A fun take on volunteer vacations and voluntourism at Go Girl, group of enthusiasts who take a fresh new look at travel through the unique eyes and experiences of women around the world.
Enjoy!
A modern day conundrum: You want to go on holiday, but you feel bad for just lazing around for a week and you are really just harming the environment with your carbon footprint….but you reeeeally want a holiday. What do you do?
Become a Volutourist.
It’s a surprisingly short time ago that volunteering became so wide-spread and easily available. These days you can volunteer from one week to two years, but this is a relatively new phenomenon. The most recent development for volunteering is ‘voluntourism’. This is, as the name suggests, where you combine vacation travel with volunteering at your chosen destination. Typically a two-week holiday will be split between the two ‘themes’ of the holiday. By doing this, it creates a far more personal experience to any holiday as well as giving you a different insight to a country you might not have visited before. Volunteering will inevitably introduce people on vacation to the people and culture’s rather than just the tourist spots and crowds. The idea of it is connected to ‘sustainable travel ’, defined as “lessening the toll that travel and tourism takes on the environment and local cultures.”
There are many bonuses to volunteering while on holiday, cost being a huge one. Not only do you feel like you have really earned your holiday by helping out, it also can cut the price quite significantly. Europe and North America are home to the highest amount of voluntourists, with the majority heading to Asia, Africa and South America. While anyone can benefit from voluntourism, people with a vocational skill can be especially beneficial to the people of the country they are visiting. Doctors, carpenters, construction workers, teachers to name but a few can really help to lead a team through experience and maximise the short time spent with a community.
As I mentioned earlier, volunteering will often take you away from the crowds and into the smaller villages and the ‘real’ cultural centres, which is why more people are turning to ‘voluncations’.
While there are the “pro”s to holidaying this way, there are of course some negative factors to consider. The main one is this: What happens after you leave? Is there a constant stream of people to volunteer, or is it only seasonal? You want to make sure the community is actually benefitting from your cumulative weekly volunteer groups, and not damaging their infrastructure. You also need to make sure the organization you have booked through has an in-country contact and a reasonable orientation programme.
It is also vital to remember that you don’t have to leave your country to help make a difference. In situations of national disasters, as much help as is possible is needed. Think of the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina that required such huge manpower to help clear and feed the thousands left homeless.
There are multiple companies that specialize in voluntourists. Globeaware.org and womeninprogress.org have specifically women-based volunteer help to help teach skills so these women can make a living for themselves.
Voluntourism is great for people who have not traveled alone abroad much, but who have the desire for adventure and interest in learning, as well as busy people who cant take a long time off to volunteer, but who want to help and also relax!
With winter approaching, outside volunteer projects are not as appealing as they used to be. Need ideas for projects? We’ve got you covered. Why not plan a fun trip to a warm climate that you’ve never been to? Experience volunteering for your leisure vacation; give a little while you travel and gain a lot of rewarding sense of importance. Go on a voluntour trip!
What is voluntouring? Voluntouring is a cultural emersion volunteer experience that gives you a chance to lend a helping hand while experiencing other cultures and countries. Voluntouring creates stimulating, service-oriented vacations.
Voluntourists embark on trips to serve, to learn and help others. They return with new skills, life-experiences, and understanding.
Voluntourism advantages for the individual volunteer:
- Participating in meaningful service and having a deep impact on a community
- Developing new skills
- Interacting with locals and experiencing new cultures
- Seeing and exploring places you typically wouldn’t go to as a tourist
- Creating friendships and memories
- Experiencing true satisfaction from your vacation leisure time
Want to get involved and find vacations you can serve with?
Globe Aware is a great organization that helps people search and sign-up for vacations that give more. Globe Aware coordinates, organizes and leads volunteer vacations, service vacations, working holidays and service trips to places all over the world. Get out of the cold, and try your hand in some voluntouring!
Happy Birthday to the Peace Corps, Student Volunteers from New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in Ghana, A profile of Globe Aware, and a short doc on New Orleans.
Evvy Struzynski, writing for The Gainesville Sun, profiled a group of women who traveled to Peru with Globe Aware for one week where they helped dig and build a well and teach children English.
The entire article is here, enjoy:
Water for San Pedro de Casta
Gainesville women ‘vacation’ in Andean town for a cause
Published: Saturday, October 29, 2011 at 6:01 a.m.
The ideal vacation is rarely one where water is a precious commodity. Resort destinations don’t usually advertise vacationers digging a well, educating school children and traveling on a treacherous, one-lane road in the only vehicle in the village. But for some, to sunbathe on a beach just doesn’t cut it.
Three Gainesville women recently returned from a “volunteer vacation” to San Pedro de Casta, Peru, where they worked in rustic conditions for one week helping dig and build a well and teaching children English.
But their work just scratched the surface, and on their return, the women decided to host a fundraiser for the 999 residents of the small village. “Bring Water to San Pedro de Casta” is scheduled from 7 to 10 p.m. Nov. 4 at the United Church of Gainesville.
Beth Karbe, an acupuncturist and herbalist, said she and her friends worked from dawn to dusk and stayed in a hotel with little water and no heat in the Andes Mountains.
“If you could call it a hotel, it was more like a building,” she said. “There were no showers and the toilet only flushed every three or four times.”
San Pedro de Casta, which is at an elevation of 12,000 feet, is only 50 miles east of Lima, Peru’s capital, but it takes 5 ½ hours to get there due to its remote location.
Karbe said she discovered the volunteer vacation after her first trip to Peru, where she traveled on her own to an orphanage that housed 50 young children. On her second trip in August, she traveled through Globe Aware, a U.S. based non-profit organization that arranges supervised volunteer vacations all over the world to “promote cultural awareness and sustainability,” according to its mission statement. This time she traveled with two other Gainesville women, Judy Keathley and Carol Barron.
About 30 percent of San Pedro’s residents are children, and about 80 percent of them are malnourished, according to Karbe. The lack of water means little grass for cows to feed on, which in turn causes the animals to fail to produce milk.
The absence of water creates other difficulties as well, such as sanitation.
Two members on the trip were sick with dysentery, and had to walk a mile to the well to get fresh water, said Barron, the director of construction for Alachua County Habitat for Humanity.
“It was primitive and very intense,” she said. “The people there that were 40 looked 65 because they’re so dehydrated.”
Barron said that for more than 50 percent of their trip there was no running water, and for the other half of the time the water was freezing.
Karbe said the now dry town was previously a lush plateau, but climate change and global warming has resulted in water becoming scarce.
Karbe said the women were unsatisfied with their progress by the end of the week and wanted to help more.
“As hard as we worked, we didn’t really accomplish that much.”
So to compensate, they’ve planned a fundraiser with a goal of raising $22,000 to bring an irrigation and water system to the town.
The “Bring Water to San Pedro” fundraiser includes wine and cheese, a silent auction and live performances of Peruvian music. Tickets cost $35, or for those who are unable to attend the event, a monetary donation can be sent electronically to the Bring Water to San Pedro de Casta Project at the Internet link, Globeaware.org/sponsor-volunteer-vacationer and enter “Bring Water to San Pedro” in the field.
The cost of the trip — not including airfare to Peru, which the women paid for themselves — covered food, guides, travel costs within the country, tools and their gift to the area — a water heater for the local school.
Karbe said there are no volunteers scheduled for travel to Peru for the next year, likely due to the rustic living conditions.
“Every time I turn the water on to brush my teeth, I’m grateful,” Karbe said.
Copyright © 2011 Gainesville.com