volunteer vacations
Giving back 7 Surprising Reasons to Volunteer
There are lots of things we want to do and should do, yet never seem to find the time to actually do. Volunteering shouldn’t be one of those things. Why? Besides providing much-needed help to people or organizations that need it most, volunteering can open the door to new business opportunities, friends, skills, and appreciation for the everyday things you take for granted. Most of all, it can make you happy.
“There’s no better feeling than knowing you had a hand in improving someone’s life,†says Brae Hanson, managing broker of Starck, REALTORS®, in Barrington, Ill., and an avid volunteer.
So before you say you don’t have the time or energy to take on a volunteering task, consider these seven reasons why you should start giving back now.
Reason #1: It Will Boost Your Visibility (for Free)
Volunteer to benefit your business? That doesn’t sound very altruistic. And while that probably shouldn’t be the primary reason to volunteer, it’s certainly a nice perk.
“Real estate professionals always want to be doing more selling and prospecting, but many don’t realize they can do both of those things while giving back to the community,†says Robert Rosenthal, a spokesperson for VolunteerMatch, a San Francisco nonprofit that matches volunteers with charitable groups.
Cappy MacPherson, a salesperson with Watson Realty Corp, Hidden Hills, Jacksonville, Fla., says volunteering is one of her best â€" and lowest cost â€" marketing tools. Instead of spending money to get her name out in the community, she gains exposure by volunteering with local charities, including HabiJax, the Jacksonville Habitat for Humanity branch.
At ever volunteer job, she wears T-shirts promoting previous volunteer events, along with a name tag that identifies her real estate business.
The strategy acts as a conversation starter and gets her name circulating in the community. Since 2006 it’s landed her four buyers and generated leads for two potential listings. “These are six prospects I would never have had,†she says. “It’s a wonderful way to market without breaking the bank.â€Â
Reason #2: You’ll Sharpen Your Business Skills
With so many volunteer opportunities out there, you can select the ones that will help you improve certain business skills.
For example, Hanson, of Barrington, Ill., has perfected her marketing skills through 20-plus years of fundraising and promoting charities. Volunteering also has forced her to refine her time-management skills and has given her more financial know-how.
“I’ve never been fond of reading financial statements, but I’ve gotten better at budgeting and understanding profit and loss statements just from reviewing them for charities,†she says.
MacPherson, meanwhile, has improved her knowledge of home-improvement tasks â€" knowledge that comes in very handy when working with buyers and sellers. Through her Habitat for Humanity work, she’s learned the finer points of painting, roofing, and caulking, as well as an understanding of how buildings come together properly.
“I’m now able to see subtle problems in houses and know when to suggest further inspections,†she says.
Reason #3: It Doesn’t Require a Huge Time Commitment
If you read the stories of this year’s five Good Neighbor Award winners, you’ll be taken aback by how much time they devote to their causes. For a rookie volunteer, it can be downright intimidating. But such a large time commitment isn’t necessary.
Start small by volunteering for a one-time event or scheduling just a couple hours per week. Check out volunteer opportunities in your ZIP code by searching on Web sites such as VolunteerMatch. Each listing includes the estimated time contribution required, so you can be choosey about which jobs you take on.
Another option: Take a volunteer “vacation†to a developing nation or to a city in the United States to build a new school, restore the environment, or help on a medical mission. You can learn more about volunteer vacations at Web sites such as GlobeAware or CharityGuide.org.
Or, volunteer from the comfort of your own home. Instead of watching an hour of TV at night, log in an hour of virtual help to an organization of your choice. Learn about virtual volunteer opportunities at ServiceLeader.org.
Once you find a volunteer job that you really enjoy, making time for it will come naturally, Hanson says. “When something is important to you, you find the drive to get it done.â€Â
Reason #4: Make Meaningful Community Connections
Weekly Rotary Club meetings put Lisa L. Bass, president and broker of California Commercial Corp. in Brentwood, Calif., and president of her local Rotary Club, in touch with local businesspeople and city council representatives.
Through in-person conversations and club projects, she built meaningful relationships in her community that could never have been made via e-mail or phone. Some recent Rotary activities have included donating dictionaries to local school kids and providing wheelchairs to people in Mexico.
When fellow Rotary Club members have commercial real estate needs, Bass is their go-to person. But she says the biggest benefit of volunteering is the pick-me-up she gets from doing good things. “The meetings give me purpose that I look forward to, especially when I’ve had a difficult week,†says Bass.
In today’s high-tech age, “it’s hard to feel connected on a deeply meaningful level,†says Rosenthal, from VolunteerMatch. “Volunteering is an opportunity to connect with others who share a similar cause.â€Â
Reason #5: It’s Time to Expand Your Professional Horizons
In the early 1990s, Saul Klein, E-Pro®, GRI, owned a real estate brokerage, property management firm, and a financial-planning business, yet he was becoming increasingly interested in finding a new avenue for his real estate skills.
At the same time, through his volunteer work with the San Diego Association of REALTORS®, including a post as president of the group, he uncovered a zeal for emerging real estate technologies. He used his newfound passion as a launching pad for the next chapter of his career.
Klein now educates other real estate professionals on how to use technology, does speaking engagements around the country, has written real estate courses and books on technology, and is a founder of InternetCrusade, a San Diego company that manages the e-Pro® designation for the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®.
“Volunteering really has paid me back,†Klein says. “I love being able to take a message to people that I believe is valuable and that will make differences in their lives. It’s very rewarding when people tell me my advice is valuable.â€Â
Volunteering can do the same for you; perhaps it will open the door to a new business niche or help you uncover a new path for your real estate career. You also can use volunteer opportunities to learn about a business specialty. For example, if you specialize in waterfront properties and you want to learn more about the issues that local residents face, volunteer with a beach clean-up organization. Or, if your aim is to develop a niche selling green property, consider volunteering at an environmental awareness group. There, you can learn more about the movement and meet prospects interested in environmentally sound homes.
Reason #6: You’ll Appreciate What You Have
Life seems tough when you don’t have an iPhone or you can’t afford to hit Starbucks every morning. But when you see firsthand how families live without heat, electricity, or indoor plumbing, you might feel a little better about your present situation.
Sean Waters, a salesperson with Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty Boston, Mass., says he’s witnessed such living conditions for the first time during a “magical and enriching†volunteer vacation to Cuzco, Peru withGlobe Aware, earlier this year. There, he rehabbed an orphanage and taught children English and baseball.
Despite lacking many comforts that Americans take for granted, Waters was amazed to see that Peruvians live happy lives with an intense love for and focus on family and friends. That realization sparked changes in Waters’ life when he returned home. He now makes more of an effort to spend quality time with his loved ones. “We work so hard, yet we’re lacking so much in terms of having time for each other,†says Waters.
The trip also served as a business motivator. Waters recognized that he needs to ramp up production to finance more service trips (next up is India) and to visit out-of-state relatives.
The other business benefit: Waters says the experience broadened his world view and will help him better connect with some of his sophisticated, well-traveled clients. At the very least, travel talk beats the weather as a topic for chit-chat.
Reason #7: You’ll Feel So Good About It
A growing body of research links volunteering with better health. One study, The Health Benefits of Volunteering: A Review of Recent Research, by the Corporation for National and Community Service, says volunteering improves longevity, lowers depression rates, and reduces the rates of heart disease.
Indeed, many volunteers cite a phenomenon commonly called, “helper’s high,†in which they gain feelings of exhilaration and energy from volunteering. MacPherson says she likens the feeling she gets from volunteering to the endorphin rush after a workout.
Hanson agrees. She says her post-volunteering highs frequently last five days and translate into greater enthusiasm for her work and life in general.
“Happier people live longer, and happier people are going to sell more real estate than grumpy ones,†MacPherson says.
The research evidence pleases, but doesn’t surprise, Rosenthal. “You don’t need scientific validation for people to know that the world needs them,†he says.
Double duty: Both sides reap the benefits of volunteer trips
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 spring break volunteer is shopping for fruits in Peru.
Volunteer Vacations Provide Fresh Opportunities for Service
Voluntourism – Volunteering on your vacation
Some vacations allow travelers to give back while they’re away. CNN’s Heidi Collins explains.
Volunteer Vacation Primer
By: Manya Chylinski
No longer on the fringes of travel, voluntourism has attracted increasing numbers of travelers looking to learn new skills, meet people, and give back to the global community. In a recent Travelocity poll, 38 percent of repondents said they planned to volunteer while on vacation; thats up from just 6 percent in 2006. “People tell me that a vacation with us is the most meaningful experience of their lives,” says David Minich of Habitat for Humanity. Here’s how to plan one.
THE EXPERIENCE:
Go with your interests when deciding to work with people, animals, or the environment. Most programs don’t require you to have any special skills. Despite the short-term naure of these trips, you may complete a significant task, such as building adobe stoves in an Amazon village. “We’re not solving the world’s problems,” says Globe Aware’s Kimberly Haley-Coleman. “But volunteers do make a difference.”
A unique volunteer opportunity
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
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.
Rewarding volunteer vacations for the whole family
Shawna Bohan – If you’re looking for a rewarding vacation experience for your family this summer or fall, there are excellent opportunities to be had.
