Are there ways of volunteering abroad that are actually effective? I want to travel and volunteer for personal reasons, but it’s still important to me that the work I do is helpful (at least not harmful!). It would probably be more effective to stay home and volunteer remotely, but it would be of great personal value to me to experience the country in person.
Would you be interested in supporting EA groups abroad to recruit local talent to work on impactful causes? I'm not sure what country you're from or what languages you're fluent in. But even if you only know English, it seems like you could potentially help with EA Philippines, EA India, EA University of Cape Town, EA Nigeria, or EA groups in the UK, US, and Australia. You can browse groups and get in contact with them through the EA Forum.
To get a sense of why this could be valuable, see "Building effective altruism - 80,000 Hours" and "A huge opportunity for impact: movement building at top universities" (especially relevant to groups like EA Philippines which are focused on supporting university groups).
I'm not sure what your background is, but I agree that getting in touch with local EA groups is a great place to start. We (University of Cape Town) would certainly be happy to have somebody offer help