Fourteen fully funded European Solidarity Corps placements are open right now across 11 countries, and almost every one of them is built around people who need someone to show up. You could be visiting and befriending elderly people living in isolation near Paris, transforming teaching at a rural community school in Uganda, running a hostel and school projects in a historical town in southern Italy, supporting women's shea butter and basket weaving cooperatives in northern Ghana, defending territory and climate justice in Colombia's Cesar region, or caring for children who arrived at an Estonian reception centre with nothing. From a cultural centre in Normandy to a castle town in Granada, this batch is one long argument for human connection.
Every one of these fourteen placements is a European Solidarity Corps opportunity, which means the funding is real: travel within the usual distance bands, accommodation, food, local transport, insurance, pocket money, a mentor and language support are all covered, for volunteers aged 18 to 30. Two placements are limited to residents of a specific country, and those are flagged below. The deadlines run from 26 July to 31 August 2026.
What's in this batch:
14 Fully Funded ESC Volunteering Placements · 11 Countries · Deadlines from 26 July to 31 August 2026
🩷 ESC Volunteering Opportunities
🇨🇴 Colombia: Climate Justice and Territory Defence 🌎
📅 Deadline: 26 July 2026
Contribute to defending the territory and building communities more resilient to the climate crisis in the Cesar region of Colombia. As part of the PUENTES project, you support climate justice initiatives, strengthen community organisations and help defend the territory, working alongside local communities to promote participation, environmental sustainability and collective rights from a territorial, inclusive approach. You join a pacifist, feminist and antiracist movement with over forty years of experience, working 30 to 38 hours a week with continuous training and mentoring, and travelling to nearby communities where the projects take place. Open to applicants from 🇮🇹 🇹🇷 🇵🇹 🇩🇪 🇪🇸 and 26 more. Climate justice, learned from the communities living it.
🇧🇬 Bulgaria: Promoting ESC Through Media and Local Campaigns 📱
📅 Deadline: 31 July 2026
Support a hosting organisation in the Bulgarian capital in preparing a local campaign about the ESC and Erasmus+ programmes. You take part in city visits and information collection, and work on web content and Q&A sessions: gathering materials and publications for a web blog and social media, translating and editing materials, writing text, and producing and editing video, photo and text. A hands on way to build media and communication skills while promoting European opportunities and intercultural dialogue in the local community. ⚠️ Open to residents of Türkiye. Build a media portfolio while opening doors for others.
🇳🇱 Netherlands: Social Work Supporting People with Limitations 🤝
📅 Deadline: 31 July 2026
Explore various aspects of social work with a focus on supporting individuals with different types of limitations. Starting with an initial four month term that can be extended by another four after a positive evaluation, this project is for volunteers who are genuinely enthusiastic about the social sector, working across different organisations and locations. An educational background in social work is especially welcome, and an interest in gardening and sports activities is highly valued. Since communication is crucial in this field, a willingness to learn Dutch is a real advantage. Open to applicants from 🇮🇹 🇩🇪 🇵🇹 🇫🇷 🇭🇷 and 22 more. Try several corners of social work in one placement.
📋 New to ESC volunteering? Everything you need to know, how it works, who can apply, what costs are covered, is in one place. Read the complete guide →
🇫🇷 France: Fighting Social Isolation Among the Elderly 💛
📅 Deadline: 4 August 2026
Join a well known solidarity organisation near Paris to help elderly people who suffer from loneliness and social isolation. You visit them, build friendships, take part in and create new social events, help them feel confident again, and contribute to a new project reaching out to elderly people in rural areas near Paris. Two European volunteers join a local team of French volunteers of all ages, within an organisation that already brings together 15,000 local volunteers and 400 staff. In France one older adult in four is isolated, and the challenge is growing worldwide. Open to applicants from 🇮🇹 🇩🇪 🇵🇹 🇪🇸 🇭🇷 and 22 more. Sometimes the whole job is showing up.
🇮🇹 Italy: Hostel Management and Educational Support 🏛️
📅 Deadline: 9 August 2026
Join a social cooperative promoting sustainable tourism through a hostel in the historical town of Crotone in southern Italy. In summer you help manage the hostel, from reception and administration to cleaning rooms and spaces, supporting local trips for youth, assisting the municipality's tourist infopoint, and handling website and social media communication. In autumn and winter you continue at the hostel and also assist in a local school and in educational meetings and trips with young people, sharing your ESC experience and organising workshops for children and youth. Open to applicants from 🇮🇹 🇵🇹 🇪🇸 🇫🇷 🇭🇷 and 15 more. Two seasons, two very different jobs.
🇬🇭 Ghana: Women's Economic Empowerment and Artisan Crafts ✋
📅 Deadline: 10 August 2026
Be a catalyst for real social change through the economic and social empowerment of women in rural northern Ghana. You take part in empowerment programmes supporting women's economic activities like shea butter production, basket weaving and cloth weaving, helping strengthen their skills, build lasting cooperatives and foster sustainable economic independence. You also engage with school age children for intergenerational impact and inclusive development rooted in cultural understanding. A key part of the mission is opening new European markets for these artisanal products, building strong bridges between local communities and international buyers. Open to applicants from 🇮🇹 🇩🇪 🇵🇹 🇹🇷 🇪🇸 and 26 more. Craft, cooperatives and real economic independence.
✍️ Last minute motivation letter? Here's how to write one that actually gets read, and remembered. Read the guide →
🇬🇭 Ghana: Climate Change Adaptation in Northern Communities 🌍
📅 Deadline: 10 August 2026
Support communities in northern Ghana facing persistent poverty and heavy dependence on rain fed agriculture, where climate change brings erratic rainfall, drought, rising temperatures and flooding that hit farming, water security and livelihoods. You help conduct climate vulnerability assessments, identify practical intervention options, and build local capacity in energy saving, reduce, reuse, repair and recycle practices, food management, income diversification and sustainable farming using organic inputs. You also strengthen networking and stakeholder engagement in climate action, combining immediate adaptation with long term resilience. Open to applicants from 🇮🇹 🇩🇪 🇵🇹 🇹🇷 🇷🇸 and 26 more. Adaptation work where the climate crisis is already daily life.
🇺🇬 Uganda: Education Expert in a Rural Community School 📚
📅 Deadline: 10 August 2026
Join a Ugandan association and Mondo in a rewarding role transforming education in a rural community school. You lead workshops and training sessions to strengthen school management and equip teachers with innovative practical and theoretical methods, support subject teachers across disciplines, and raise community awareness of why education matters. You also help source partnerships to enrich the school library, organise and supervise extracurricular activities, and ensure a well rounded, holistic education, while contributing to Mondo's wider community projects across primary and secondary schools. Open to applicants from 🇮🇹 🇩🇪 🇵🇹 🇹🇷 🇪🇸 and 26 more. Change how a whole school teaches.
🇵🇱 Poland: Long Term Community Work with Youth or Seniors 🎨
📅 Deadline: 15 August 2026
Spend ten to twelve months in a Polish city becoming actively involved in the local community. Depending on your placement, you may work with children and young people during school hours or afternoon workshops, support activities with seniors, or get involved in the local cultural environment. Activities can include language and intercultural workshops, sports and movement, arts and crafts, cultural events and other creative initiatives. Volunteers are encouraged to develop their own ideas, always with the support and supervision of the hosting organisation. The project rewards independence, creativity, initiative, teamwork and flexibility. Open to applicants from 🇮🇹 🇹🇷 🇵🇹 🇩🇪 🇺🇦 and 60 more. A year shaped largely by your own ideas.
💡 What do organisations actually look for in an ESC volunteer? Skills, values, attitude, what makes a strong profile. Read the guide →
🇫🇷 France: Youth and Culture Work at a Community Centre in Normandy 🎭
📅 Deadline: 23 August 2026
Spend a year leading creative projects for young people at a lively cultural centre in Normandy. Run workshops, artistic events and projects at a Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture, work with a team of volunteers, and learn French along the way. Open to applicants from 🇮🇪 🇲🇹 🇱🇺 🇭🇷 🇸🇪 and 21 more. A year of making things happen in Normandy.
🇪🇸 Spain: Cultural and Community Life in a Rural Town 🎭
📅 Deadline: 24 August 2026
Spend a long term project supporting a wide range of cultural, educational and social activities in a small town in the Granada province of southern Spain. You collaborate on preparing, running and promoting events like book presentations, theatre performances, workshops, talks, exhibitions, guided visits to the local castle and other community initiatives. You also help welcome participants, assist with logistics, create communication materials, document activities through photos and videos, and bring ideas to engage local people, especially young people, in community life. A place for someone ready to live rurally and get truly involved locally. Open to applicants from 🇮🇹 🇩🇪 🇵🇹 🇫🇷 🇷🇸 and 26 more. A castle town that runs on its own events.
🇹🇷 Türkiye: Youth, Culture and Social Work in Erzurum 🎨
📅 Deadline: 24 August 2026
Work across several areas in a lively eastern Turkish city. At the hosting organisation you help prepare new projects, find partners, translate the website, run social media, teach your mother tongue to Turkish youth and plan entrepreneurship games. At two universities you prepare and share information on Youth, Erasmus+, ESC and Eurodesk, meeting students on campus. You also spend time with children without families preparing activities, join information activities in libraries, museums and historical sites, organise cultural and artistic events, and plan activities for disabled people and women with the metropolitan municipality. Open to applicants from 🇮🇹 🇩🇪 🇵🇹 🇷🇸 🇬🇪 and 27 more. One placement, a whole city's worth of work.
🗺️ Not sure if your country is eligible? The full list of ESC and Erasmus+ programme and partner countries, including many outside the EU. Check eligibility →
🇪🇪 Estonia: Supporting Children at Risk in a Care Centre 💙
📅 Deadline: 25 August 2026
Work at a social care organisation offering professional support to children abandoned by their parents or facing behavioural or addiction related difficulties, running two reception centres in the city. Children arrive for many reasons, often family neglect, domestic violence, parental addiction or unemployment, or the loss of a home to poverty. As a volunteer you care for and play with the children, support the staff, and organise extra educational activities like teaching Italian and sharing your culture through games, songs and physical activity, plus outings like cultural visits, hikes and picnics. ⚠️ Open to residents of Italy. Be the calm in a child's hardest year.
🇫🇷 France: Social Action and Youth Work at a Popular Education Centre 🤝
📅 Deadline: 31 August 2026
A youth and culture centre that doubles as a social centre, built on promoting solidarity, democracy and human dignity through inclusion, participation and cultural rights. Its work runs across social support (integration, access to rights, parenting support, intergenerational ties), leisure programmes of workshops, clubs, courses and outings, discussion forums on education, citizenship and social issues, plus cultural and festive events. Your role sits mainly in the social and youth actions while staying plugged into the wider mission: fostering autonomy, empowerment and access to education and culture for everyone. Open to applicants from 🇩🇿 🇬🇱 🇯🇴 🇲🇦 🇹🇷 and 60 more. Popular education, in the fullest sense.
Fourteen placements, eleven countries, one shared promise: your travel, housing, food, insurance and pocket money are covered, so all you bring is yourself. The reach beyond Europe is what stands out, spanning women's artisan cooperatives and climate adaptation in northern Ghana, teacher training at a rural Ugandan school, and climate justice work with communities in Colombia's Cesar region. France takes three placements of its own, from elderly loneliness near Paris to a Normandy cultural centre and a popular education centre. And care anchors the rest, across children at risk in Estonia, social work with people with limitations in the Netherlands, community life in a Granada castle town, a Crotone hostel, a Polish city and the many sides of youth work in Erzurum. Two placements are limited to residents of a specific country, so check those first. The deadlines run from 26 July to 31 August 2026. Find the one that sounds like your next year, and get your application in while the place is still there.
