Volunteer trips are often pitched at students, but they don’t belong only to people in their teens and twenties. If you’re in your 40s, 50s or beyond, you bring what many projects need most: practical skills, years of experience and the maturity to fit into a workplace that runs very differently from your own.
There is no upper age limit on our programs, and a career break, a sabbatical or the gap between two jobs can be the right moment to go. This guide matches common skills to the projects where they help most. For advice on comfort, health and insurance, read our guide to being a senior volunteer in India.
A few practical points
- Accommodation: in Delhi, you share a room at our hostel with volunteers of the same gender, or pay extra for a private room. In Jaipur, it’s our volunteer house or a room with a local host family.
- Food: meals are vegetarian and freshly cooked, and filtered drinking water is provided where you stay. Try the street food by all means, but ease into it.
- Culture: expect a different pace, different ideas about time and plenty of curious questions. Flexibility helps more than anything, and our post on dealing with culture shock has practical tips.
- Insurance: travel and medical insurance is compulsory. Check that your policy covers volunteering, any pre-existing conditions and your whole stay.
Where your skills fit
Teachers and trainers
If you have taught, coached or trained people for a living, teaching in Jaipur puts that experience to work. Placed in a government, NGO or community school, you support the class teacher in English, math or sports lessons for middle-school children, on weekday mornings from about 8am to 1pm. No teaching qualification is required, but lesson planning and classroom management count for a lot when classes are large and resources thin. Open from 18.
Prefer small groups? On the slum schools program, you teach small groups of children with a grassroots project, usually in the afternoons.
Sewing, beauty, craft and computer skills
Our women’s empowerment program works with community centers run by local NGOs in Delhi’s urban slums. Alongside spoken English and literacy, the centers teach sewing, embroidery, beauty work and computer skills that help women earn an income. Most volunteers teach English, but if you have one of these skills, tell us when you apply and we’ll let the center know. In Jaipur, the women and girls program welcomes help with stitching, crafts, basic computer lessons and health and hygiene sessions.
Occupational therapists and physiotherapists
Our special needs care program spans three centers in Delhi: one for special education, one for skill development and a school for autistic children. Trained staff run the therapy, and qualified occupational therapists and physiotherapists can support their sessions: send us proof of your qualification and we’ll discuss it with the center. Without a therapy background, you help with classroom routines, vocational sessions and one-to-one time. Open from 18.
Practical, hands-on skills
Plenty of schools, clinics and community centers in Jaipur need repairs and a fresh coat of paint but have no budget for them. On the construction and renovation program, you put in four to five hours a day of repairs, painting and murals, while your coordinator makes the calls on materials and safety. Experience with tools or a paintbrush is a bonus, and if you can draw, you may get to design a mural. Structural and electrical work is left to professionals.
Office and organizational skills
On our childcare program in Jaipur, you spend your afternoons at a shelter home for boys rescued from child labor or for girls affected by HIV, helping with homework, English, crafts and play. If you have office experience, the staff also welcome help with emails, funding proposals and event planning. Open from 18.
If you only have two weeks
If work only allows two weeks away, the two-week mini break is planned from start to finish. It combines eight volunteering days with children in Delhi, a guided city tour that takes in Humayun’s Tomb, and a day trip to the Taj Mahal.
Your weekends
Project days run Monday to Friday, leaving your weekends free. Our weekend trips include a Taj Mahal day trip, three days on the Golden Triangle, a Jaipur weekend, Amritsar and the Golden Temple by train, and Varanasi by overnight train. Our round-up of weekend trips for volunteers has the details.
Whatever your background, there is probably a project where it can help. Email info@volunteeringindia.com with a few lines about your skills and how long you can stay, and we’ll suggest the programs that fit.