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!
Globe Aware , a nonprofit 501 (c) (3) develops short-term volunteer programs in international environments that encourage people to immerse themselves in a unique way of giving back.
Globe Aware has been featured and profiled in numerous news outlets, among them: CNN, The New York Times, Business Week, NBC Today Show, NPR (National Public Radio), Newsweek, Budget Travel, Travel&Leisure Magazine, Men’s Fitness, Toronto Globe and Mail, and many others. Globe Aware has also been the subject of several major documentaries, among them a 9 part series titled Journeys of the Heart shot in high definition chronicling a group’s developments in our Care for Cusco program. This series, produced by Concrete Productions, runs on the Dish Network’s Equator Channel. Another documentary on Globe Aware was produced by Asterisk Productions called Vacations from the Heart which aired several times coast to coast in Canada on the Global Network and in the UK. Asterisk is a world renown production company with a special interest in social and environmental issues, for more on their inspiring work, see http://www.asterisk.bc.ca/.
Every activity in which we engage is intended to accomplish one of two things: promote cultural awareness and/or promote sustainability. For us the concept of cultural awareness means to recognize and appreciate the real beauties and real challenges of a culture, but not to change it. The concept of sustainability is to help others stand on their own two feet; to teach skills rather than reliance.
Chosen projects meet several key criteria: safe, culturally interesting, genuinely beneficial to a needy community, and involve significant interaction with the host community. Globe Aware reviews volunteer feedback on a weekly basis to incorporate changes, and continually meets with the communities to monitor and review projects. Simultaneously Globe Aware organizes several optional cultural excursions throughout every program, designed to highlight local culture in a way the typical tourist can rarely experience. The organization has no political or religious affiliation.
Volunteers help to empower the host communities in creating renewable, sustainable programs. While Globe Aware’s financial assistance benefits the community economically, it is actually the involvement and collaboration between the volunteers and community that is the greatest mutual benefit. Globe Aware is not a foundation that focuses on giving out charity, but rather an organization which focuses on creating self reliance.
We feel it is of supreme importance to respect the culture and heritage in which the volunteer is working. The goal is not for volunteers to change the host communities, but rather to help them in the needs that the host community has identified as important. Those who will enjoy the experience the most are those who bring an open mind and willingness to help. The natural, healthy exchange of ideas and opinions lead s to a mutual understanding of cultures.
Unlike a regular vacation, during which you may spend a good deal of time on a tourist bus and in lines at museums, our trips allow you to learn things such as how to cook local cuisine, sing with local school children, work side by side on local community projects. Few vacations provide a way to bond so closely with local cultures in so short a time. The experience will likely change how you see the world.
Together, Globe Aware’s founders have been arranging cultural missions for 15 years in developing nations and organizing volunteer missions since 2000. The first programs were run in Peru and Costa Rica, with several in Asia to follow.
indiaLocations are chosen based on a huge number of factors, but generally are communities that are safe, genuinely needy, organized (in terms of proper NGO status), with significant cultural differences from the typical North American lifestyle, and willing to accept our involvement. Our nonprofit status was recognized in 2003.
In addition to being granted not-for-profit status by the United States Internal Revenue Service, Globe Aware is also registered with The Texas State Attorney General’s Charities Bureau which is responsible for supervising the activity of charities to ensure that their funds are properly used.
Karen Baroody and family of Boston recently returned from a week-long volunteer vacation in Peru plus an other two weeks hiking in Peru’ Lares Valley, visiting Macchu Picchu and exploring the rainforest near Puerto Maldonado.
They compiled a great photo album and travelogue of their adventures.
Enjoy:
Highlight photos
Daily journals