Volunteering Gains Popularity
Volunteer vacations can be meaningful and magical—and fairly inexpensive as well. Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village program, which places volunteers at homebuilding projects around the world, generally costs $100 a day, plus airfare. A Global Volunteers service trip this summer will range from $1,395 to $2,600. And a typical expedition offered by Earthwatch Institute, which engages people worldwide in scientific research and education, will cost $1,850. The fee paid to the nonprofit sponsor is fully tax-deductible.

Organizations are reporting a growth spurt in volunteer vacations—much of it attributed to the outpouring of compassion following the Indian Ocean tsunami. This year, as an example, Habitat for Humanity will send 15 teams to that region, triple the usual number.

Vanessa Sandom, a former mayor from Hopewell Township in New Jersey, returned in May from Sri Lanka, where she helped clean beaches of debris. “I couldn’t not go,” says Sandom, who takes her two sons, 13 and 15, on service trips every summer.

In past summers, the family has taught English to kids on the Cook Islands and worked in Ecuador as aides at a school for children with disabilities. In July, they will depart for Poland to work at a summer camp for disadvantaged youngsters.

“I decided that when my kids were old enough, they needed to get a different perspective on the world than what they were getting from our community. Short of moving overseas, this is a tremendous way to appreciate diversity,” says Sandom, 51. “My kids will say stuff like: `People laugh the same in every language.’ It brings a greater sensibility to how we are all the same—and you realize the fundamental differences, too.”

At Global Volunteers, most participants are over 50, well-educated and predominantly female. Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village attracts mostly women, 26 to 49. And Earthwatch, which encourages intergenerational teams, mixes up its teams according to age.

Experiential Learning
Peter Vacchina, a science teacher at Hudson High School in Hudson, Mass., has taken three teams of students to the Pantanal wetlands in Brazil, to work with scientists there on an Earthwatch project to help conserve the ecosystem and preserve the lifestyle of the region’s ranchers.

“Even though it’s still my work, it takes me very much away from my job,” says Vacchina, 56. “And I feel like I’m giving to a worthy cause.”

The experience has had a ripple effect back home where Vacchina’s students are replicating their fieldwork along the Assabett River behind their school. Among other things, they are collecting data on amphibians and reptiles, and they’ve cleared and are maintaining a waterfront trail. Another special benefit: One-third of Hudson’s residents are of Brazilian or Portuguese descent so the trip created a cultural bridge as well.

A host of service trips is being offered this summer, among them: Global Volunteers participants will be teaching conversational English in Italy, constructing community buildings in Costa Rica, and working with babies at a failure-to-thrive clinic in Romania. Habitat for Humanity will have a team learning to make adobe in New Mexico, along with homebuilding teams in Zambia and Bulgaria. New this summer: Earthwatch volunteers are going to be tracking wildlife in an Alaskan forest and excavating Stone Age caves in France.

“It’s very much service-learning,” notes David Minich, director of Habitat’s Global Village program. “It’s typical that folks travel out thinking about how much help they can be and they come home thinking about how much they’ve received. They realize out in the field that the love and hope, and the relationships and the spiritual and emotional connections they make with people of another culture are something they would never otherwise get.”

Ellen Uzelac is a freelance writer based in Chestertown, Maryland.
Copyright 2005 Community Foundations of America
Used with permission