It's impossible to volunteer! I really want to volunteer for about 6 months in India and Africa once I graduate, but it's impossible to do so because the program fee and sustinence fees alone are -on average- $2000 to $6000 just for a month! That's not even including the $5000 it takes me to *fly* there. Frankly, I don't have an extra five grande laying around that I can use to *volunteer*! Arg! Do you think it would be hard just to go up to an orphanage in India and say "I'd like to volunteer"?
Currently I am in India myself and it costs you lots and lots less to go and stay there. Retour ticket for me costed 700 Euro and I can sleep, eat, drink and have fun here for around 10 Euro a day. As for volunteer programs; do not use any of those highly-priced, highly-advertised ' commercial' volunteer programs but look a little beyond that. You can just go up to an orphanage and ask them to volunteer, I have not done that myself but I heard from people who did. You can also look on the internet for places to volunteer or just buy a Lonely Planet guide or other guides for adresses. At a lot of places you can eat and sleep whilst you are doing the voluntary work and you do not have to pay rediculus amounts of money. Good luck!
