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How to Change the World: Globe Aware featured in WSJ

21 December 2010
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Kelly Greene, a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal in New York, considered how individuals can change the world on a limited budget. She notes that one of the the best methods was through a volunteer vacation with Globe Aware. Read the Dec. 20, 2010 article in its entirety:

How to Change the World…

…Whatever the size of your wallet. These ideas, with budgets from $20 to $20,000, can help better the lives of others' and your own.

By KELLY GREENE

Got any plans for next week? Perhaps you could begin changing the world.

Yes, household budgets remain tight. But you don’t have to be a lottery winner to make a difference in your community or halfway around the globe. People who are winding down first or primary careers and looking for new directions are discovering that for the cost of a weekend getaway, they can help change the world. Or start to.

Bob and Jo Link, for instance, retirees in Portland, Ore., serve on a nonprofit board that awards scholarships in Belize. Mr. Link, age 69, also troubleshoots computer problems for African refugees. This after the couple spent two years in the Peace Corps, helped with Hurricane Katrina cleanup, assembled computers for schools in Guatemala and worked with deaf orphans in Peru.

The cost to them? A few plane tickets, some scholarship donations and sweat equity.

“When you do this kind of stuff, you get back more than you really expect,” Mr. Link says. “A lot of people wouldn’t, or couldn’t, put two years into the Peace Corps, but they could afford to spend a week in Peru.”

We decided to look for ways that people, whatever the size of their savings, can change the lives of others' and their own. So go ahead: Pick one of the following budgets and write it on your calendar: “CTW.”

$100 and Under

SERVICE PROGRAMS: In some cases, you actually can get paid while you’re helping to make a difference.

With the help of DonorsChoose, students in a school in New Haven, Conn., received new musical instruments to form a school band.

The Links, for instance, earned $300 apiece each month in the Peace Corps, where about 7% of the organization’s volunteers last year were age 50-plus. Closer to home, AmeriCorps, one of the largest national-service programs, is aiming for 10% of its 85,000 participants to be at least 55 years old' up from 4% in fiscal 2009.

AmeriCorps volunteers receive federal stipends averaging $11,800 for a commitment of 10 months to a year. They can also receive education grants of as much as $5,350, which, starting this year, they can transfer to their grandchildren, says Patrick Corvington, chief executive of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the agency that runs AmeriCorps. Work varies from part-time service in a volunteer’s own community to full-time opportunities across the country. Options include helping to rebuild communities on the Gulf Coast and installing solar-electric systems in low-income California neighborhoods.

BECOME A LENDER: For what you spend today on lunch, “microfinance” allows you to play a big role in jump-starting modest entrepreneurial undertakings around the world' whether it’s boosting inventory at a produce stand in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, or providing additional nets to fishermen in Cambodia.

Farmers in Peru, with assistance from Heifer International, are able to afford cattle to help plow and seed their fields.

If you’re interested in lending to an individual entrepreneur overseas, Kiva.org lets you choose the borrower on its website. If the loans are paid back, you can fund another loan, donate the proceeds to Kiva or get your money back. DonorsChoose.org, where you can pick a classroom project to fund with as little as $1, sifts proposals by cost, school poverty level and subject. Requests might include $140 for dry-erase markers or $2,000 for camcorders and laptops for budding filmmakers.

Heifer International, through which $20 buys a flock of chickens or $5,000 delivers an “ark” of animals to a family or village in Asia or Africa, finds that many people age 50-plus seek out the cause around holidays. Then, as they learn more about it, many wind up joining study tours to the communities raising the animals, coordinating fund-raising efforts in the U.S., or working at several Heifer learning centers, says Steve Stirling, executive vice president for marketing in Little Rock, Ark.

$300 to $4,000

GIVING CIRCLES: One way to get more bang for your charity buck is to join a so-called giving circle, a group with a common interest that pools its resources and collectively decides where to put its combined money to work.

In the 1960s, Sally Bookman studied social anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Now she leads a Dining for Women chapter with two dozen women, many of them retirees, attending monthly dinners in Santa Cruz, Calif. At each meeting, they eat a potluck dinner and chip in about $30 each to support women entrepreneurs in developing countries.

The national Dining for Women group, based in Greenville, S.C., picks the cause du jour and sends educational materials to local chapters. But the members’ life experience gives the gatherings their flavor, says Ms. Bookman, 67. “At one meeting we were learning about women in a remote village in the jungle in Peru, and one of our members had been to that village for three days with her husband,” she says.

If you join a giving circle, you can choose simply to write checks, or take a more active role researching where the circle’s money might have the most impact.

“VOLUNTOURISM”: Trips on which people do volunteer work, typically overseas, have exploded in number and type in recent years.

How do you choose among the estimated 10,000 trips out there? Ask how the work you do will fit into the overall scope of the on-the-ground project, says Alexia Nestora, founder of Voluntourism Gal, an industry blog. If you’re working with children, ask how what you do will build on what the previous volunteer did. (You don’t want to be the 20th volunteer to teach them to sing “Itsy Bitsy Spider” in English, for example.) Also make sure the operator provides emergency medical insurance and has an employee living in the country who speaks English in case of political upheaval or a natural disaster.

Mark Sanger, a 58-year-old retired transportation engineer in La Grande, Ore., has taken several weeklong trips with Globe Aware, a Dallas nonprofit that coordinates volunteer travel work. In a tiny Costa Rican village, his crew slept in A-frame cabins and helped villagers build housing in hopes of drawing national-park tourists and generating additional income. He also spent time eating meals in local families’ homes, where you could “see how they interact with their kids, what pictures they have on their walls.” He enjoyed his next trip even more, teaching English to children in Cambodia.

“It was like a whole other world opened up to me,” he says. “There’s a sense of adventure…without your life in danger every day. It’s a nice balance of doing something interesting, exciting, different and incredibly rewarding.”

Your room, board and airfare in some cases are tax-deductible if you travel with a nonprofit. Vincent Mirrione, 69, of Newman, Calif., has taken seven trips with Cross-Cultural Solutions, a nonprofit operator in New Rochelle, N.Y., for six to eight weeks at a time. His work at a Guatemala soup kitchen and orphanage, Russian senior centers and a project that Mother Teresa started in India have wound up costing about $300 a week after the tax break, he says.

BACK TO SCHOOL: Retraining, as a classroom teacher, for instance, can jump-start a second career as well as benefit others.

“Green,” of course, is hot. Clover Park Technical College, Lakewood, Wash., offers a number of environmental-sustainability programs, which include cla ssroom study and hands-on field work. The programs last 12 weeks to two years, depending on an individual’s goals.

Pam Kirchhofer, 49, enrolled there in a 15-month sustainable-building program after she was laid off as a personal-finance counselor. The attraction: “You’re helping people save money by conserving energy and resources, and…you’re being a good steward of the Earth,” she says. The tough part: “I haven’t had a math class in 28 years, and we just did an energy audit of this woman’s house using algebraic equations.”

$5,000 to $10,000

JOIN A BOARD: A director on a board? You? Why not?

“Almost half of all nonprofit board seats never get filled. Nonprofits would love to have more qualified candidates, but they don’t know how to tap into really talented people in the community,” says David Simms, a partner with Bridgespan Group in Boston, which advises nonprofits. (One new resource for a board-seat search: The websites where nonprofits place want-ads for volunteers also are starting to post vacant board seats.)

Bonnie R. Harrison, 61, a retired Corning Inc. executive, became involved with Southern Tier Hospice in Corning, N.Y., after serving as her father’s caregiver while he was also receiving hospice services. To join the board, Ms. Harrison asked her father’s hospice nurse to write a recommendation. Shortly after Ms. Harrison retired last year, the hospice board’s chairwoman stepped down, and Ms. Harrison was asked to take her place.

“The challenge of working along with the board, the staff and different organizations has been a great help in making the transition away from a high-pressured job,” she says.

BECOME A BENEFACTOR: So, you like the idea of having a charitable vehicle to help others, but you aren’t Bill Gates. Consider a donor-advised fund, a good tool for people who want to give away amounts starting at about $5,000 a year.

Such funds can be set up through big financial-service companies, like Fidelity Investments, as well as university, religious and community foundations. The fund will invest your assets and make grants based on your guidance. Typically, you become eligible for an immediate tax deduction.

“It might be a little more than you can handle doing on your own, yet you don’t want to set up the superstructure of a foundation,” says John Gomperts, the recently named director of AmeriCorps. “You might go to a community foundation and say, ‘I want to give this money away, and I care about the humane care of animals, so please give me some suggestions and administer this for me.’ “

$20,000 and Up

START A NONPROFIT: You have a cause you’re passionate about, and nobody seems to be tackling it. So you dream of starting a nonprofit to that end. Expect to spend at least $10,000 to $20,000 on start-up costs, including the legal expenses involved in creating an organization and asking the government to grant you a tax exemption, called 501(c)3 status.

First question: Are you sure there are no similar efforts? The U.S. has about 1.5 million nonprofits, and “many of them are doing phenomenal work,” says Mr. Simms in Boston.

If your idea truly is unique, try to find a community foundation to “incubate your effort so that you can worry about the service you want to provide” instead of setting up the business end, says Christopher Stone, faculty director of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

Elaine Santore is the 59-year-old co-founder of Umbrella of the Capital District, a Schenectady, N.Y., organization that helps older adults, in part by matching them with retirees-turned-handymen. She and her partner jump-started the program before receiving their not-for-profit status. “I would clean houses if need be, and he would mow yards,” she says. “It’s good to be hands-on at first so you know what it’s like.”

ENDOW A SCHOLARSHIP: What if you win the lottery, or your stock options go through the roof? The sky’s the limit: You could fund scientists trying to cure cancer, build a new stage for your local symphony, or even start your own university and town, as did Domino’s Pizza founder and philanthropist Tom Monaghan.

One of the more popular big-ticket items, though, is creating your own college scholarship. With $1 million, you could set up an endowment that should last for decades, says Becky Sharpe, president of International Scholarship & Tuition Services Inc., Nashville, Tenn., which administers privately and publicly funded scholarships.

Joe Scarlett, retired chairman and chief executive of Tractor Supply Co., Brentwood, Tenn., started a family foundation in 2005 with $2.5 million to provide college scholarships to business students from middle Tennessee, and he hired Ms. Sharpe’s company to run the award program.

“We generate way too few business leaders in our country, so we wanted to focus our scholarship money on business,” says Mr. Scarlett, 67. The foundation now has a balance of approximately $24 million, thanks to additional gifts from the Scarletts and growth in its value, and is expanding its efforts, supporting students in high schools and even preschools.

 

 

How to Choose the Best Volunteering Option: Globe Aware featured in U.S.News & World Report

27 October 2010
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Writer Christopher J. Gearon dug deep, examining the options and motivations behind the volunteer vacation phenomenon while noting that even in times of financial uncertainty, people are still seeking out unique, rewarding vacation opportunities around the world. Writing in U.S.News & World Report, Mr. Gearson features Globe Aware and its unique, one-week volunteer program:

If you have less vacation time, you might try Globe Aware, which hosts one-week volunteer programs around the world. About 15 percent of the group’s roughly 4,500 vacationers are families. “We’re one of the few nonprofits that allow” them, says spokesperson Catherine McMillan. Families with kids as young as 6 months travel to such places as Peru, Costa Rica, and Ghana for roughly $1,250 a person, plus airfare. Volunteers build recycling areas, clear paths in the rain forest, make cheese, milk cows, and take part in many other projects. “It’s kind of like a vacation that needs you,” says McMillan.

Volunteer vacations are not for those who like to be pampered. But if experiencing a new culture, “meeting the people, working with the families, and feeling like what you do matters,” they are a great option, King says. It’s also less expensive than a standard vacation. King went to India for two weeks for $1,200, plus airfare, for example. And thanks to a handy Global Village widget, she solicited donations from friends and colleagues that helped defray some of her costs.

Mr. Gearson' s article, in its entirety, is below:

How to Choose the Best Volunteering Option

Volunteering is up, here’s how to find the best fit for you

By Christopher J. Gearon

October 26, 2010

Though the economy is hurting, volunteering in the United States jumped last year at the fastest rate in six years. At least 63 million gave of their time and energy. “What we’re seeing is the depth of the American spirit and generosity at its best,” says Patrick Corvington, CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the federal agency that is the nation’s largest grantmaker supporting service and volunteering. Many organizations are responding to the demand by offering more service options, creating leadership positions for volunteers, and providing virtual service opportunities to appeal to baby boomers, retirees, and young people.

“Volunteering patterns have changed,” says Barb Quaintance, who heads up volunteer and civic engagement at AARP. Boomers, in particular, want more say in how they serve. In 2009, AARP started Create the Good, a network where people and nonprofits can connect around volunteering, “whether you have five minutes, five hours, or five days,” says Quaintance.

The challenge for all volunteers is finding the best fit for themselves. “Look to creditable organizations or ones you know,” Quaintance recommends. Regardless of your tastes, temperament, or availability, a wide range of opportunities can be found, each offering its own rewards.

Disaster Relief

For those who seek an adrenaline rush and have a flexible schedule, emergency response groups may be an appealing option. The largest is the American Red Cross, which has more than 90,000 disaster workers, 93 percent of whom are volunteers. (Training is conducted at each of the 700-plus chapters.) Some 55,000 volunteers can be deployed nationwide; the rest can be mobilized only within their home area. “Volunteer in your local community first,” advises Anita Foster, chief communications officer for the American Red Cross in Dallas. “Getting a call at 3 a.m. to help a family” whose house has burned “is a great way to get your feet wet.”

When it’s time for the big leagues, the Red Cross depends on volunteers to pick up at a moment’s notice. Eleanor Guzik, 71, a nurse practitioner from Ventura, Calif., has been deployed to a number of disasters' a tornado in Georgia, floods in North Dakota, and wildfires in her home state. Helping others when they need it most “is extremely satisfying,” Guzik says.

Among other groups providing disaster relief are faith-based organizations like the Salvation Army, which assigns a small subset of its 3.4 million volunteers to emergency response. Since retiring as a Secret Service agent in 1996, Dave Freriks, 71, of Lubbock, Texas, has served as a volunteer at disasters in the American South and West, often for two weeks at a time. His missions have included responding to a fire at a nearby ethanol plant and hurricanes on the Gulf Coast. “It keeps me young, and it keeps me active,” Freriks says.

Though the Salvation Army did send volunteers to Haiti after the earthquake in January, it generally responds to U.S. disasters. Volunteers are summoned from the local region to deliver food and drinks to victims and provide emergency shelter, cleanup services, and communications. Catholic Charities USA and Samaritan’s Purse an evangelical Christian relief organization, are two other faith-based groups that deploy volunteers when a disaster happens.

A Second Act

The growing trend of skills-based volunteering is “a big change from years past,” says Corvington. Baby boomers and others with significant work experience want to segue to new service careers, while nonprofits realize they can leverage this influx of talent to expand their reach. Experience Corps, which has about 2,000 members, connected retired Budget Rent A Car executive Bill Schultz, 65, with an elementary school to help teach children to read in St. Paul, Minn. “You have to find a passion when you retire,” says Schultz, who works three days a week at the school and finds it “very rewarding.” Lindsay Moore, program spokesperson for Experience Corps, says prospective volunteers must formally apply, submit to a personal interview, and pass a background check. In addition, they must attend an orientation program and get at least 25 hours of training each year.

The largest network for people 55 and older is Senior Corps, which links more than 500,000 individuals to service opportunities in its three programs. The biggest of these, the Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), has members helping some 60,000 local organizations tutoring and mentoring children, assisting victims of natural disasters, improving the environment, and conducting safety patrols. They also provide business and technical support to nonprofits, including accounting, IT, and fundraising expertise.

Gary LaGrange, a retired Army colonel in Manhattan, Kan., wanted to expand his nonprofit, Help us Learn … Give us Hope. The group collects and ships school supplies and books to children in war-torn nations. RSVP assigned “at least 100 volunteers” and, because of this, more than 400,000 kids have received 520,000 pounds of supplies and 550,000 books, he says.

Senior Corps also offers two other programs: Senior Companions help the elderly maintain independence by assisting them with daily tasks; and Foster Grandparents mentor and tutor children. For other “second act” opportunities, you can try AARP’s Create the Good network or its other programs.

An Extended commitment

Got more time? Two full-time gigs to consider include the storied Peace Corps for international posts or the fast-growing AmeriCorps program to serve domestically.

Established under President John F. Kennedy in 1961 to promote goodwill, the Peace Corps has over the years sent nearly 200,000 Americans (who receive three months of training) to serve in 139 countries, from agribusiness workers in Malawi to engineers in Mexico. (Good news for liberal arts grads: Teaching English is in high demand in many part s of the world.) Jennifer Bailey, 29, worked on educational programs in the Dominican Republic, finishing her two-year hitch in May. “I received a world of education and professional work experience with Peace Corps,” says Bailey, originally from Ohio, whose tasks ranged from teaching youths about trash management and river cleanup to helping women start income-generating projects. Bailey landed a position as a program analyst in September with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Besides gaining invaluable skills and fluency in foreign languages, Peace Corps volunteers get other perks, including medical and dental benefits, living allowances, student loan help, vacation time, and job placement support. (Check the Web site of the International Volunteer Programs Association for other opportunities to serve abroad.)

If you’d prefer a long-term assignment stateside, you might consider AmeriCorps, which uses volunteers to help address critical needs in education, public safety, health, and the environment. A variety of positions are available, from tutoring young people, assisting crime victims, and building homes to teaching computer skills, restoring parks, and responding to disasters. AmeriCorps plans to expand its ranks from 85,000 volunteers today to 250,000 by 2017.

In general, volunteers sign on for at least a year and can stay on longer if they desire. Dwight Owens, 28, of Collins, Miss., provided practical advice to more than 1,200 people with disabilities on how to manage daily tasks. He also checked that businesses in his area complied with federal laws regarding handicapped access, and helped transition people from nursing facilities and other institutions to their homes. “The program builds character,” says Owens, who does all his work from a wheelchair. The former teacher and coach was paralyzed when he was hit by a drunk driver five years ago. The AmeriCorps application process took only a couple of weeks, and while there was some upfront training, Owens was impressed how quickly the program got him out “doing things for people.”

Other AmeriCorps avenues include the National Civilian Community Corps, a full-time, team-based residential program for young adults, and AmeriCorps VISTA, focused on helping people out of poverty. All AmeriCorps participants get a modest living allowance, a $5,350 education award to pay for college-related costs (after completing the program), and student loan assistance. While young adults fill most of the ranks, 10 percent of volunteers are 55 or older. (Older adults can transfer their education award to a grandchild or others.) There are three applicants for every position, but you can boost your chances by applying to multiple programs (up to 10) and to rural postings, where there are heavy needs but fewer applicants. Information on all AmeriCorps programs can be found through the organization’s main Web site.

Volunteer Vacations

Ever consider combining a vacation with service? After seeing people in need after Hurricane Katrina, “I just wanted to volunteer and do something,” says Lisa King, 47, of Arlington, Va., who went to Mexico to build homes with Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village program. The experience was so rewarding that King has taken annual, two-week volunteer vacations since. Last February, she helped build a town of modified mud huts in Ethiopia' pouring foundations, erecting the wooden frames, and even tossing mud to obefortify one home’s exterior.

Habitat, one of the largest organizers of volunteer vacations, has hundreds of projects around the world involving home construction and renovation, or disaster relief. No experience is necessary, but participants should have “an interest, curiosity, and commitment to serve,” says David Minich, Habitat’s global volunteer director.

Volunteers pay for their airfare and, on average, about $100 a day to cover building supplies, room and board, and transportation within the country. Since most projects require manual labor, you should be in good health. “I can honestly say that I have never physically worked so hard” or “enjoyed myself so much,” says Salli Innes, 57, a schoolteacher from Brookeville, Md., who built houses in Guatemala two years ago. Her husband, Rich, caught a free ride by serving as group leader.

If you have less vacation time, you might try Globe Aware, which hosts one-week volunteer programs around the world. About 15 percent of the group’s roughly 4,500 vacationers are families. “We’re one of the few nonprofits that allow” them, says spokesperson Catherine McMillan. Families with kids as young as 6 months travel to such places as Peru, Costa Rica, and Ghana for roughly $1,250 a person, plus airfare. Volunteers build recycling areas, clear paths in the rain forest, make cheese, milk cows, and take part in many other projects. “It’s kind of like a vacation that needs you,” says McMillan.

Volunteer vacations are not for those who like to be pampered. But if experiencing a new culture, “meeting the people, working with the families, and feeling like what you do matters,” they are a great option, King says. It’s also less expensive than a standard vacation. King went to India for two weeks for $1,200, plus airfare, for example. And thanks to a handy Global Village widget, she solicited donations from friends and colleagues that helped defray some of her costs.

To learn about other volunteer vacations, you can check out Global Volunteers, Idealist.org, and Charity Guide.

Virtual helping hands

Chicagoan Summer Johansson, a 33-year-old student finance adviser, wanted to volunteer but couldn’t fit traditional commitments into her schedule. The solution? In 2008, Johansson signed on to the online volunteering service of United Nations Volunteers, which looks for virtual assistance for a wide variety of tasks, including project development, design, research, writing, translation, and coaching. Johansson serves as a tutor and head coordinator with RESPECT University, which offers free post-secondary courses to refugees and displaced persons. She develops the syllabus, lessons, and assignments, then E-mails them to a ground liaison. “I currently have courses running in Afghanistan, Uganda, and Nepal,” she says. Overall, the program used some 9,400 online volunteers of all ages in 2009. “All they need is a computer, an Internet connection, and skills,” says Elise Bouvet of United Nations Volunteers, “and a commitment to making a real difference to peace and development.”

While virtual volunteering may not offer personal one-on-one contact, it’s more flexible than other options and is a great “CV enhancer,” says Johansson. A number of sites can help you find virtual opportunities, including www.volunteermatch.org, which recruits for more than 74,000 organizations, and the HandsOn Network, an arm of the Points of Light Institute, which represents more than 70,000 corporate, faith, and nonprofit organizations. Finally, DoSomething.org specifically matches young people with service options, over 1,700 of which are virtual.

DIY Volunteering

A fixture in her Wheaton, Md., community, Kathleen Michels is often seen yanking out invasive plants along a local creek, caring for a nearby community garden, or working with groups she had a hand in forming. This includes her neighborhood civic association and a coalition to “push back against the paving of our athletic fields with rocks, plastic, and pulverized tires”' that is, artificial turf, she says.

Ask the National Institutes of Health neuroscientist, wife, and mother why she starts these and other efforts, she simply says: “It needed to be done.” Michels, 52, figures she puts in 40 hours a month volunteering.

You can find many valuable tools online to advance your own cause, such as AARP’s Create the Good program. It has created a slew of downloadable how-to guides' from organizing river cleanups and holding school supply drives to helping oth ers get good healthcare.

Marlene Ellis, 56, of Arlington, Va., last fall initiated her own food drive for a local food bank. Thanks to an AARP starter kit that provided suggestions, bags for food collection, and fliers to post, Ellis was able to collect 127 pounds of food in about a week. “I was so happy” when she delivered it to the food bank, she says. “It is nice to see how much I can accomplish on my own.”

DIY projects can be time-consuming, so Michels recommends bringing in friends and neighbors to help when possible. “People respond to passion, commitment, and reasoned arguments,” she says.

The upsides of self-directed work are immediately apparent. It’s “usually more intellectually engaging since you are organizing and problem-solving and doing research” on your own, Michels notes. She believes she is testament that even shy people can tackle and solve problems in the community or the world, saying, “Success breeds confidence.”

Copyright © 2010 U.S.News & World Report LP All rights reserved.

 

Volunteer Vacationing, See the World and Make a Difference

1 March 2010
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If you are looking to take a different type of vacation this year consider a volunteer vacation. Volunteer vacations give you the opportunity to see a different part of the world and make a small difference by contributing to a specific project while you are away. Each trip can last anywhere from a week to several weeks and range from working with scientists on research projects to building schools in Guatemala to maintaining forest trails.

Besides benefiting the project that you volunteer with you will benefit from the well deserved downtime and an experience that you cannot get from a regular vacation. Here are four well known organizations that have been matching up travelers with worthwhile projects for years.

Globe Aware

This non profit organization sets up volunteer vacations to nine countries in Central and South America and Asia. Globe Aware sets up their vacations in one week intervals and the work projects range from working with Buddhists monks in Thailand to teaching English to Peruvian children in an isolated mountain village. The trips allow plenty of time for after work exploring and sightseeing and because most of the locations are in residential rather than in tourist locations you are able to immerse yourself in the culture.

 

 

North Texas volunteers see personal rewards

1 March 2010
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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.

 

 

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

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.”

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a Trip!

28 February 2010
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Categories: Globe Aware news

Volunteer vacations are a feel-good way to spend a summer break. Here’s how to turn your family’s kick-back time into a give-back experience.

by Alia Akkam – What has been your favorite family vacation? Sitting on a beach, perhaps, watching the kids make sand castles? Or maybe that fun trip to a water park? If you’re like the Hatfield family of Provo, Utah, you might be reminiscing about mixing concrete and lugging around corrugated metal roofing. That’s because they spent one particularly memorable holiday together in Guatemala, helping families turn their dirt-and-wood houses into sturdier homes.


For people who’ve devoted their time off to volunteering, there’s nothing like the chance to combine travel, education, and service. What a way to see the world with your kids â€" and show them compassion in action. “Voluntourism,” as its known, can expand your family’s worldview, change people’s lives, and still be a fun break from the everyday.


The Give-Back Vacation

The Hatfields set off for Guatemala through CHOICE Humanitarian, a volunteer organization that sends workers to Bolivia, Kenya, and other countries. The family spent their days helping the local people, and their nights sleeping in a schoolhouse. Not your typical theme-park vacation, but an extremely valuable one for them all. “My wife and I thought for a long time that we’d like to let our children see how other people live â€" and not just from a vacation point of view,” says dad Harlan Hatfield. “You leave thinking you’re helping those in poverty, but you come away realizing that you’ve also nourished yourself. All of the things we’re accustomed to, all the conveniences, they aren’t necessary for being happy.”


Laura Kuykendall, a mom of two in Andover, Massachusetts, also found that her family’s volunteer vacation had long-lasting effects. It was her daughter, Ariel, who inspired the trip” During a school break, she’d traveled with a group from her family’s church, which had been working with the Christian group Harvest Hands Ministries to help build an orphanage in Juarez, Mexico. Her mom was so moved by Ariel’s experience that she went along the next year, and brought Ariel’s brother, Joseph, too.


During that weeklong trip, the Kuykendalls worked on various building projects at the orphanage, conducted a Bible school for local children, and cooked for residents. Kuykendall describes herself as a workaholic and says her kids were startled to see her without a Blackberry or cell phone in hand. She, in turn, was amazed that, without their iPods and televisions, her children amused themselves by making up games with rocks. Kuykendall says it was extremely satisfying to see tiny glimpses of change in her and her children’s daily lives based on what they’d experienced in Mexico: “I was the most tired and dirtiest I’ve ever been, but the most fulfilled I’ve ever felt about anything. And to do it with my children was pretty amazing.”


Voluntourism: Getting Started

If you’re thinking of giving up the breakfast buffet for a volunteer vacation, check out these organizations:


Globe Aware
Globeware.org


The one-week volunteer vacations in Peru, Thailand, Cuba, Laos, and 11 other countries have no age restrictions. Kids as young as 2 have taken Globe Aware trips and helped with planting, building, and more.


Can You Swing It?

The truth is, voluntourism isn’t cheap. Prices can run into the thousands, and while interest has been up in recent years, it’s still a hefty price tag for most families. The website Travelocity, though, has one way to help. Through its Travel for Good program, which helps connect do-gooders with voluntourism opportunities, it awards grants of up to $5,000 to “change ambassadors,” people who want to travel and volunteer but can’t afford to do so.


“We know that when you visit a place, you don’t always really get to see what’s happening there,” says Amy Ziff, Travelocity’s editor-at-large. “We believe that travel can build bridges between cultures. We can all be change ambassadors by helping others in need, even while on vacation.” If you’re interested, check out travelocity.com and click on the Voluntourism button on the home page. There are four application deadlines throughout the year.


Keep in mind, too, that this kind of vacation isn’t right for every family. Some kids are simply too young. Many voluntourism trips are best for preteens and teens (though it’s worth checking, especially if you have one older and one younger child). The upside? By the time your child is old enough for a volunteer vacation, perhaps money won’t be as tight and you’ll have made a head start on planning (and even saving).


If swimming pools and fluffy towels and the chance to put your feet up are important to your family (and, hey, who doesn’t love those things?), you might think voluntourism isn’t right for you. That may be true; your family may be happiest doing other kinds of volunteering, and only you’ll know best. But don’t underestimate your kids’ â€" and your own â€" ability to adapt.


Volunteering with kids doesn’t just help others, it brings families closer together. When you can share a meaningful project â€" or a desperate need for a long, hot shower! â€" there’s a feeling of connectedness that’s often hard to find in day-to-day life. And whenever you can achieve that kind of bond, it’s the best vacation of all.

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