Alright experience but not worth the money. I spent four weeks on the Advanced Bali Mental Health Placement. I met some lovely volunteers, amazing service users and supportive coordinators. However I really struggled with the transparency of SLV in the way they spend our fees. Firstly you have to pay a £250 deposit to secure your place after you apply. You have a week to pay it once you commit. They call/email you almost everyday and warn that you will lose your place if you don’t. Please don’t just pay it due to the pressure. If you miss the deadline you can re-apply and you will probably get a place again as long as there’s still space. Also you would think the deposit contributes towards your £1400 fees like a normal deposit would but it’s doesn’t, it’s just an extra expense. You have to pay the full £1400 after that for the fees. Also before securing a specific placement date with the deposit I asked for the other dates they had available and they were very reluctant to give any information on dates over the phone. I had to ask multiple times. This is so backwards to me because we are paying for a service and should be given all the information when asked. Although we are volunteering for this wonderful cause, we are also putting our own lives on hold from our jobs and university therefore information should be as forthcoming as possible. Furthermore we have to pay for our own flights, visa, new wardrobe, lunch every day, weekend transport/hotels/food etc as we are not allowed in the accommodation over the weekends. I’ve been told only 15% of fees are contributed to the well-being and mental health of Balinese people. Furthermore the projects we are taken on are paid for by us, it’s not “volunteering”. We are paying for the experience. Apparently most volunteering companies do this which I was shocked by but maybe that’s just the way it is. Onto the accommodation. In the information pack given to us in the months before the placement we are told we will be staying with a traditional Balinese family; that they are welcoming us into their home with open arms and doing this amazing thing for us. Then the first day we enter the village we see a big placard with each of the homestays names and phone numbers on in case you want to ‘book a room’. These homestays are hotels to the general public too and anyone can book a room there... even on booking.com. I have looked online and the rooms are around £6 a night. We only spend 15 days in the homestay therefore only £90 of our fees go to accommodation on the placement (I haven’t included the hotel we stayed at during the first week for training and the jungle weekend). Again SLV is not forthcoming with the information they have given us, making it out that we are this big burden to the family and that we should be eternally grateful, giving them gifts when we arrive etc. Yet again we are paying for a service. I have to be honest about the quality of accommodation too. The rooms are nice inside and cleaned once a week. But you are given one fan between four people, which is hard in 30 degree heat. Furthermore there are real issues with the food. The breakfast is a stale piece of toast that has been sat out for a while, fruit, and either a cold fried egg or cold pancake. Which is supposed to sustain us from 7am until 1pm during projects and project planning. Again this is what we have paid for in our fees. Please note that apparently not all homestays are like this. Some other volunteers were given as much they they liked, while others were the same as mine. I even spoke to the SLV staff about this and they said that was unacceptable. They told me they would sort this, and when I came back from the weekend it will have changed. This was in the first week in the homestay, by the final week nothing had changed. On the other hand dinner was much better with portion sizes, and tastes great too. Also please note that the home stay families are the nicest people you will meet. They are so lovely and do look after you like their own, however SLV made it out to be that us staying was a huge burden and that we should be super grateful. When in fact it’s a hotel we are paying for. It’s the exaggeration of facts that is the problem. Another problem with this placement is the project planning. We are given every Monday and Wednesday afternoon to project plan for the week ahead. This is not nearly enough time. In the information provided by SLV before signing up you are told you have evenings and weekends off to relax. This is not true. On my placement there were volunteers working until 11pm trying to sort out activities for the upcoming projects. Others had been walking around the village in pitch black at 9pm to get to the printing shop so they have enough resources for their projects. I wouldn’t even be allowed to walk twenty minutes in the dark at home, let alone in a foreign county when guard dogs are barking at you while you pass them in the street. My parents weren’t happy about this. I bought this up to SLV staff and they said they did say that they didn’t want anyone walking around at night for projects or working so hard to the point we are stressed out. But this information wasn’t passed on to the whole group, and volunteers still felt obligated to work this hard because projects fell completely on our shoulders. If we didn’t pull through then the service users would have nothing do to and it would make us and SLV look bad. This was a lot of pressure. The staff were very supportive in regards to these points and always offered to help prepare for projects or offer ideas which was good and really appreciated. Projects ranged from teaching English to staff at a local medical hospital, to practicing yoga with the geriatric village community, to conducting cognitive activities to those in the only psychiatric hospital in Bali. Each project gave valuable experience if you are looking for a career in psychology, but also in a general sense. It abled me to become more confident and allowed me to develop skills working with a wide range of people from all different backgrounds (other volunteers). It must also be mentioned, however, that some volunteers felt they didn’t have a great variety of projects given to them in their weekly timetable. For example they would have two different English teaching sessions, with service users that were either from the local school or staff and the medical hospital. And then a yoga session with the geriatric village community Although these projects are valuable to these service users it doesn’t have much to do with mental health (although yoga can promote positive mental health). But it meant that half these volunteers week wasn’t what they hoped it would be, or what they expected from the SLV mental health placement. This didn’t happen to me directly, but it was something that was mentioned on my placement that some volunteers were unhappy with. Finally this is a FOR PROFIT TOURIST COMPANY. Not a charity. For these reasons I gave the placement and application process through SLV one star.