Are there any resources for pre-med students looking to volunteer?

Question

Are there any resources for pre-med students looking to volunteer?

Answer 1

Try the traditional listings of volunteer opportunities -- at least a few should be looking for people with basic medical training. For the USA: VolunteerMatch (http://www.volunteermatch.org), Idealist (http://www.idealist.org) and CraigsList (http://www.craigslist.com) all list volunteering opportunities with thousands of organizations. Also, contact your local volunteer center; you can find this via the Points of Light Foundation web site (http://www.pointsoflight.org/centers/).

If you are looking to volunteer abroad, that's trickier. Unless you have a great deal of training and work experience, and are willing to volunteer for at least a year, most of your options will require you to pay a fee (for flights, in-country transportation, health insurance, accommodation, food, security, translators, training, staff to supervise and support them in their service, liaisons with the police and local officials, etc.). There is a listing of the more-than-30 member organizations of the International Volunteers Program Association (IVPA) that is a good place to find reputable volunteer-for-a-fee programs -- programs where you don't need to have much experience in order to participate, and the placements are just for a few weeks or months:

http://www.volunteerinternational.org/