North Texas volunteers see personal rewards
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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.
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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.
In need of attention
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.
Focus on teens
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.”
‘Extraordinary’ rewards
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.”
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Vacationing like Brangelina
Volunteers with the group Globe Aware are digging a trench to lay a water pipe in Costa Rica.Sarah McCall / Globe Aware
As the industry grapples with how to make money without compromising the results of the volunteer work, one thing is clear: more and more private citizens are ready to roll up their sleeves and lend a hand. “I was just so sick of just donating a gift at the end of the year,” says Yates of his decision to spend a week volunteering in Costa Rica. “I worked my butt off.”Getting in touch with your inner Angelina Jolie is easier than it used to be. The so-called voluntourism industry, which sends travelers around the globe for a mix of volunteer work and sightseeing, is generating almost as much praise and criticism as the goodwill ambassador herself. Are volunteer vacations–which have become so mainstream that CheapTickets recently started letting online customers book volunteer activities along with their vacations–merely overpriced guilt trips with an impact as fleeting as the feel-good factor? Or do they offer individuals a real chance to change the world, one summer jaunt at a time?
Voluntourism trips are shorter, more entertaining versions of the kind of international work long sponsored by the likes of church missions and the Peace Corps. During trips that can be as short as a day and usually don’t last longer than three weeks, work–which is often physically intensive–is punctuated by excursions to each destination’s artistic, historical or recreational highlights. Ambassadors for Children volunteers, for example, who range from teenagers to retirees, pay $2,025 for 11 days in South Africa (airfare and lodging included), spending about a week with children infected with or orphaned by HIV/AIDS. Plus, they get a daylong safari as well as a tour of the Robben Island prison that held Nelson Mandela for 18 years. In Thailand, Globe Aware charges $1,090, not including airfare, for a week split between teaching English to impoverished schoolchildren and visiting floating markets or trekking through temple ruins. These kinds of blended experiences are key to the multifaceted cultural education that tour operators are aiming for. “You don’t walk away from the destination only with this snapshot in your mind of ‘Oh, my gosh, it’s this wretched, horrid poverty,'” says Voluntourism.org founder David Clemmons. “You see there are other sides.”One big draw for tourists is the camaraderie. “You’re meeting kindred spirits,” says Adam Yates, 25, an advertising sales executive in Los Angeles, who in June went horseback riding and hiking in a national park during his Globe Aware trip to clear trails and teach English in Costa Rica. And companies are eager to tap into the growing number of itinerant Samaritans like Yates. With leading market-research firm Euromonitor International touting this niche’s growth potential, particularly among single travelers, Voluntourism.org’s newsletter now boasts nearly 1,900 trade subscribers, up from a mere 30 in March 2005. Lonely Planet published its first volunteer-travel guidebook in June–which was good timing, considering that a recent Travelocity poll found that almost twice as many vacationers (11%) planned to volunteer this year as in 2006.As Earthwatch and other industry veterans well know, make-a-difference sojourns often attract repeat customers. “It’s lifechanging,” says Barbara Jenkel, 68, of her 2005 caravan with Relief Riders International through India’s Rajasthan Desert. On the 15-day trip, which included a night in a 257-year-old fort, the retiree from Chappaqua, N.Y., helped set up medical camps and distribute books to schools and goats to poor families. She found the experience so inspiring that she’s going back in October. Volunteer vacations also channel tourism dollars to places that aren’t usually featured in glossy travel brochures and don’t have the infrastructure to support three-star, let alone four- or five-star, hotels. For scenic places desperately in need of economic development, “this kind of tourism is an easier sell,” says Kristin Lamoureux, director of the International Institute for Tourism Studies at George Washington University.But some critics say transient volunteering is more suited to making participants feel like do-gooders than to doing good. “If you’re going to work with children in an orphanage, [how will they] understand what you’re trying to do when you don’t speak their language and you don’t stay long enough to form a relationship?” asks Tricia Barnett, director of Tourism Concern, an industry watchdog based in the U.K. “What does it mean to the child?”Sally Brown, founder of Ambassadors for Children, counters that every bit helps. “If a kid can be held for a couple of days,” she says, “you’re able to make a small difference.” Other tour operators stress that voluntourism really does have lasting impact because, despite rapid turnover among individual volunteers, trip organizers develop long-term relationships with community partners. On one of her first group trips to El Salvador in 2001, explains Nancy Rivard, who founded Airline Ambassadors to expand on relief work she began as a flight attendant for American Airlines, volunteers helped 150 families acquire land and rebuild homes devastated by earthquakes. They were scheduled to open a vocational-training center near those homes during the last week of July and stock it with sewing machines carried to hilly El Salvador in volunteers’ suitcases. “We’re creating a way to empower local people,” Rivard says.Sarah McCall, a Peace Corps veteran who since March has led six Globe Aware trips in Costa Rica and Peru, recalls how her groups constructed mud-and-brick stoves for 24 Peruvian families in San Pedro de Casta to save fuel and keep harmful smoke out of adobe homes. The project was the brainchild of municipal officials. “We never go in and say that we had this idea, and we want to do this,” McCall explains. Instead, she and other leaders check in with the locals to see what the community needs, then dispatch volunteers to do the legwork. Voluntourism supporters are quick to point out indirect benefits too. “Americans don’t have the best reputation in the world right now,” says Doug Cutchins, director of social commitment at Grinnell College and co-author of Volunteer Vacations: Short-Term Adventures That Will Benefit You and Others. “For Americans to get out and represent a different side of America … I think that has a tremendously positive benefit.”
But critics like Barnett warn that ill-prepared or poorly directed volunteers can produce more harm than good. Voluntourists have gone to her complaining about groups that repeated projects already finished by earlier crews or did work considered at odds with the local people’s desires. With new companies entering a sector that is still largely unregulated, tour operators sometimes take advantage of even the best-intentioned volunteers, Barnett explains. “It’s a new form of colonialism, really,” she says. “The market is geared toward profit rather than the needs of the communities.” Tourism Concern is developing a code of ethical conduct for the international volunteering sector and is gathering information from volunteers, tour companies and the communities they work in. Barnett plans to begin auditing U.K. firms but knows of no such initiatives in the U.S.
As the industry grapples with how to make money without compromising the results of the volunteer work, one thing is clear: more and more private citizens are ready to roll up their sleeves and lend a hand. “I was just so sick of just donating a gift at the end of the year,” says Yates of his decision to spend a week volunteering in Costa Rica. “I worked my butt off.”
Helpful Holidays
Helpful Holidays
With summer in full swing, leisure travel is high on the to-do list, but some vacationers are doing good while they get away.
by Glenn R. Swift | July 2007
In the 1990s, organizations like Earthwatch offering “volunteer vacations” added a new dimension to the charity-based travel that began in the 1960s with organizations like the Peace Corps. A number of establishments took notice and began offering their own tailored itineraries combining travel with volunteer service. But things changed after September 11.
“Following the terrorist attacks of September 2001, there was a realization upon the part of many Americans that we were not isolated from the rest of the world. As a result, a whole new generation of ‘hands-on helpers’ quickly emerged,” says Kimberly Haley-Coleman, executive committee member of the International Volunteer Programs Association (IVPA), an alliance of non-profit, non-governmental organizations involved in international volunteer and internship exchanges based in North Bergen, New Jersey. She also acknowledged that interest in volunteer vacationing increased markedly following the devastating tsunami in December of 2004 and the catastrophic Kashmir earthquake ten months later, adding, “This type of activity reflects not only a different outlook toward the world, but a changing attitude about travel.”Says Jeanne Brown, a Long Beach resident who has participated in four trips with Global Volunteers, a not-for-profit organization based in St. Paul, “It’s time to give back. We all have too much.” Brown has worked on the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana, and also traveled to Minnesota and to Beards Fork, West Virginia, deep in Appalachia, where she and others on her trip helped a coal-mining community build and repair homes.
“It’s a test of yourself—to see who you can get along with, and what really bothers you, and what’s really important,” Brown says.
Trip Roster
“Traveling for good” is most definitely a growing trend. According to the Travel Industry Association of America, more than 55 million Americans have traveled to other countries on vacations that included some form of volunteering. The growing desire to “give back” is also reflected in a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics study, which reported that nearly 30 percent of those 16 and older participated in some kind of community service project last year.
So what exactly is a volunteer vacation? There is no simple definition. Some volunteers work in remote mountain villages after traveling for miles by horseback, while others teach local children how to read and write English in the morning, before retiring to five-star oceanfront hotels on a tranquil Caribbean island. Despite this wide variation in activities, the goal is the same. “This type of travel is designed for people who want to become directly involved in the communities they visit so they can make a positive impact, not just act as observers,” Haley-Coleman says.
“I’ve always had this desire to be a foreign missionary,” says Nancy Murphy of West Hempstead. “I’ve always had this interest in traveling to far-off places. When you’re just a tourist you’re just looking but when you do this sort of thing, you become immersed in the community for a while, and it becomes like being part of the local scene. It’s very sustaining,” she says. “I guess I was looking for a little adventure,” Jeanne Brown laughs as she describes her experiences painting the reservation’s juvenile detention center and a “never-ending fence.” Brown’s work in Appalachia was more than adventurous; it was labor-intensive and included home repair, planting, spackling and painting, along with some daycare there and interaction with younger kids.
The U.S. government has also teamed with a number of organizations worldwide to expand opportunities for Americans to serve overseas. The campaign is led by Colin Powell and is part of an effort originated by the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank in Washington D.C., to develop a new global approach to enhance security and promote national interests, while improving our standing in the world. “The idea is to promote ‘soft power’ instead of ‘hard power’ throughout the world,” says Haley-Coleman, who also serves as executive director of Globe Aware, a Dallas-based non-profit organization currently offering volunteer vacations in a number of underdeveloped locales.
A study released in April of last year by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), a public policy research arm of the United States Congress, vividly illustrates the exorbitant cost of having to rely upon military muscle alone to protect U.S. national interests. The study calculated that it costs an average of $361,000 annually to put a soldier, Marine, airman or sailor in Iraq or in the region. Needless to say, the soft-power approach of fostering goodwill by sending volunteer travelers abroad is significantly less expensive.
Here are some of the major players working hard to help foster that goodwill:
So if you’re looking for a way to help make the world a better place the next time you travel, maybe an “adventure in service” is just what you’re looking for.
Among the major players working hard to help foster that goodwill:
Globe Aware
This group offers volunteer vacations in Peru, Costa Rica, Thailand, Cuba, Nepal, Brazil, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. One-week trips focus upon cultural awareness and sustainability, and are often compared to a “mini Peace Corps.” Globe Aware is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity and all program costs, including the cost of airfare, are tax-deductible. No special skills or ability to speak a foreign language are needed. “Our trips are primarily designed for working professionals who can’t afford to take three weeks or more off at one time,” says Haley-Coleman. Costs vary depending upon the country visited and range from just over $1,000 to around $1,400 (exclusive of airfare).
Could You Be a Volunteer Vacationer?
The Answers to These Questions Will Help You Decide
If you’re wondering whether or not you’re a good candidate, most operators will tell you that there are so many options available that’s it’s more a question of finding the right program, one tailored to your skills and interests. Here are some questions you should ask yourself:
- What kind of conditions am I willing to live in?
- How long am I willing to give?
- What skills do I have to offer?
- How much can I afford?
Remember, the greatest need isn’t always the safest. There are war-torn countries in Africa desperate for help, but they’re not necessarily open to outsiders. Take the time to evaluate all your options. Here are some basic questions that you need to ask your tour operator when choosing which itinerary is best for you.
- Are the host organizations faith-based or secular?
- What is the level of interaction that you will have with local residents?
- How much guidance and supervision will I receive?
- What type of physical labor/strenuous activity is involved?
- Is there a backup plan in case of an emergency?
(If you’re staying in a secluded mountain village in the Andes, you need to know what happens if you break your leg.) - What exactly is included in the price?
- Do you offer travel insurance?
- How much free time will there be and what types of sightseeing options are there?
- What types of immunizations are required?
- What is the climate?
- How safe is the locale?
- What percentage of the trip is tax- deductible?
CBS Radio Interview
Press Releases and News
Michael Dixon and Louis Thiele
KTAR 92.3 FM syndicated across CBS radio stations across USA
A very special kind of vacation is gaining in popularity as more people look for ways to give back to society. VOLUNTOURISM is a way to spend time help others while visiting another culture and making new “Life Friends”. Kimberly Haley Coleman – Founder and Executive Director of –Globe Aware Adventures in Service. She explains how this program works around the world including the fact that much of your vacation expense will be tax deductible.
This Radio Interview may be posted online at a later stage.
A Trip to Remember: Volunteer Vacations offer more than rest and relaxation
Ramping Up
Honeymoons with Heart
Press Releases and News
By Carla McLeod
This article begins with a discussion of the personal experiences of five couples who spent their honeymoons making a difference, and closes by listing who to contact, including the advice to “consider working with a reputable nonprofit . . . such as Globe Aware . . . which has years of experience
40 Trips To Change Your World
By Jennifer Bain
Whether it’s building houses in Jordan or meeting the feathered residents of Antarctica’s Penguin Island, these dream journeys are guaranteed to make a difference in your life, and the lives of those you help along the way.
Sustainable travel. Ecotourism. Fund-raising expeditions. Educational tours. Voluntourism.
The lexicon of travel is expanding as quickly as the world is shrinking. For many, it is no longer enough to return home with a Turkish carpet or tales of an exquisite atoll. Travelers still want to explore Chile or the Loire in style, but they also want a deeper experience, and one that doesn’t leave a footprint, carbon or otherwise. In the post-9/11 world, travelers want to make transformations of their own.
A range of organizations are answering that need, including luxury outfitters like Butterfield & Robinson, environmental watchdogs such as the Sierra Club, and new groups like Cross-Cultural Solutions (CCS), which places volunteers in 12 countries. As with other vacation packages, there is staff to take care of the detailsâ€"arranging airport transfers, setting up accommodations (a converted riad, a Maori lodge, a stateroom on an Amazon sloop), and coordinating work assignments.
Whatever these trips might cost, all of them give backâ€"to the travelers themselves as well as to the communities they visit. Debby and Tom Glassanos of Pleasanton, California, spent three weeks in Morocco with CCS where Tom, a Silicon Valley executive, worked with local women to increase their computer skills. Now, long after the couple’s return to the United States, he continues to share his expertise with his old students in a stream of e-mail exchanges. And interior designer Joe Naham and his partner, Jeffrey Fields, carried away from their trip to Costa Rica a lasting impression of the camaraderie that can develop between “voluntour” travelers of disparate backgrounds. Their group, including a financier, a CNN anchor, and a coffeehouse owner, discovered shared interests along with the new bond of their shared experience abroad.
Volunteers also describe the rewards of contributing beyond writing a check, although the dollars these programs provide to communities and causes are significant and often crucial. The itineraries that follow have the potential to make a difference in both your world, and the world.
Teach basic English and computer classes to children living in the remote mountain village of San Pedro de Casta, north of Lima. Those with carpentry skills can help with community housing repairs and build simple Lorena stoves. When the workday ends, hike or horseback ride to the majestic stone sculptures on the Markawasi Plateau.
Trip Tip: Take an Andean cooking lesson while you’re there. Pachamanca, a traditional dish of meat wrapped in banana leaves and cooked in a hot stone oven, is a must-try.
Luxury Level: Volunteers stay at the central village lodge with basic amenities. Those who tend to get the shivers should bring an extra blanket or two.
Key Voluntourism: Globe Aware; 877/588-4562; globeaware.org; one-week tours from $1,090 per person.
Giving back 7 Surprising Reasons to Volunteer
There are lots of things we want to do and should do, yet never seem to find the time to actually do. Volunteering shouldn’t be one of those things. Why? Besides providing much-needed help to people or organizations that need it most, volunteering can open the door to new business opportunities, friends, skills, and appreciation for the everyday things you take for granted. Most of all, it can make you happy.
“There’s no better feeling than knowing you had a hand in improving someone’s life,†says Brae Hanson, managing broker of Starck, REALTORS®, in Barrington, Ill., and an avid volunteer.
So before you say you don’t have the time or energy to take on a volunteering task, consider these seven reasons why you should start giving back now.
Reason #1: It Will Boost Your Visibility (for Free)
Volunteer to benefit your business? That doesn’t sound very altruistic. And while that probably shouldn’t be the primary reason to volunteer, it’s certainly a nice perk.
“Real estate professionals always want to be doing more selling and prospecting, but many don’t realize they can do both of those things while giving back to the community,†says Robert Rosenthal, a spokesperson for VolunteerMatch, a San Francisco nonprofit that matches volunteers with charitable groups.
Cappy MacPherson, a salesperson with Watson Realty Corp, Hidden Hills, Jacksonville, Fla., says volunteering is one of her best â€" and lowest cost â€" marketing tools. Instead of spending money to get her name out in the community, she gains exposure by volunteering with local charities, including HabiJax, the Jacksonville Habitat for Humanity branch.
At ever volunteer job, she wears T-shirts promoting previous volunteer events, along with a name tag that identifies her real estate business.
The strategy acts as a conversation starter and gets her name circulating in the community. Since 2006 it’s landed her four buyers and generated leads for two potential listings. “These are six prospects I would never have had,†she says. “It’s a wonderful way to market without breaking the bank.â€Â
Reason #2: You’ll Sharpen Your Business Skills
With so many volunteer opportunities out there, you can select the ones that will help you improve certain business skills.
For example, Hanson, of Barrington, Ill., has perfected her marketing skills through 20-plus years of fundraising and promoting charities. Volunteering also has forced her to refine her time-management skills and has given her more financial know-how.
“I’ve never been fond of reading financial statements, but I’ve gotten better at budgeting and understanding profit and loss statements just from reviewing them for charities,†she says.
MacPherson, meanwhile, has improved her knowledge of home-improvement tasks â€" knowledge that comes in very handy when working with buyers and sellers. Through her Habitat for Humanity work, she’s learned the finer points of painting, roofing, and caulking, as well as an understanding of how buildings come together properly.
“I’m now able to see subtle problems in houses and know when to suggest further inspections,†she says.
Reason #3: It Doesn’t Require a Huge Time Commitment
If you read the stories of this year’s five Good Neighbor Award winners, you’ll be taken aback by how much time they devote to their causes. For a rookie volunteer, it can be downright intimidating. But such a large time commitment isn’t necessary.
Start small by volunteering for a one-time event or scheduling just a couple hours per week. Check out volunteer opportunities in your ZIP code by searching on Web sites such as VolunteerMatch. Each listing includes the estimated time contribution required, so you can be choosey about which jobs you take on.
Another option: Take a volunteer “vacation†to a developing nation or to a city in the United States to build a new school, restore the environment, or help on a medical mission. You can learn more about volunteer vacations at Web sites such as GlobeAware or CharityGuide.org.
Or, volunteer from the comfort of your own home. Instead of watching an hour of TV at night, log in an hour of virtual help to an organization of your choice. Learn about virtual volunteer opportunities at ServiceLeader.org.
Once you find a volunteer job that you really enjoy, making time for it will come naturally, Hanson says. “When something is important to you, you find the drive to get it done.â€Â
Reason #4: Make Meaningful Community Connections
Weekly Rotary Club meetings put Lisa L. Bass, president and broker of California Commercial Corp. in Brentwood, Calif., and president of her local Rotary Club, in touch with local businesspeople and city council representatives.
Through in-person conversations and club projects, she built meaningful relationships in her community that could never have been made via e-mail or phone. Some recent Rotary activities have included donating dictionaries to local school kids and providing wheelchairs to people in Mexico.
When fellow Rotary Club members have commercial real estate needs, Bass is their go-to person. But she says the biggest benefit of volunteering is the pick-me-up she gets from doing good things. “The meetings give me purpose that I look forward to, especially when I’ve had a difficult week,†says Bass.
In today’s high-tech age, “it’s hard to feel connected on a deeply meaningful level,†says Rosenthal, from VolunteerMatch. “Volunteering is an opportunity to connect with others who share a similar cause.â€Â
Reason #5: It’s Time to Expand Your Professional Horizons
In the early 1990s, Saul Klein, E-Pro®, GRI, owned a real estate brokerage, property management firm, and a financial-planning business, yet he was becoming increasingly interested in finding a new avenue for his real estate skills.
At the same time, through his volunteer work with the San Diego Association of REALTORS®, including a post as president of the group, he uncovered a zeal for emerging real estate technologies. He used his newfound passion as a launching pad for the next chapter of his career.
Klein now educates other real estate professionals on how to use technology, does speaking engagements around the country, has written real estate courses and books on technology, and is a founder of InternetCrusade, a San Diego company that manages the e-Pro® designation for the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.
“Volunteering really has paid me back,†Klein says. “I love being able to take a message to people that I believe is valuable and that will make differences in their lives. It’s very rewarding when people tell me my advice is valuable.â€Â
Volunteering can do the same for you; perhaps it will open the door to a new business niche or help you uncover a new path for your real estate career. You also can use volunteer opportunities to learn about a business specialty. For example, if you specialize in waterfront properties and you want to learn more about the issues that local residents face, volunteer with a beach clean-up organization. Or, if your aim is to develop a niche selling green property, consider volunteering at an environmental awareness group. There, you can learn more about the movement and meet prospects interested in environmentally sound homes.
Reason #6: You’ll Appreciate What You Have
Life seems tough when you don’t have an iPhone or you can’t afford to hit Starbucks every morning. But when you see firsthand how families live without heat, electricity, or indoor plumbing, you might feel a little better about your present situation.
Sean Waters, a salesperson with Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty Boston, Mass., says he’s witnessed such living conditions for the first time during a “magical and enriching†volunteer vacation to Cuzco, Peru withGlobe Aware, earlier this year. There, he rehabbed an orphanage and taught children English and baseball.
Despite lacking many comforts that Americans take for granted, Waters was amazed to see that Peruvians live happy lives with an intense love for and focus on family and friends. That realization sparked changes in Waters’ life when he returned home. He now makes more of an effort to spend quality time with his loved ones. “We work so hard, yet we’re lacking so much in terms of having time for each other,†says Waters.
The trip also served as a business motivator. Waters recognized that he needs to ramp up production to finance more service trips (next up is India) and to visit out-of-state relatives.
The other business benefit: Waters says the experience broadened his world view and will help him better connect with some of his sophisticated, well-traveled clients. At the very least, travel talk beats the weather as a topic for chit-chat.
Reason #7: You’ll Feel So Good About It
A growing body of research links volunteering with better health. One study, The Health Benefits of Volunteering: A Review of Recent Research, by the Corporation for National and Community Service, says volunteering improves longevity, lowers depression rates, and reduces the rates of heart disease.
Indeed, many volunteers cite a phenomenon commonly called, “helper’s high,†in which they gain feelings of exhilaration and energy from volunteering. MacPherson says she likens the feeling she gets from volunteering to the endorphin rush after a workout.
Hanson agrees. She says her post-volunteering highs frequently last five days and translate into greater enthusiasm for her work and life in general.
“Happier people live longer, and happier people are going to sell more real estate than grumpy ones,†MacPherson says.
The research evidence pleases, but doesn’t surprise, Rosenthal. “You don’t need scientific validation for people to know that the world needs them,†he says.
