Featured Articles Style 2

Volunteer Vacationers to return to Peru

Source: Dallas Morning News

Dallas, TX (May 8, 2012) Volunteers Beth Karbe, Krystal Nix, Carol Barron, and Judy Keathley traveled with Globe Aware, a nonprofit organization that coordinates 17 unique volunteer programs in 15 countries worldwide, to San Pedro de Casta, Peru. While there, the group of volunteers began work on a badly needed irrigation system for community use. They now plan to return in order to offer the village a professionally executed solution to their water crisis.

Water is hard to come by in this secluded village high in the Andes Mountains of Peru. While it is only 50 miles from the Peruvian capitol of Lima, the journey usually takes over 5 hours due to the rocky terrain and single lane road. Globe Aware specializes in short term voluntourism, trips usually one week in duration. In that week all four women fell in love with the spirited people of San Pedro de Casta, especially the children. The ladies worked closely with the school and quickly realized the detrimental effect the lack of water has had on the village.

Kimberly Haley Coleman, Founder and Executive Director of Globe Aware comments on the impact a volunteer can make in one week, “we think of this more as like lighting a lamp. If a volunteer has an experience of helping someone side-by-side as part of a community you've lit that lamp of wanting to give back and wanting to volunteer and serving and knowing that joy.” Haley Coleman continues, “Volunteer Vacations are an ideal way to both encourage service while offering the benefit of international travel to small communities in the developing world. This experience exposes individuals to the beauties and challenges faced by others and also serves as a culturally immersive exercise”

Upon return to Florida: Beth, Krystal, Carol, and Judy decided to continue their work for the 999 residents of San Pedro de Casta. They organized and held the “Bring Water to San Pedro” fundraiser in Gainesville, Fl where over $20,000 was raised to fund an engineering team to excavate and build a proper irrigation system for the people of San Pedro de Casta.

The trip made an immeasurable impact on Beth Karbe’s view as well as the impetus to reevaluate her goals in San Pedro de Casta:

“This is a crucial need in San Pedro, since water is very scarce. The irrigation trench was essential, but despite spending hours digging every day and working very hard, we honestly didn’t get very far. The ground was bone dry and full of rock, and the 3 foot deep trench needs to run eight tenths of a mile! The new plan would not involve hand digging, nor dependence on infrequent volunteers, but construction by an engineering company with real machinery and big boy prowess. I am committed, I will go back. I will stay on this. And honestly I won't rest until it's done. This has been quite literally my life's purpose for 9 months and it will continue to be until the water flows.”

Work for this new irrigation system is planned for Summer 2012. If you would like to contribute to the Bring Water to San Pedro cause please visit : https://www.facebook.com/BringWater/app_101393123286933

About Globe Aware (R)

Globe Aware(R) is a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit charity that mobilizes short term volunteer programs around the world. These adventures in service focus on promoting cultural awareness and sustainability and are often compared to a mini "peace corps" experience. All volunteers are accompanied by a bilingual volunteer coordinator to assist the volunteer throughout their program. The program fee and the airfare to get there are fully tax deductible to the full extent of the law. Globe Aware is a member of International Volunteer Programs Association, Volunteers for Prosperity, the Building Bridges Coalition, was recommended for United Nations Consultative Status for Social and Economic Council, and administers the President's Volunteer Service Awards. Additionally, Globe Aware offsets its carbon emissions with Carbonfund.org, the country's leading carbon offset organization. Our carbon footprint is estimated at less than 70 tons annually, and we have chosen to support carbon-reducing projects in renewable energy to offset the CO2 that is produced in running our offices worldwide, from powering our offices to the transportation used to get to and from our work sites. This commitment places Globe Aware as an environmental leader in the volunteer abroad community and demonstrates proactive steps being taken in the fight against global climate change.

If you would like more information about this topic, or to schedule an interview with Globe Aware’s founder and Executive Director, Kimberly Haley-Coleman, please call Vaughn Hancock at 214-824-4562 or e-mail Vaughn@globeaware.com

New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in Ghana with Globe Aware,

Happy Birthday to the Peace Corps, Student Volunteers from New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in Ghana, A profile of Globe Aware, and a short doc on New Orleans.

New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in Ghana with Globe Aware,

Happy Birthday to the Peace Corps, Student Volunteers from New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) in Ghana, A profile of Globe Aware, and a short doc on New Orleans.

International Herald Tribune features Globe Aware

Globe Aware was featured in a June, 2011 spotlight in the International Herald Tribune:

For students longing to take time off before starting college or university or working people who would like a complete change from their daily occupation, taking a ‘‘gap year’’ can be a rewarding, lifechanging experience, especially if the time is spent volunteering.

Teaching English, for example, is a huge help in poor communities in Asia and requires little training. Other projects may include sports coaching, community building projects and working with handicapped children.

According to studies by such leading universities as Harvard, students who take a year off before college are more focused and motivated when they begin their studies than those who don’t.

Globe Aware, a nonprofit organization based in Texas, organizes volunteer programs around the world.

‘‘Gap-year volunteering broadens horizons, strengthens résumés and brings the kind of perspective that can change lives,’’ says Catherine Greenberg, its vice president of volunteer communications. ‘‘Kids who volunteer internationally realize how fortunate they are and gain insight into what’s truly important in life — not money or greed or luxury items, but community, compassion and hard work.’’ Each project aims to promote cultural awareness and/or sustainability. Cultural awareness, explain the organizers, means learning to appreciate a culture but not changing it.

‘‘By promoting volunteerism,’’ says Greenberg, ‘‘we’re promoting active civic engagement in disadvantaged communities in an exciting and different way.’’ Combining travel with volunteering has become popular enough that a conference on ‘‘voluntourism’’ will be held June 28 in Denver, Colorado.

‘‘This is the first time there has been a conference held that focuses solely on voluntourism,’’ says its organizer, Alexia Nestora.

Subject matter for the conference will include the economic impact of voluntourism, how it has evolved and how to create sustainable projects, as well as industry sessions on subjects such as the marketing of volunteer travel.

Nestora is a consultant on the industry Though the company is American, Asian students participate, too.

WLS International is a London-based organizer of volunteer-abroad projects that focuses on Asia, specifically Cambodia, China, Nepal, India, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Volunteering abroad, says the company, is a way to make travel meaningful and have a simple, affordable vacation. Many of its projects attract those taking a gap year.

Ben Mattress, a young volunteer from Australia, says his weeklong project teaching English to young children in Siem Reap, Cambodia, was a life-changing experience.

The children are ‘‘so happy and eager to learn, and very smart,’’ says Mattress, adding that he is eager to volunteer there again. An added benefit of this project is its location at the gateway to the ancient Angkor Wat temple complex, a Unesco World Heritage site.

Young people may spend several weeks or months abroad, but will certainly return with experiences that will last a lifetime.

Says Greenberg of Global Aware: ‘‘If our local young people can benefit from this experience, it’s one vital step toward reshaping our culture to be more green, more responsible and more caring.’’ and writes the blog Voluntourism Gal. She says that the industry has been very competitive and that conference participants ‘‘are showing their willingness to move into an era of cooperation that can only better serve the sometimes-at-risk and always needy populations where our collective projects are concentrated.’’ In Globe Aware’s Laos program, volunteers have the opportunity to work with orphans and schoolchildren in Luang Prabang.

In a weeklong program, participants work with local monks and perform such tasks as teaching English, assembling wheelchairs from recycled parts and distributing them to the needy, distributing books and helping to repair schools. There is also free time to visit the temples, Buddhist caves and waterfalls of this charming Unesco World Heritage site.

Adventures Cross-Country, a Californiabased youth-travel company, has been leading volunteer programs for gap-year students for nearly 30 years. Its Asia Gap Semester, for example, takes students to China, Thailand and Tibet, and includes such activities as helping mahouts and biologists rehabilitate elephants at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang, and teaching English to Chinese and Thai students, some of whom have never met Westerners.

Globe Aware: Volunteer Vacation Take a trip that will last a lifetime.

"The habitual characteristics of vacations are quite notorious: Stress relief. A hiatus from your accustomed duties. The effortless Pleasures of relaxation, or they can be used to simply revitalize a relationship. Although these likings may be essential, your short-term journey can also benefit the world around you," writes Kimberly Haddad in Pasadena Magazine.

Ms. Haddad goes on to add that there are are a number of affordable volunteer vacations across the country that will allow the interested and inspired to travel to a unique destination "while giving back to the community. Whether it's environmental assistance, lending a kinding hand to a child's education or habitat restoration for wildlife,everyone has the opportunity to take part in an adventure with a purpose."

Included in her list of top volunteer vacation providers is Globe Aware:

“Globe Aware is a non-profit organization that organizes volunteer vacations in various parts of the world including Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America.

Globe Aware allows volunteer travelers the extraordinary opportunity to be involved in a community while gaining valuable knowledge about cultures and the foreign environments we may not be accustomed to. Set goals for yourself and work alongside locals and other volunteers in elaborate hands-on projects like working with disadvantaged children in India, building shade shelters for elephants in Thailand, and working with youngsters who suffer from Down Syndrome in Cuba.

Some volunteer vacation organizations do not offer room and board, but Globe Aware is one of the few that do. Although it may not be as extravagant as you wish, the cost of the program includes housing accommodations and traditional style meals during your stay.”