Global Adventures: Volunteering Overseas
Increasingly, vacationers want to do more than just admire a mountain stream or loll on a sunny beach when they leave home. They want to help somebody.
A number of organizations can help you help others as an overseas volunteer. One thing to keep in mind, though: While you are volunteering your services, you are also paying for the privilege. There are no free lunches in these programs but plenty of gratifying experiences.
Global Citizens Network
This group based in St. Paul, Minnesota exists with only two part-time staffers and many volunteers. Global Citizens organizes trips to much of the world.
Volunteers regularly visit two sites in Kenya, for example. At Taracha Village, a farming community of 3,000, they have been building a health clinic. And at Rombo, at the foot of famed Mount Kilimanjaro, they are also constructing a health clinic for a Masai village of 1,000.
Global Citizens has also been visiting Tibetan refugee settlements in Nepal, at the foot of the Annapurna Mountains, where they are developing a recycling center and building a job training center.
Explorations in Travel
This program provides volunteer placements, whether you want to spend a few weeks or an extended period. Volunteers are needed to work in schools, biological reserves, rain forests and even to monitor sea turtles.
Among the experiences of past adventurers, Jack Stoddard lived in an Australian rain forest in Queensland feeding and caring for flying foxes. That's bats. If that is not to your liking, perhaps Cathy Vaughan's trip to New Zealand might interest you. She worked on organic farms. But it wasn't all work. She had time to hike the Southern Alps of the country and do some whitewater rafting.
And Sam Haines worked at a biospheric reserve on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.
Amizade
Amizade, (Portuguese for friendship) began in 1994 with the hope of saving the rain forest by helping those who lived there. Today, Amizade collaborates with communities around the world. The volunteer programs are a mix of community service, educational opportunities and recreational activities.
Among Amizade projects are building classrooms and renovating a health clinic in the Brazilian Amazon region. As in most programs, volunteers do not need any special skills, only a willingness to help. Local masons and carpenters instruct volunteers. While there, volunteers may also have an opportunity to take a boat ride down the Amazon, hike in a forest preserve or visit an open air market.
The rural area around the city of Cocha bamba in the Bolivian Andes is the site for another volunteer project. Volunteers have worked on an adult education center, adding rooms for an orphanage and renovating a nursing home. Long-term volunteer options are available.
Habitat for Humanity
Established in 1976, Habitat for Humanity has built more than 125,000 houses around the world. It is best known because of the active involvement of President Jimmy Carter, an accomplished carpenter, who spends a week each year building houses. (His wife , Rosalynn, like many Habitat volunteers, learned on the job).
Using volunteer workers and donations for materials, Habitat constructs and rehabs modest housing with the help of the future owners. The houses are sold to the owners at no profit with no interest loans. The monthly mortgage payments are used to build more Habitat homes.
Carter has been involved with Habitat for 20 years.
"Habitat has successfully removed the stigma of charity by substituting it with a sense of partnership," says Carter.
Books
Find these books online at Barnes and Noble.com.
- How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas. Joseph Collins. Penguin Publishing. December 2001
- Volunteer Vacations: Short-Term Adventures That Will Benefit You and Others. Bill McMillon, Dennis Schmitz. Chicago Review Press. February 2006
- Habitat for Humanity: How to Build a House. Larry Haun, Tim Snyder. Taunton Press. October 2002
