Cultural volunteer projects in Uganda

Uganda has rich cultural history that's admired throughout the world, and if you'd like to embrace and promote the unique tribal diversity surrounding Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, then volunteering in the Cultures of Bwindi Project could be just for you. It's a brilliant opportunity to be involved with fascinating cultural initiatives, which will give you a serious insight into indigenous forest tribes.

What will I do?

You'll be teaming up with locals including the indigenous Pygmy Batwa Tribe to develop projects aimed at reinvigorating and celebrating cultures and traditions. We really need volunteers to help us research this fascinating tribe bordering Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and try to understand their traditional and modern cultures, uncover stories, artefacts and interesting facts to showcase in a local museum and an interactive forest trail which are currently in development.

Tasks may include working along-side a variety of performers keen to celebrate their traditions through dance, stories, plays and ceremonies and create shows in the new amphitheatre for tourists as well as local people. Also the Pygmy Batwa tribe are developing an interactive forest trail inside Bwindi that will demonstrate how they used to live and survive entirely in the forest, side-by-side with the mountain gorillas, and they want Big Beyond volunteers to help them create a top-notch experience for visitors. A cultural festival is also in the making to exhibit and celebrate the diversity of cultures around the park - so seriously plenty to do!

Accommodation

You'll be living in the Big Beyond house with other volunteers in a quiet village with fantastic sweeping views of Bwindi forest. It's a great chance to socialise too and meet great mates, share stories and ideas and have that piece of familiarity to hand after a hard day's work in the community! You may find the accommodation relatively basic to what you're used to back home, but we've got nice comfy bedding, a water harvesting scheme is in place, electricity (through solar power) and nice chill out spots for you to relax and take some time out.

Day-to-day lifestyle and responsibilities

On an average day - you'll work in one project site or across a range of proejcts - Monday to Friday. We'll give you breakfast at the house at around 7.30am and about 8am you'll be directed or taken to your project task/site for that day. Lunch will either be back at the house at around 12-1pm, or with the people you're working with or we'll give you a packed lunch. Your project work finishes at 5pm and you'll then have time to relax, socialise with new local friends and other volunteers. at 7.30pm there's an evening meal at the Big Beyond house.

BUT this is Africa so 'average' days happily don't really happen which means you'll experience great variety and need to learn a different kind of flexibility compared to back home.

What's required of me - bags of enthusiasm, flexibility and a good work ethic

When can I join and how long can I stay?

You can join us from various intake dates throughout the year (2 every month). There's a limited amount of space on the team so make sure you're quick to grab your's! Whether you've got 2 weeks annual leave or are planning the ultimate career break or gap year, we can design a placement around any timeframe. The ideal amount of time to really get stuck in is 3 months, but we can accomodate longer or much shorter too.

Programme Fee

There is a programme fee to join the Big Beyond team but this includes everything that makes it a seamless and unforgettable experience. For two weeks it's $1,595 and it works out cheaper per week the longer you stay. The fee includes all of your accommodation, food, in-country transfers, local transport, personal placement design and excellent project management and support, orientation and training, local SIM plus a few more bits.