Volunteer
Volunteer and support social projects while studying Spanish and learning about the Guatemalan way of life. There are plenty of opportunities to help around Flores! Volunteers can spend time with children at an orphanage, work with endangered animals at The ARCAS Rescue Center or help with a community project.
We are continually accepting new volunteer projects in the area. If you are interested in volunteering in other realms, please contact us, as we may not have updated our sites with the latest offers.
You can enroll in a volunteer program without being a student of Dos Mundos Spanish School. We charge volunteers a US$25 entry fee which includes contact details of your project, airport pick-up and help with finding accommodation.
Orphanage
Opened in 1980 in Santa Elena, Petén, Santo Domingo provides a refuge for neglected, abused and abandoned girls. Overseen by nuns and assisted by very few employees, the girls are raised in a Catholic-centered environment. The orphanage receives the children via the court system, through cases where the parents are declared to be unfit or have passed away. The orphanage receives no monetary support from the government, and instead relies strictly on donations from outside sources and organizations from other countries.
The girls at Santo Domingo vary in age from 1 to 32. They attend school in Flores and are responsible for all their own chores at the orphanage. Here they learn all the necessary skills to survive in the outside world once they feel self-sufficient enough to leave. Some girls never leave, and choose to stay at the orphanage to help run the facility.
Adoption is a possibility for those girls who are completely orphaned. Few have parents that come to visit them. They are loving, kind children who are always willing to show off their dances, give a hug or take your hand. Volunteer at the orphanage and change the lives of these lovely little girls!
Help is needed in all areas of the orphanage, so your volunteer work will be tailored to what you are interested in doing. Cleaning, preparation of food, bathing and dressing of the girls, helping in the school and providing companionship are all possibilities at Santo Domingo! The best way is to ask a nun what needs to be done, and she will guide you in the right direction.
The orphanage is a 10 minute walk from Flores, or a matter of minutes in tuk-tuk. Café Yaxha provides food for volunteers at a discount and can help to arrange accommodations in Flores.
The nuns also run a kindergarden in San Benito. They take care of 15-30 children daily of whom many come from deprived families. They attend any ages from newborn babies to 4-year olds. Your tasks here will be pretty much the same as at the orphanage but only on weekdays from 8 am to 3 pm.
ARCAS Rescue Center in Petén
ARCAS is a non-profit Guatemalan NGO formed in 1989 by a group of Guatemalan citizens who became concerned as they saw their precious natural heritage - especially their wildlife - rapidly disappearing before their eyes. ARCAS’s main project sites are: Guatemala City, Petén, and the Hawaii area of the southern pacific coast.
The ARCAS Rescue Center is situated on a forested 45 hectare protected area on the shores of Lake Petén Itza next to the Peténcito Zoo. Volunteers live in a spacious two story wooden building with open, screened walls, situated in the middle of a beautiful tropical forest with comfortable wooden bunk beds, "western" shower and toilet facilities and US-style 110V electricity. Volunteers eat and socialize at a separate kitchen/dining room rancho; there is a games room plus a very nice floating dock for late afternoon swims.
Depending on the time of year, the Rescue Center in Petén hosts anywhere between 5 and 25 mostly international volunteers, ranging from veterinary students looking to gain practical experience working with tropical animals, graduate students carrying out research in wildlife management and rehabilitation, and backpack travelers (mochileros) who simply want to contribute their tourist dollars and sweat to the conservation of Guatemalan wildlife.
The Rescue Center gives these volunteers the hand-on opportunity to work with such beautiful and endangered tropical animals as scarlet macaws, mealy parrots, kinkajous, spider and howler monkeys, peccaries, coatimundis, margays and jaguars.
The priority at the ARCAS Rescue Center is the welfare, rehabilitation and reintroduction of the wild animals received there, so volunteers should be willing to adjust their schedules, habits and attitudes to meet the needs of these animals.For example, it is often not in the animal’s long-term best interest to be handled or showered with attention.
Internship
We are looking for open-minded, reliable, self-employed and creative volunteers to work in our language school, Dos Mundos, in Flores, Guatemala.
Our volunteers are responsible for the care and attention of the students, assisting the school staff, organizing and running leisure time activities for the students, and general administrative duties. We also ask our volunteers to help in our restaurant, the Café Arqueológico Yaxha.
Volunteers who are an undergraduate student with a major in English or Education also have the possibility of teaching English to Guatemalans.
Volunteers have the opportunity to work on an international team with people from all corners of the globe. Our volunteers receive free lodging and discounted meals.