CDCA Volunteer Information Sheet

You are interested in volunteering with the Center for Development in Central America? Great!

Dottie treating patient Let us tell you a bit about what is available here in Nicaragua. First, we have short-term (less than 1 month) and long-term (6 months and longer) opportunities. Volunteers wishing to come for a short period of time must join a delegation visiting our projects unless you have special skills. We have a summer 2-month volunteer session as well. We do not accept volunteers under the age of 18 unless accompanied by a responsible adult. We work in the areas of health care, sustainable economic development, construction projects, appropriate technology, sustainable agriculture, and community development.  

Besides help in these areas we are also inundated with paper/computer work of many kinds! We can use almost any skill presented to us in one form or another. We are extremely flexible and try to respond to the needs of the communities as well as yours.

If you are interested in our current Long-Term Volunteering, please follow these links:

 Waxor repairing computer     > Volunteer Coordinator

    > Herbalist

    > Health Professionals

    > Teach Support/IT

What we expect from volunteers:

Because all of our Nicaraguan staff work for low salaries and our budget is tight, we need you to contribute to your costs. Besides paying your travel down and back, we ask that groups and individual short-term volunteers contribute $65.00/day for room and board; and $10.00/day for volunteers over 3 months. We really wish we could absorb those costs on our own but feel that until our staff are paid good wages we can't, in good conscience, absorb these extra costs. (Nicaragua is one of the most expensive countries in Central America to live if one uses electricity, cars, and imported commodities.) We are willing to give you ideas on how to do fundraising on your own. Peter and Lieve cooking

We want you to know that life here is different and stressful. You will stay in the International Training Facitility, with people who have varying views of life. You will interact with the community . We appreciate open, flexible people. In Nicaragua, the main characteristic that people need to function is flexibility. It is also wise not to come if you have serious health issues. Health care is not very good and mental health care is antiquated. You must answer the following questions to our satisfaction:

We also want you to be aware while considering this that we all work hard on our projects and we aren't a volunteer organization so we have little energy to expend on organizing people who come down thinking that the CDCA is a just a spring-board for traveling and doing their "own thing". We can provide hospitality and organization to volunteers who come for the purpose of helping in the projects we are overseeing, and we do hope and expect our volunteers to have fun, adventures and learning experiences.

If you are interested in doing research we will help you (for a nominal fee) by introducing you to people and finding you a family to live with in the area (the family will set the cost of housing).

If you are still interested then we ask you to write us a letter (preferably by email). We hate forms but would like to know some things about you to begin a dialogue.

What things? Well, how about... your age, your level of Spanish, your interests, why you want to come down and volunteer, your likes and dislikes, when you'd like to come and for how long, and anything you think we ought to know or just want us to know. Here is a more complete list of questions that you should consider.

helping in the Women's Sewing Cooperative Because our work is changing we have less and less manual labor work to be done, and we want your experience to be good.

We hope to hear from you and thank you for being interested in this work. We always need all the help we can get!

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