Voluntary Work Abroad - The Insurance Question
The main objection seems to be that somehow travel insurance is a scam. You are just giving your money away. The truth is quite different. As long as you use a reputable company you are getting hundreds or even thousands of dollars of cover for a very small investment. Imagine you are volunteering in Africa, for example, and your flight is canceled. What are you going to do if you are not covered. Worse than that, imagine if the air company - who have nothing to do with your volunteer organizers - go broke. What are you going to do then? Who is going to get you home? Who is going to pay for a hotel while alternative arrangements are made.It"s easy to think that it won"t happen to you, and we all hope it won"t, but how often do you hear of airlines getting into trouble and leaving passengers stranded? It"s not every week, but it is more often than is comfortable if you are not covered!
Of course travel isn"t the only thing covered. Doing voluntary work abroad should be no more dangerous than doing your normal job but you are a long way from home should an unfortunate accident happen. People break bones walking down their own street. It would be very sad if the same should happen to you while volunteering but it would be foolish not to consider the possibility, however remote.
Volunteering overseas isn"t inherently dangerous - the volunteer organizations work very hard to make you safe. They certainly don"t want the adverse publicity that a serious accident would bring. However, accidents do happen, even in the safest environments, and the last thing you want is to be thousands of miles from home without transportation or perhaps medical support. That"s just silly when it can all easily be arranged before you leave to do your voluntary work abroad. Any decent volunteer organization will have a preferred insurance provider. They have specialist knowledge so take advantage of it.