Voluntourism: Good Times and Good Works

by Steve Kallaugher

Most people come home from vacation with a nice tan and a suitcase full of souvenirs. Carolyn Bentley returned from a trip she took with her 17-year-old daughter, Julia, with a new outlook on life â€" and a renewed bond with her child.

“It was life changing,” says Bentley. “It’s an amazing way to grow yourself and develop bonds with others. You become part of the country, instead of just looking at it out a window.”

With those sentences, Bentley sums up the appeal of one of the fastest growing segments of the travel industry: Voluntourism.

Euromonitor International announced at the 2006 Travel Trust Association Conference in London that Voluntourism will be one of four key growth areas in travel over the next three to four years. A 2006 Travel Forecast poll conducted by Travelocity revealed that 15% of travelers planned on taking a volunteer, educational or religious trip this year. That’s an increase over last year’s record, when more than 65,000 Americans traveled overseas for volunteer vacations, according to the International Volunteer Programs Association (IVPA)

“Voluntourism isn’t simply growing in popularity, it’s exploding,” says Delta Willis, communications manager for the Earthwatch Institute. She cites two reasons for its emergence. “First, the fantastic growth of adventure travel. Second, the increasing number of travelers who want to learn or do good deeds.”

Globe Aware’s experience confirms this: Enrollment in the company’s programs has increased 40% each year since 2001. According to Executive Director Kimberly Haley-Coleman, “Voluntourism is flourishing at such a rate it is hard to comprehend. September 11 changed everything. When that was followed by the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, it made everyone aware of how much is needed. People want to make a concrete connection, to give more than money.”

Getting More Than You Give

The voluntourist concept was born with the establishment of the Peace Corps in 1960. But devoting two years of one’s life to volunteering in a distant country isn’t possible for most people. Still, as a generation of travelers wandered further off the beaten path in their search for adventure, they saw the face of need first handâ€"and they came home determined to do something about it.

Ask any voluntourist why he or she takes precious time from work to serve others and, chances are, you’ll get the same response: “I got so much more than I gave.”

Indeed, Voluntourism is by far the best way to experience in depth the country you’re visiting. Working, eating, and living with local residents takes you out of the bubble most tourists live in, and away from well traveled tourist haunts. It breaks down the barriers that most travelers face, giving you a much deeper understanding of the culture, challenges, and pleasures of the people who live there.

A voluntour vacation may not be a day at the beach, but voluntourists come home refreshed from the changeâ€"even if some projects can be demanding work. They’re also filled with accomplishment and a sense that their spirits have been replenished as well. For time-pressed professionals and their families, who might not be able to volunteer regularly at home because of their busy schedules, a voluntourist vacation offers a means of connecting, not only with themselves, but with their desire to give back.

A Voluntour for Every Taste

Then again, a volunteer trip may well be a day at the beachâ€"literally. There are thousands of opportunities in every part the world, so you can choose a program and place that suites your passion.

Most voluntourist organizations, of course, focus their efforts on less developed parts of the world where the need is greatest- from Nepal and Vietnam to Ghana and Botswana, from Peru and Nicaragua to the Cook Islands…volunteer opportunities in the developing world tend more towards humanitarian aid and development projects, such as Globe Aware’s project assembling wheelchairs in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Getting Started

Questions to ponder while planning your trip:

1. Where in the world do I want to go?
2. What cause means the most to me-humanitarian, educational, medical, environmental, professional?
3. How much time do I want to devote?
4. What are the physical requirements of the work and living conditions?
5. Do I need to know the local language? How can I learn at least a few phrases?
6. What immunizations will I need?
7. Is the organization a recognized 501(c) (3) that accounts for how its money is spent and how much it gives to the local community?
8. Is my trip tax deductible?
9. How much experience has the organization had in the country?
10. Can I speak to previous volunteers about their experiences?
11. What background reading can I do about the country and culture?

Steve Kallaugher is a freelance writer and veteran voluntourist.

Compiled by Jonathan S. Paul and Rosecranns Baldwin

Volunteer Vacations
Just because your idea of a good vacation requires tanning on a beach doesn' t mean you can' t save the world while you are doing it. Here, six of the best volunteer trips, where you can sport a good-works glow along with a sunburn.

Land Mine Aid, Cambodia, Globe Aware Between visiting a floating village on Tonle Sap Lake and the temples of Angkor Wat you' ll help assemble simple metal-and-plastic wheelchairs. There' s no expertise required and you' ll deliver your finished chairs to some of the thousands of Cambodians devastated by land mines. One week trip, $1,200.00;877-588-4562;globeaware.org

 

 

 

GUATEMALA CITY — Instead of heading to the beaches of Mexico or the capitals of Europe this summer, thousands of Americans are going abroad to reap the rewards of compassion.

“I heard from everyone how life-changing it is, and I wanted to see for myself,” said Shelley Foran, 15, as a busload of young people from Park Cities Baptist Church bounced across the rutted road leading to a gritty Guatemalan home for abandoned and delinquent boys.

More than 50,000 American volunteers work in foreign countries every year, helping others and learning about themselves. Half go with faith-based groups; many go on their vacations. While not all the experiences are life-changing, international service can reward volunteers, the people they help and the ailing image of the United States.

Dallas mother and empty-nester Betty Sanders, 58, went to Guatemala City for three months to work with disabled orphans and elderly women abandoned by their families.

“I’m old enough to know that I wasn’t going to change the world, but I did feel like before I left there was going to be some contribution I’d made,” she said. “I’ve had a very good life. I have a wonderful family, a truly wonderful daughter and great friends. I’ve been very, very fortunate throughout my life. I just wanted to do something to give back.”

Dallas Jesuit School graduate Nathan Castillo was a bilingual teaching assistant in San Antonio when he joined the Peace Corps last year and found himself supervising primary school sanitation projects in Guatemala’s western highlands.

“The kids were sick so often they couldn’t go to school,” Mr. Castillo, 25, said. “Now it’s a whole different dynamic. There’s an ambiance of hope and happiness.”

Interest in volunteer vacations has spawned more than 60 travel agencies arranging opportunities for Americans to work in poor overseas communities. Kimberly Haley-Coleman runs Globe Aware in Dallas, sending customers to Cambodia, Peru, Cuba and nine other countries.

JIM LANDERS / Staff

Park Cities Baptist Church volunteers Brenna Burns, Laurel Folmar and Meredith Leach sing with boys at the San Gabriel y Elisa Martinez Home for Boys in Guatemala.

“You live at high altitude, sleep in uncomfortable beds, take cold showers,” Ms. Haley-Coleman said, describing the experiences of volunteers in Peru. “The locals get adobe stoves [built by the volunteers] that clear the smoke from their homes. But the volunteers get more out of it.”

They have to pay for the experience. The Park Cities young people, with their families and their church, paid about $1,800 apiece to spend a week with orphans in Guatemala. Globe Aware charges about $1,000 for room, meals and work projects, and customers have to pay airfare as well. Cross-Cultural Solutions, the group that Ms. Sanders chose for her trip to Guatemala, charges about $2,000 for a two-week package and $250 a week after that.

Such charges are tax-deductible as charitable contributions.

Ms. Foran and her church group went to see Guatemalan boys in need of some gentle attention. The government-run San Gabriel y Elisa Martinez Home for Boys houses 80 kids ages 9 to 18. Among them are mentally challenged 9-year-olds who were abandoned on the streets, a 13-year-old severely abused boy with only a couple of teeth who disarmed and shot at a police officer, and a 17-year-old loner who made a pact with the devil and used to cut himself with a knife.

The boys live in three dorms and are locked in every night at 6 p.m. A 15-foot-tall green cinderblock wall surrounds the campus.

“It is a misnomer to call it an orphanage, but it’s a better word than children’s warehouse,” said Jeff Byrd, associate pastor of Park Cities Baptist.

The Guatemalan boys surrounded the church group when they arrived, and there was much hugging and handshaking. Next came songs of faith, and the boys joined in. Three of the Park Cities girls read from Genesis. The Guatemalan boys were split into groups. Two groups studied Bible passages, while the others played kickball. Then they traded places.

“It was a lot more than I expected, a lot more kids with special needs. It’s fun, though,” said Jeff Perkins, 16, who will be a sophomore this fall at St. Mark’s School of Texas in Dallas.

Buckner International, a Dallas-based, Christian service organization with orphanages in several countries, coordinates the visits. Buckner arranges visits by more than 500 volunteers a year to both its own Guatemalan orphanages and those of the government. Many of the volunteers are from North Texas and belong to church groups that come every year. They’re concentrating at the moment on older teens who hope to make the transition out of the homes and into society.

“Some of the girls at 15 have only a second-grade education, and they won’t be able to do much unless we strengthen their life skills,” said Leslie Chace, director of Buckner International’s Latin American work. “Dallas Baptist University comes to teach some skills to these kids.”

Plunging into Guatemala’s poor neighborhoods and bleak institutions takes verve and courage. Volunteers with Cross-Cultural Solutions work at a clinic where gun-toting gang members chased a wounded rival into the emergency room. Other volunteers spend mornings with disabled children confined to wheelchairs — in some cases because their muscles atrophied when no one ever taught them to walk. The volunteers also try to cheer old women who have lost their memories.

They teach a smattering of English to disturbed children raised in a squalid neighborhood surrounding a massive landfill that has swallowed trash pickers alive and feeds flocks of vultures. “It’s not a traditional education,” said Eva Morales, director of the Casita Amarilla School for Abused Children and Women. “Our students come for the support they get from the teachers, not for the curriculum.”

Working in these places changed Ms. Sanders.

“The rewards were extraordinary. They all evolved from simple human-to-human contact and interaction,” she said. “I came back feeling like I had made small contributions to lots of different lives along the way.”

Addison financial strategist Steve Miller was invited to Guatemala in 1981, in the midst of a 35-year civil war, to see about investments. He came back determined to bring dentists and doctors to beaten-down villagers. About 120 teams have since visited under the auspices of HELPS International, performing surgeries, dental work and other care valued at more than $100 million, Mr. Miller said.

“We get a lot of young people [as volunteers] who are looking for purpose in their life,” Mr. Miller said. “We’ve all been told if we own the Lexus or the Mercedes we are going to be happy, and of course that’s not the way it works. The people who go down and get involved in a mission, it revolutionizes their life.”

Some in Washington, D.C., also want to help. President Bush has asked Congress to double the size of the Peace Corps from 7,700 to 15,000 volunteers willing to spend 27 months abroad. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., have introduced legislation that would fund 10,000 Global Service Fellowships for volunteers willing to spend six months overseas.

Republicans and Democrats alike are reaching back to the idealism of President John F. Kennedy to urge Americans to volunteer for peaceful international service.

Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, charged by Mr. Bush with improving American public diplomacy, praises volunteers for “a diplomacy of deeds rather than words.”

When the Peace Corps was formed in 1961, Mr. Kennedy hoped to send 100,000 volunteers abroad each year so that, after 10 years, a million Americans would have the experience and knowledge to form a constituency for foreign affairs.

The Peace Corps never numbered more than 20,000 volunteers in the field. But today’s efforts from faith-based organizations, individual volunteers working with travel agencies, compan ies that sponsor volunteer work among their employees and other nongovernmental groups are swelling the numbers of Americans abroad.

Many of these groups, guided by Mr. Kennedy’s vision, have joined a coalition aiming to boost the number of volunteers working overseas to 100,000 by 2010.

“What if they had built the Peace Corps up to those numbers?” asked Steve Rosenthal, founder of Cross-Cultural Solutions and head of the Building Bridges Coalition that is working to double the number of international volunteers. “By 9/11, we would have had more than 3 million people in the United States who had been volunteers abroad, many in Muslim countries, people who learned to speak Arabic. … The opportunity lost is massive.

“We’ve got a spiraling-down global image, and the anti-American sentiment out there is really important,” he said. “The international volunteer is one of the single greatest things we can do about it.”