I am always looking for organizations where you can donate your time and work without having to also spend a fortune. This time I’d like to feature IndiGO. This organization was founded in 2014 by Holly Penalver and Benjamin Western. They had been volunteers before. It is an activity they enjoyed during their spare time but there were two things that overwhelmed them about volunteering.
The first one has to do with people living in the developing world who have little or often no access to what we would consider mandatory daily living resources. They have such a positive, and inspiring energy! You can also see and feel the drive that they have to work, help themselves and their community. They want to break away from simply ‘surviving’.
The second one has to do with the amount of support that they get. It is so minimal and that most of that support is unstructured and unsustainable and relatively unhelpful as a consequence.
Keeping those to aspects in mind IndiGO seeks to inspire and help more people to help others. They work with projects across the world and connect them with the right volunteers. But the best part of it all is that they do this without charging any fees.
They believe that getting rid of fees will allow more people to volunteer and it can also end the corruption that is turning volunteering into a business. “Without a monetary incentive, organizations can purely focus on the effectiveness of the volunteering.”
This is a UK-Registered charity trying to change the culture of the volunteering sector by not charging any fees.
If you still want to help but don’t have the time to travel to some country and work. You can check out a section on their website called Ethical Gifts. In it they feature organizations that sell products made by communities in underdeveloped countries. All of the profits go back to them. In it you buy the items directly from the organizations, they have nothing to do with them.
There is also a video about InfiGO, that you can watch to learn more about what they are all about:
What do you think about IndiGO? I think it sounds like a great option. To learn more about IndiGO check out their website. If you like what you just read and want to volunteer with them sign up here, or send them questions to info@indigovolunteers.org.
Like it? Pin It!
