Volunteering is many things to many people, but it is definitely not a holiday. It can be satisfying and frustrating, rewarding and challenging, life affirming and exhausting in equal quantities, so your decision to participate requires careful consideration and commitment. Teamwork is essential and the ability to share your skills, while also learning from others, requires mutual respect.

Saga Volunteer Travel operates as a non-profit part of the Saga Group – any profit we make is passed on to the Saga Charitable Trust, which supports additional projects worldwide. In this way the benefits of your volunteer placement are two-fold, helping not only the community you visit, but others too.

Making sure that both our volunteers and the projects we support are well matched is vitally important to the success of our placements, and we’re particularly proud that 96% of volunteers rate their overall experience as either ‘excellent’ or ‘very good’.

We are helped in this by the relentless work of the local management teams who are deeply committed to improving their communities, and who are critical in making sure that the time and skills so generously shared by Saga volunteers has maximum impact.

There are many ways in which you can help - perhaps you’ve been a sports coach or have a flair for art or music? Alternatively you might have vocational qualifications in teaching or counselling. Whatever your skills or knowledge, and whether you’re travelling with your partner, a friend or on your own, we will be able to match you with a project that can really make use of your time.

Once you’ve read more about the projects we support, we hope you'll be inspired to take the next step in making a real difference to the lives of those much less fortunate than ourselves.