Frontier

Rice and chick peas for every meal. Porridge like clay. I lost a lot of weight, and was skinny to begin with. Hugely overpriced- they market to starry eyed teenagers (as I was at the time) with exotic locations. We had to pay for our own accommodation on the mainland. Staff weren't paid. How they're still getting away with it, I have no clue.

I went on a study trip to Costa Rica with Frontier at the age of 16 after they visited my school to showcase their "gap year opportunities". Only recently, whilst trying to get in touch with them about my written paper, did I find out they didn't exist anymore...and I'm honestly not surprised. I was too young to understand the severity of the ways that we were treated out there. On my first day I was left alone by a bus stop by one of the staff and told "someone will be here to collect you soon" to which I waited multiple hours in a strange place with no language skills, phone, details, and no idea when someone was coming to get me. When they eventually arrived and I was taken to a small camp, the facilities were minimal, filthy, and not at all what was advertised. My "studies" started the following day when I was told to sit by a lagoon and count birds. I received absolutely no guidance on my project and had to fill my days with interesting ways of counting and analysing my data because I wasn't given any kind of task. I suffered severe sun burn a few weeks into my course and they refused to take me to hospital. Instead I was covered in iodine patches and told to "shut up" when I complained about the pain. During all of this my wallet was stolen and I had to find an internet cafe with the little money I had in my pocket to email my dad to wire me money because I wouldn't have been able to get home! At the second of the two locations we had extreme weather and personal items were lost from the camp. There was no emergency planning for bad weather, so myself and another young girl from the course were sent into town by ourselves on the back of a local's truck and told to find accommodation. No information was passed to my parents about the change of my return flight (due to the bad weather) and it resulted in me waiting at the wrong terminal in Heathrow with no way to call my parents and explain. It took hours for the confusion to clear enough for my mum to find me. So much more happened during this trip that, now I look back on it, just seems horrible and some of it probably illegal. I would never have recommend this trip to anyone, but like I said, it seems like they don't exist anymore anyway. It was extortionately expensive for what we received and I wish I hadn't gone. I have physical and mental scars that will never leave me.

Careful, this is corruption to the core and if you raise any questions you are full on in a whole load of dreadful trouble, proper food being witheld. or extortionate prices like $20 being demanded for two bog standard normal sausages.Thats because questions were raised about this company selling medicine to locals or 'exchanging' for sexual exploitations of locals when its all meant to be free for locals. Paid £2000 for this utter disruputable company that needs shutting down for the locals safety, and stop exploiting us volunteers. Try VSO or Kibbutz

Late to review but duty bound to forewarn Fraud'corruption & exploitation, this is an established fraud "Aid" company that preys on young volunteer girls. Its essence is corruption and fraud of funds, that do not go near any aid, and predatory environment for young girls far from family. Think Haiti...essential supplies exchanged for 'favours'. Staff exploit locals and volunteers. There are serious charity companies out there, this is NOT one. You are funding and supporting exploitation and corruption. STOP

Very late review and the dates may not be exact but I thought it necessary to share my experience with Frontier in Cambodia. It was a total scam: we went on the pretense that we would be assisting the ministry of environment on a conservation project, this was not the case and in fact the two government reps with us were at a loss as to what we were doing there. We were told that one day a week we could go to the local town and mingle, to buy supplies and interact with the community; in fact we were banned from leaving the site and forbidden to interact with villagers. We were even told not to use our medical kits to help the local rangers, and kids who would stop by from time to time to say hello. The work we did was a total farce and served no purpose whatsoever besides providing graduates with something to put on their CV. Myself and a friend wrote letters to head office explaining our disappointment which were taken from our hands by staff who then refused to mail them. The company, sorry, the non-profit organization profits by diverting the income to sister companies owned by the same people. Eg, Frontier Marketing Ltd will receive a nice big invoice that happens to be the same as the NGO's income... see how it works? They are a total scam, don't give them a penny or a minute of your time.

Not great - I attended the teacher training the month before, in a rather hard to find location and they know I was going in July. Arrived in Bangalore on 1st July - no one there to pick me up from the airport. Stranded. I didn't know what to do, so I rang my sister in London who got in touch with them and read the riot act! The training itself wasn't really that helpful and I was lucky enough to have already taught in a different situation in another country so I used that to help me.