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Voluntourism: Good Times and Good Works

1 March 2010
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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.

 

 

 

 

 

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.”

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vacationing like Brangelina

1 March 2010
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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

1 March 2010
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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:

  1. What kind of conditions am I willing to live in?
  2. How long am I willing to give?
  3. What skills do I have to offer?
  4. 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?


Giving back 7 Surprising Reasons to Volunteer

28 February 2010
Globe Aware
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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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

Double duty: Both sides reap the benefits of volunteer trips

28 February 2010
Globe Aware
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Categories: Globe Aware news

USA Today

KRASANG ROLEUNG, Cambodia â€" Andrew Krupp doesn’t speak a word of Cambodian. And, for the most part, the dozens of happy-faced children racing across the dusty schoolyard to greet him don’t speak a word of English.

But that doesn’t stop Krupp from winning them over immediately.

It doesn’t take much, after all, to get across the basics of the hokeypokey, which it turns out is just as big a crowd-pleaser in the poorest thatched-roof villages of Cambodia as it is in the manicured suburb near Chicago where Krupp lives.

“I’m like a novelty act riding into town,” says the 39-year-old manufacturing executive, laughing as his frenzied “right foot in” sends the children into hysterics. “Everybody loves a lunatic.”

A lunatic with a mission. With the ever-energetic Krupp occupying the kids, his five traveling companions are free to grab hammers and saws and get down to the real task of the morning: building new eraser boards for the rural school’s ramshackle classrooms.
It’s a lot of work.

It’s also their vacation.

A volunteer vacation, it’s called â€" a type of trip that has gone from being on the fringe to the mainstream in just a few years.

Krupp and the others have signed up to visit Cambodia with GlobeAware, one of a growing number of organizations that design vacations for people who want to spend as much time helping in the destinations they visit as they spend seeing the major sites.

People such as Mary-Ellen Connolly, 46, of Chelsea, Quebec.

“I’m so sick of going to typical tourist attractions and doing the same old tourist thing,” says Connolly, who volunteers at home teaching the visually impaired to ski and thought it would be fun to combine voluntarism with vacation.

Like the others here, Connolly says she wanted to “give back.” But she also saw the allure of volunteering as a way to experience a country on a deeper level.

“I wanted to meet the local people,” she says, “because that’s the way to really know a country.”

A scene from a Dickens novel

Connolly, a part-time accountant who left her children with her husband to take the trip with a friend, is talking outside an orphanage where the group spends every afternoon. In Siem Reap, the region’s tourist hub, the tiny, run-down building houses 23 children in two rooms â€" one for girls, one for boys.

Many of the kids are barefoot, their hair a mess, their clothes stained â€" a Cambodian version of a scene from a Dickens novel. But however bleak their situation, they, like kids everywhere, relish the chance for a little adult-sponsored goofiness. Encouraged by GlobeAware’s local coordinator, Sophanit Prin, 26, who serves as guide and translator, Connolly and the others quickly organize lessons in such life-important skills as playing “duck, duck, goose” and “hot potato.” The sad faces turn to smiles.

Like the thousands of other tourists arriving each week in this low-lying region of rice paddies and rural villages, famed for its 1,000-year-old temples, Connolly and her companions spent a day or so of their one-week trip exploring the legendary ruins of Angkor Wat and other remnants of Cambodia’s ancient Khmer empire. And like other Westerners, they’re staying in Siem Reap, which has mushroomed with hotels, restaurants and nightspots over the past decade as tourism rebounds from years of violence.

But that’s where the similarity ends. While other tourists lounge at $200-a-night resorts around Siem Reap â€" in sharp contrast to the region’s still-widespread poverty â€" the GlobeAware group bunks in a no-frills, $15-a-night guesthouse a short walk from the town center. They’ve paid $1,200 each for the trip, but much of that money goes to the local institutions on the group’s itinerary.

‘Volunteering 101’

In addition to spending time at the orphanage, the group takes on at least one, sometimes two more volunteer activities each day. On one sunny morning, the group assembles wheelchairs for some of the war-ravaged country’s thousands of land-mine victims. On four nights before dinner, Prin leads the volunteers down a dusty road to a Buddhist monastery to help teach English to locals.

The mix is typical of the new breed of short-term volunteer vacations, which often follow a “little of this, little of that” format that gives volunteering newbies a chance to try a lot of things to see what clicks. Krupp dubs it Volunteering 101, “a survey course of the options available” for those considering a longer-term commitment.

Krupp quickly decides that teaching is by far the most difficult task of the week. Welcomed at the monastery by monks in orange robes, the six GlobeAware volunteers are ushered into stark, barely lit classrooms, introduced to rows of wide-eyed students and then, for the most part, left on their own.

It’s trial by fire. But as Krupp notes, it doesn’t take long to realize the students, many of whom hope to become English-speaking tour guides at the nearby temples, a relatively high-paying job in the region, want little more than to hear the correct pronunciation for words they’ve only seen in books.

Despite an influx of tourist dollars in recent years, Cambodia remains one of the world’s poorest countries. Years of war and genocide under the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s devastated the population â€" by some estimates, 2 million people died â€" and the violence and chaos continued well into the 1990s, stunting economic development.

A difficult life for most

At the Angkor Participatory Development Organization, a small non-profit agency that partners with GlobeAware, director Savuth Tek-Sakana explains that a typical job in the region pays only $100 a month. Those who speak English, however, can find work in tourist hotels paying as much as $250 a month, a small fortune in an economy in which more than a third of the population subsists on less than $1 a day.

Still, even for the higher earners, it’s a rough existence â€" a point that hits home when Tek-Sakana and Prin whisk the group into the countryside to visit a typical village.

The destination, Kravan, is less than a mile from Ta Prohm, the magical, jungle-covered ruins made famous in Angelina Jolie’s Tomb Raider, and just steps away from Prasat Kravan, a lesser-visited Hindu temple built in 921.

Leading the way down the muddy path that serves as the village’s main street, Tek-Sakana points to the rickety, one-room huts that house families of five, six or even eight people. Built on wooden stilts to keep occupants dry during the rainy season, the thatched-roof huts have flimsy walls made of palm leaves. There’s no electricity, running water or toilets. And the “kitchen” is a fire circle in the dirt.

“I’m at a loss,” says Krupp, echoing the shock of other volunteers at the sight of children running barefoot through the same muddy puddles that serve as latrines for roaming chickens and pigs. “I’ve seen poverty, but extreme poverty like this is so mentally conflicting. It makes it hard to enjoy life seeing and feeling how some people are forced to live in the 21st century.”

Much can be done in a week

Visiting such sites long has been part of the volunteer vacation experience. But it also has brought criticism from some who see it as little more than voyeurism.

Even some of the participants on this trip are conflicted. “I felt a bit embarrassed, like it was a show for us,” says Gabrielle Duchesne, 26, of Toronto. “But I think it’s good that we see it. If we can go back and find a way to volunteer, to donate, to integrate giving into our lives, then it was worth it.”

Like others on the trip, Duchesne says she was hesitant to sign up fo r a volunteering experience that was so short, concerned that she wasn’t going to be able to do enough.

But “it takes a lot of people doing small things to make a big difference,” says Duchesne, a fundraiser for the Multiple Sclerosis Society of Canada. And she and others on the trip are surprised by how many small things they can get done in a week and, indeed, by the difference they seem to make.

The proof comes on the final day, when the group meets grateful recipients of the wheelchairs assembled during a single morning. Awkward at first, the “wheelchair party,” as GlobeAware’s Prin has dubbed it, loosens up as Duchesne distributes snacks, and the recipients begin to tell their stories. Some have waited years for a wheelchair, which costs many times the $20-a-month stipend that one disabled recipient says he has received since stepping on a mine in 1987.

“At first I was nervous, but it was a happy occasion, not sad,” Duchesne says afterward. The wheelchair recipients “left better than they had arrived, and that’s the reason we’re here.”

IF YOU GO

GlobeAware offers volunteer vacations to Cambodia year-round; 13 departures are planned for 2008.

The seven-night trips feature five days of volunteering in and around Siem Reap and a day visiting the nearby ruins of Angkor Wat, Angkor Thom, Ta Prohm and other ancient Khmer Empire sites. The cost is $1,200 per person, based on double occupancy, including lodging and meals. Singles will be paired in rooms.

GlobeAware has similar programs in 11 other countries, including Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Costa Rica, Peru, Romania and Ghana. Costs: from $1,080 to $1,390 per person.

Information: 877-588-4562; globeaware.org

A unique volunteer opportunity

28 February 2010
Globe Aware
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Categories: Globe Aware news

LeeAnn Webster spent a week in Costa Rico in August 2007 working side-by-side with members of a village painting a community center and digging irrigation ditches.

She ate lunch and dinner with the village residents, and learned first-hand about their culture.

In 2008 she volunteered in an orphanage in Peru. Families living in the nearby mountains used the orphanage as a place for their children to live during the week so they could attend school. She also helped build clay stoves for those families.

These trips were possible because of her involvement in Globe Aware, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) develops short-term volunteer programs in international environments that encourage people to immerse themselves in a unique way of giving back.

Every activity is intended to promote cultural awareness and/or promote sustainability, according to globeaware.org. Chosen projects meet several criteria: safe, culturally interesting, genuinely beneficial to a needy community, and involve significant interaction with the host community.

The organization has no political or religious affiliation, and volunteers help to empower the host communities in creating renewable, sustainable programs, according to the site.

Webster, assistant director of marketing and business development at Mayer Brown, said each trip really changed her and how she lives her life. She typically spends one week working with Globe Aware, and a second week traveling on her own.

Most programs, she said, cost about $1,100 a week, and that includes accommodations and food for the week. But those who participate must also pay for airfare, but it’s tax-deductible.

She said Globe Aware really strives to put the money it receives back into community the volunteers are working in. She plans to go this year back to Costa Rico, but this time will work with a coastal program involving sea turtles. And she will bring her nephew, who just graduated from high school.

Globe Aware could be an option for those lawyers in-between jobs.

“It’s going to give them a unique experience, especially if they’ve never traveled somewhere like that, and an understanding of how these people live, how a different government structure or different supply structure can affect what you’re able to do,” she said.

“As a new attorney you suddenly get on [your firm’s] timetable… Your life really becomes usurped by the firm. This is their last opportunity to do something totally for them to help them gain a different perspective, and I think give them a different view of the world at really unique time. It’s hard to break away after you start practicing.

“And in the jungles of Costa Rico your BlackBerry doesn’t work. That is another reason I like these trips. You can really get away.”

Travel Good: Voluntourism Trips

28 February 2010
admin
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Categories: Globe Aware news

A previous and fantastic intern left my former 9-to-5, where she was making mere peanuts researching in an office, to take a job in Costa Rica and make a difference in the world. Since then, I’ve had a major crush on the country, and write it up whenever I can.

Of course, Costa Rica is one of those destinations that, because of underdevelopment, is a pure, natural place to see, but also a difficult place to wrangle. Sure, there are tons of beach getaways, but if you’re looking for more of a rainforest or cultural trip, many tour companies are a little lacking. This also makes it an expensive trip. Not to mention there are areas of the country that are so underdeveloped the locals are in desperate need of help. On the other side of this equation, greedy land owners buy large amounts of Costa Rican property to harvest the natural resources, leaving nothing for natives, and barren holes behind. Costa Rica remains a conundrum.

Luckily, I was tipped off to a voluntourism company called Globe Aware which organizes trips to Costa Rica, Peru, Romania, Nepal, Vietnam, Jamaica, and more, with a catch- you do community service while there. The tasks are more experience than labor and range from providing language conversation to Peruvians studying English, to assembling wheelchairs in Cambodia. Lodging and meals are provided on most tours, which last an average of a week and cost around $1200 (10% discount for minors).

And if you’d love to take one of these trips, but just don’t have the money, Travelocity has, from time to time, offered a $500 grant to deserving individuals who would like to spread some love across the globe. Their voluntourism page highlights tours saving Leatherback Turtles in Costa Rica (yay!), assisting medical operations in Tanzania, and even cleaning up US parks.

Read the original story at Frill Seeker Diary.

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