Volunteer in Iceland

Help conserve our common nature and come volunteer in Iceland. People have experienced the best time of their life while helping out. And if you enjoy nature, then this is something for you.

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The largest nature conservation program in Iceland is Iceland Conservation Volunteers run by The Environment Agency of Iceland. But there are also other ones like Þórsmörk trail team run by the forestry service and Working Abroad. Additional volunteer programs include World Wide Friends and SEEDS, in both you are able to volunteer through a number of workcamps.

Here's the program description of The Environment Agency of Iceland and the work they do. Below you can read about Seeds workcamps.

Iceland Conservation Volunteers

"Each summer about 200 international volunteers take part in the Environment Agency programme. Together our volunteers now complete more than 400 weeks of conservation work around Iceland every year.

The Environment Agency hosts volunteers from all over the world and works closely with a variety of international organisations. Our work began over 35 years ago in Jökulsárgljúfur, Vatnajökull National Park, with a team of 15 volunteers from the British organisation BTCV. Today, if you visit Iceland's national parks, there is a good chance that you will walk on trails built and maintained by Environment Agency volunteers.  

Our volunteers mostly live in tents and work in some of the most beautiful parts of Iceland throughout the summer. The teams gain experience of a wide range of practical conservation skills while working closely with local staff and other international volunteers. Though our work is focused on the improvement and maintenance of hiking trails, volunteers are involved in all aspects of practical conservation management in nature protection areas including wilderness and heritage management projects."

The work we do at The Environment Agency

"The Environment Agency volunteer programme was established in 2003 to assist with the practical management of Iceland’s national parks and nature protection areas. The programme includes a wide range of practical conservation work, though the main focus is on the construction and maintenance of hiking trails. Our volunteer teams play an extremely important role in the practical management of the country’s protected areas".

Deadline for applying is in February. Find more details on the volunteer page.

SEEDS workcamps

SEEDS Iceland was founded in 2005. It is a non-governmental, non-profit volunteer organisation designed to promote intercultural understanding, environmental protection and awareness through work on environmental, social and cultural projects within Iceland. You can read more about SEEDS here.

Workcamps are the most common form of short-term volunteering, where a group of volunteers work and live together on a project which has been identified by a local community or working with that community. SEEDS workcamps generally last for 2 up to 3 weeks.

The types of the projects developed by SEEDS are mainly nature or environmental oriented, and they can be for instance building of walking paths or hiking trails, cleaning of the coastline, reforestation and erosion control works, construction or renovation of a community building, monument or community centre, ecological research, removing invasive growth (lupine flowers), etc...

There are some social, cultural, study, agricultural, archeological, maintenance projects and others depending basically on the identified need of the local community.

International workcamps bring together volunteers from different nationalities and backgrounds aiming at building up international understanding and therefore encouraging peace while working for an identified need of the local community. Groups' sizes vary between 5 and 30 participants.

Every year SEEDS organises workcamps in Iceland; in 2012 they organised about 120 projects located in every corner of Iceland; hosted over 1000 international volunteers from 50 different countries, performing over 75 000 hours of valuable volunteer work. Since 2006, SEEDS has hosted over 4000 local and international volunteers in their projects in Iceland.