Advice on Humanitarian Work

Volunteer work is, by definition, unpaid.
Are you looking for a job in a charity, or do you want to volunteer your time for a good cause?
In both cases you should contact the organisations running such activities in the countries you want to go to. Their requirements are likely to be as varied as the places they work in.

Paid volunteer......an oxymoron.

Corbs wrote:

Hello Expats!

My wife and I are planning to move out of the US next year and we are exploring the idea of commiting to humanitarian work. My wife is currently finishing a degree in communications and gender studies. She works as a coordinator with a local refugee support non-profit. I work in safety and emergency response in manufacturing and a volunteer firefighter.

We have two small kiddos, but would love for them to experience unique places to live and learn.

What would the next steps be for me to begin applying for paid volunteer positions in medical emergency response? Would an EMT certification be useful? What about local opportunities should I focus on to be qualified for international medical response positions?

Working directly for an overseas organization in a medical capacity will often require you to not only speak the local language(s) fluently but also to prove equivalency of your qualification with the local one.

I understand you are interested in humanitarian work, not volunteering as such.

Most developed countries have both government and non-government agencies that send humanitarian aid workers abroad. I could tell you a few for Germany, which would be useless, as you are not German nationals.

For the US, the Peace Corps comes to mind, but I think they do indeed volunteering and positions are unpaid, if I understand correctly.

You could try contacting international organizations like the Red Cross, the United Nations and/or their agencies like the WHO or IOM.

You could start here:

https://careers.un.org/lbw/home.aspx?viewtype=WINF