; parents would take turns keeping an eye on them.) Usually this would take only a couple of hours each day, then we were free to go into town, to the beach, etc. Our hosts treated us very well, although for them it was their vacation time (!) so they often just socialized with each other, not with us. But the other families and mine became good friends; we still stay in touch.

In 2013, I volunteered in Reykjavik with SEEDS, Iceland's VFP counterpart. Volunteering is apparently not a common pursuit among Icelanders, so SEEDS has taken advantage of 1) Iceland's booming tourist industry and 2) tourists who do like to volunteer. The SEEDS program I did involved helping a soccer club called Throttur with their annual international tournament for teen players. The Throttur hosts provided a comfortable living space, groceries, and free passes to the city's top swimming pool facility, right across from our lodging. The work was physically challenging, but not difficult -- cleaning up the fields each day, setting up beds for the players and coaches, etc. Working with VFP for travelling is awesome. They offer a ton of choices, the fees are exceptionally low compared to others volunteer-abroad programs, and the staff is helpful, knowledgeable, and quick to respond to questions and concerns.