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Globe Aware 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 accomplish one of two things: promote cultural awareness and/or promote sustainability. The concept of cultural awareness means to recognize and appreciate the real beauties and real challenges of a culture, but not to change it. The concept of sustainability is to help others stand on their own two feet; to teach skills rather than reliance. Chosen projects meet several key criteria: safe, culturally interesting, genuinely beneficial to a needy community, and involve significant interaction with the host community. www.globeaware.com
Read the rest of the issue at Angel Rock Project.
- Details
- Category: About
- Published:
Globe Aware 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 accomplish one of two things: promote cultural awareness and/or promote sustainability. The concept of cultural awareness means to recognize and appreciate the real beauties and real challenges of a culture, but not to change it. The concept of sustainability is to help others stand on their own two feet; to teach skills rather than reliance. Chosen projects meet several key criteria: safe, culturally interesting, genuinely beneficial to a needy community, and involve significant interaction with the host community. www.globeaware.com
Read the rest of the issue at Angel Rock Project.
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Programs offer an opportunity to give something back during your time away from work and everyday life
By Peter Greenberg
Travel editor
Tired of spending vacations sitting around a pool with nothing to do? Well this is an alternative that in most cases the whole family can do.
Volunteer vacations
• Vacation as a volunteer
Programs offer an opportunity to give something back during your time away from work and everyday life
Volunteer vacations: helping children
Learn how you can participate in one of these special programs:
• Peru - "The Andean Village Experience": Visit www.globeaware.org or call 214-823-0083 • WorldTeach: Visit www.worldteach.org or call 800-483-2240
• Airline Ambassadors International: Visit www.airlineambassadors.org
• India with Pratham: Visit www.prathamusa.org or call: 866-pratham
• Pediatrician's for Central America's Children: Call: 516-663-9409
Nine thousand feet high up in the Andes mountain range — a place of tremendous physical beauty — lies Peru's maximum security prison in Ayachucho — home to murderers, drug dealers and other violent criminals. Eighteen year-old Amanda McCullough — a recent Atlanta high school graduate — is checking in. She's not a prisoner. And she's not there to see the prisoners, but she's there to teach their children.
“Every weekday morning I go to this prison and I take care of the kids that live here with their mothers. It’s really, really fine, but really challenging. The kids had never had any kind of education at all,†says McCullough.
Inmates' children under the age of four years old live at the prison. It offers no formal schooling, so it’s up to volunteers like Amanda to teach them songs, show them their numbers, play with them and teach them about life outside the prison walls.
“The thing that I try to do is be positive and make them laugh and smile and give them something to look forward to every day. If they can look forward to us coming, you know, for those four hours every morning makes their day a little better,†says McCullough.
Amanda volunteers with a group called Cross Cultural Solutions — or CCS. How did her parents handle the assignment? "Hey mom! Hey dad! I'm goin' to Peru, goin' to prison. See ya later."
“Yeah (laughter). They were pretty supportive. They trusted CCS — the program — so they weren't too worried. But they were a little shocked at first,†she explains.
She and nine other volunteers traveled to Peru to learn the language and the culture, while helping the locals. Ayacucho means — "the place of the dead" — a city of extraordinary poverty with a history of extreme political violence.
Rudy Anyosa runs the program. “I feel that Ayacucho needs a lot of help and I'm glad to work with volunteers who are eager to help us in trying to relieve the poverty situation in Ayacucho,†he explains.
Some volunteers work at an orphanage for disabled children. Audrey Wintory is from Englewood, Colorado. “This experience has been a dream come true. I feel like I've learned so much. I feel like I've actually helped. And I feel like every day I'm actually growing,†says Wintory.
Others help street children. Today they're painting the facility that houses the children's activities. But it's not just about the physical painting; it's about the emotional bonding that helps both the kids and the volunteers alike.
“Every time that I wake up every morning, I feel like I have a reason to be here and to be with these kids,†says Leira Maldonado.
Sherry Stephens is volunteering here for the second time — helping out at a health clinic.
“I don't know if any vacation that I take in the future will ever be the same as what I did in the past. I don't know if I could go to a country and just visit. Maybe I could, but I don't think I'd get the same enjoyment out of it that I used to. To me it's just more important to help out,†says Stephens.
On weekends the volunteers explore Ayucucho, including hiking in the Andes mountains. They enjoy the breathtaking views out of town, but it is their work in town that replenishes their souls.
Stephens explains, “You can't come on one of these trips, do one of these vacations and expect that you're gonna change the world. You have to understand that it is holding the child's hand and making a difference in that child's life and putting a baby to sleep or helping the fellow who's overwhelmed in the records department, giving them a break and if more people could pitch in that way and there were more baby steps taken, of course, there would be more of an impact on the world.â€
“I'm gonna take back a lot of things when I go home from this. And just maybe hopefully one of those little kids at the orphanage will just remember that American that came in and played with them or that taught 'em a little something,' or that helped, I think. I think I'll think about that for a long time,†says Audrey Wintory.
© 2004 MSNBC Interactive
ON THE ROAD
Do-Good Getaways
You don't have to join the Peace Corps to contribute to society. Here are ...[ vacations that could change your life-and someone else's ].
..." Globe Aware: Public-health and cultural-immersion adventures. Examples: Give basic English instruction in Costa Rica or Thailand, or help a poor community in Rio prepare for Carnival. 1 to 6 weeks; $600 to $1,800. www.globeaware.com "
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By Janet Wilson
This fall, we asked readers of our Travel section to share stories about their volunteer vacations. We got a great response, hearing from Central Texans who had done everything from helping Honduran victims of Hurricane Mitch to teaching children at a Hopi Indian reservation in Arizona. Read their stories below.
I went on a volunteer vacation to Thailand for a week. We worked on a few projects. We helped Buddhist monks (poor by definition) practice English, we had a few environmental projects, like building a community compost pile, and we helped local residents prepare for festival, which was really awesome! It's amazing how much fun you can have with so little. Anyway the company was called Globeaware. I went last October. I stayed in Thailand for a few weeks afterwards, touring on my own, but by far the best highlight of the trip was getting to know my fellow volunteers while working on these projects. When I was staying in hotels, I felt I was farther from the culture I was there to learn about, but living in those perched Thai homes, eating homemade Thai food was pretty cool. When I was helping these poor folks, I felt they really saw me in a special, human way. — Greg Coles
I am something of an expert volunteer vacationer. I have been on five different volunteer vacation experiences with different organizations and thought this info might be useful. I spent about $1,500 to go on an I-to-I trip for almost 3 months as an English teacher in a small village in Costa Rica. The people were just amazing, the rainforest was incredible, and I genuinely felt I was contributing. The only down side was that I also had to pay $300 a month for food, and I found out that not one dollar of my contribution when to the local community. I understand that the organization must fund itself somehow, since it does not have government grants, but I was disappointed that NONE of the funds went to the community. They did have pretty decent Spanish lessons prior to the beginning of my volunteer work.
I also went on a two-week SCI trip to Thailand (one of your recent recommendations). This is the least expensive trip of this kind (by far) I have ever taken. However, it showed! I hardly got any orientation materials, there seemed to be no communication whatsoever between SCI and the local community, and I was not able to get any answers to any of my pre-trip questions. This is a great option for those who are willing to deal with a lot of unknowns. Also, I had to pay an additional "meal fee" once I arrived. The work was good, though not particularly well organized.
Two years ago, I went on a Global Volunteers trip to teach English in a charming little school in southern Italy. The cost was high — nearly $3000 BEFORE my airfare — however it was very well organized, everything was included, and our leader made the trip fun and meaningful. About $200 of the fee went to the community itself. I was just happy that at least they got some of it. For those who have the money, this was a well-run trip.
This month I just returned from a one-week vacation with two of my colleagues from work with Globe Aware to an orphanage in Cuzco, Peru. I did NOT see this organization listed in your paper. The one down side was that it I really enjoy longer trips, and all their trips seem to be only one week. It was a third of the cost of Global Volunteers, but just as well organized.
Not only was it relatively cheap to begin with, but they help set up an easy sponsorship program. Frito-Lay, my employer, matched our contribution fee two-for-one toward our volunteer contribution fee, so it ended up costing us very little out of our own pockets. All of our costs but airfare were included, and I think the community got a substantial portion of the fee. Our free time was well organized (we got to see Machu Picchu), and the work with the children (quite varied) was deeply touching. The fact that it was only one week, while a disappointment for me, made it an easy thing for my colleagues to fit in their schedules.
I would really recommend this for working professionals with very little time and a moderate amount of money. Lastly, I went on a church retreat to Guatemala three years ago with a church in my then hometown. It cost about $650 for everything but airfare, much of which we raised through bake sales throughout the year. We were helping to set up a variety of church-related services and felt some resistance from the community in some ways. I got the feeling we hadn't necessarily gone about asking the community how they felt about our assistance, yet everything worked out well, and all the families made for a really unique bonding experience.
I wish everyone would have the opportunity to do this. I have had little desire to do typical tourist vacations ever since I first went on a volunteer vacation, and I find myself so deeply grateful for the things in my life.
— Brenda Colleen, College Station
The following is a selected excerpt from the above Travel article in the January 1, 2004 Austin-Statesman, titled, "Lend a hand"
You won't find a mint on your pillow and there's no room service, but volunteer vacations do have their rewards
May Schmidt was a teenager when she first spent her vacation on hands and knees, scraping the earth with a trowel.
Canyon Dam was about to be built on the Guadalupe River, and her parents decided that they and their six children would help archeologists search for Native American artifacts that would be lost once the dam was complete.
The family signed up for an eight-day school sponsored by the Texas Archeological Society near the dam site.
"I always liked archeology as a kid, but my idea of archeology was going to Egypt and the Middle East," May Schmidt recalls. "It never occurred to me there was archeology in Texas."
Her parents' decision to volunteer that summer in 1963 would affect the Schmidt family for generations. Though she took a hiatus to attend the University of Texas and serve in the Peace Corps, Schmidt, her husband, Jim, and their 6-month-old daughter returned to the excavation pits in 1970, recording archeology sites on West Texas land being developed as Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
The Schmidts had discovered the joys of the volunteer vacation — the kind where travelers don't just see the world, they also work to make it a better place. This is a very different kind of journey, and more travelers appear to be embracing it.
In fact, forgoing mai tais and tropical tans to spend the holiday helping others — whether working in clinics or teaching English in China, maintaining hiking trails or building sanitation facilities — has become so popular that travel guidebooks are adding special sections to their old formats.
"Let's Go found that volunteer travel is a definite trend on the rise," says Lisa Senz, who oversees Let's Go Publications at St. Martin's Press. . . .
In focus groups, participants expressed a desire to travel conscientiously and become more involved in the communities they were visiting, Senz adds.
"Thousands of opportunities are available, from volunteering for a couple of hours to a couple of weeks or months," says Nina Jacobi, a Let's Go editor who who helped research alternative vacations. "People are beginning to realize that travel has a cultural and environmental impact and, in response, are interested in traveling responsibly."
Since 1978, the Schmidts have spent one week every June volunteering their vacation time and their skills to help preserve history. Their daughter Erna Martin, 34, and son Christian, 22, were often in tow. Granddaughter McKenna Martin, 3, is now a digger in training, and nephew Hamilton Rogers, 12, has joined the crew several times.
The first year May Schmidt volunteered was similar to other family outings. "We camped a lot as kids, so that first summer was like a regular trip except we did digging, too," she says.
The junkets later became much more than just a chance to document rock art and sort pottery, dart points and rocks.
"It's kind of like a family reunion, or seeing your old college roommates," Schmidt says. "You make friendships with people from all over Texas and from outside the state.
"The kids love it, the grownups love it and we have become friends with great people who also enjoy the outdoors and archeology. . . . We have been everywhere in the state doing this and learned about historic and prehistoric peoples and cultures and had a great time doing it."
Volunteers play important labor and financial roles for the sponsoring agencies.
"Historically, these archeology projects are underfunded, and they benefit hugely from volunteer efforts," says Michael Collins, research associate at the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory at the University of Texas. "Volunteers, depending on their skills, do everything regular archeologists do. There are a lot of volunteers with special skills — photography, art, geology — and we try to maximize those skills."
When the Texas Archeological Society organized its first school, only a few dozen toiled in the fields. Now, 300 to 600 volunteers — from toddlers to octogenarians — show up for work each June.
Most camp out. Some arrive in high-dollar recreational vehicles. Breakfast is early because Texas summers are hot and workers need to be in the field by 7 a.m. At 1 p.m., they return to camp for lunch and showers. The afternoon is free for personal field trips. There's usually a good swimming hole nearby.
On a trip to Del Rio, some spent the afternoon across the border, shopping and dining. At night, informal and formal lectures are held. Kid-friendly activities, such as Native American games, crafts, basket weaving and fire making, are available for families with pint-sized diggers. There's even an excavation site where kids can hone their skills.
"These projects attract people who have an interest, or think they might have an interest, in archeology," Collins says. "It's one of the fields of science that captures the popular imagination. You cannot imagine how many times someone has said to me, 'I wish I had become an archeologist. I wanted to, but it wasn't practical at the time.' So there's a lot of yearning, and this is a way to satisfy that yearning or curiosity. Then we also have people who come out for two days and say, 'This is hard, dirty, boring, tedious work — and I'm out of here.' "
