Are you a nurse, doctor or paramedic?

Volunteer as a Raleigh Medic. Use your medical skills to volunteer abroad and support young people to create lasting change. Our volunteering programmes are based in Costa Rica and Nepal.

If you are a nurse, doctor or paramedic with at least two years post qualification experience you can apply to be part of Raleigh’s international medic team and develop your medicine skills on our overseas Expeditions.

This is a unique medical volunteering opportunity to get involved in worthwhile community and environmental projects spanning Asia and Central America, all whilst building your experience and skills in medicine in a practical, exciting environment. Ideal for those taking a gap year in medicine or simply seeking a few months experience abroad. You can join Expedition either as a Project Medic or a Field base Medic.

Joining as a Project Medic

As a Project Medic, you will lead a volunteer team out on remote project sites as well as trek on an adventure leadership project. You will be supported by another project manager, to inspire and guide our younger volunteers (aged 17-24) on their own Expedition and use your medical skills as and when required.

In Costa Rica, your projects could include helping to build school infrastructure in remote communities or working alongside rangers on an environmental programme in one of the country’s incredible national parks. In Nepal, our focus is on improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene in vulnerable communities recovering from the 2015 earthquake and now from the Coronavirus outbreak.

Joining as a Field Base Medic

From our central field base in Costa Rica or Nepal, you will support volunteers across multiple projects organised by Raleigh. This is a great opportunity to experience the ‘behind the scenes’ of Raleigh projects overseas and use your medicine skills to be part of the central operations team that leads the response to incidents.

You will spend the majority of your time based in our office in Turrialba or Kathmandu, remotely supporting groups of young volunteers. You will have opportunities to visit teams on their project sites to provide first-hand medical support to volunteers and will have a distinct role from our project managers.

Covid-19 update: We are looking forward to restarting programmes in Costa Rica and Nepal in April 2021. As a result of the global pandemic, Raleigh has unfortunately cancelled all planned Expeditions in 2020 and we are pausing Expedition in Tanzania in 2021. We will continue to take every precaution to ensure the safety of all our volunteers and staff. Full details about this and Raleigh’s ongoing response to COVID-19 can be found here.

Once you have applied, if you pass stage one of the application process you will then be invited to our Expedition Discovery Weekend based in East Grinstead, Sussex. If you are not based in the UK we will arrange an online assessment.

The Expedition Discovery Weekend is a fun and intensive weekend, designed to give you a taste of Expedition life – so be ready to get your hands dirty! (There is a £48 charge to help us cover our costs). The weekend is facilitated by Raleigh alumni and will give us the chance to assess you as a potential volunteer manager. It also gives you the opportunity to decide whether Raleigh is right for you and ask our alumni about Expedition life!

Please be aware that because of the COVID-19 pandemic we have needed to postpone many of our Expedition Discovery Weekends in 2020 and are unlikely to be able to invite you to one of these until the beginning of 2021. We are planning online events as an alternative. We will keep you updated on any developments after you apply.

Expedition fundraising costs

As a charity we talk about fundraising rather than costs. We encourage everyone to do some fundraising for their Expedition. Raleigh’s Expeditions are not funded by volunteer income alone. As a charity we need to raise funds from other sources to cover our costs and ensure our work is impactful. We do lots of fundraising to ensure they are as impactful as possible. And, we’re committed to supporting local volunteers in each Expedition country and disadvantaged young people from the UK to take part.

Find out more about how Raleigh spends its funds.

Expeditions are much more than what is achieved in the time you are there. They are about creating lasting change. As well as the communities and young people whose lives you will be impacting, don’t forget you will also be developing skills for your future too.

Our medic roles require specialist knowledge and skills so additional bursaries are available for these roles.

Expedition fundraising targets

Your costs are not fully covered by your fundraising. All volunteer managers are being subsidised to take part. The field base specific Medic role is open to doctors, nurses or paramedics and applicable to both Nepal and Costa Rica. For further information please email: internationalresources@raleighinternational.org

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