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Have you ever taken a vacation that blurred in your memory barely after you’d returned home? Perhaps the packaged hotel and whirlwind visiting of local sites, or simply days spent lounging by the pool or shopping, ran together until you realized you didn’t have a defining experience that truly stood out to last your lifetime.
That wasn’t the case for Kathleen Evans, an account manager at Texas Monthly, when she traveled to India as part of a volunteer group going to visit an orphanage. After sponsoring a child through The Miracle Foundation, an Austin nonprofit organization that supports orphanages in India, the seasoned traveler first incorporated volunteering into her travel plans in 2005, as a more meaningful way to see the world.
“Before I arrived on that first trip, I was thinking of being so noble and giving,” Evans says. “But after meeting those sweet children, I realized they were the ones doing the giving. I have learned so much from these parentless children that have so little in the way of material things – but they have raw unconditional love to give.” Meeting her sponsored child, Milli, was an eye-opening and emotional moment for Evans. “You can actually see that these kids are real, you can see with your own eyes where your money is going.”
Such volunteering while on vacation is a trend that is sweeping the nation; the concept has grown so popular that a term has even been coined for it: voluntourism. Foreign and domestic destinations are luring travelers who want to see more of the world, while at the same time engaging in community service. Long considered the province of students and recent graduates – images of intrepid 20-year-old Peace Corps workers in a remote Sierra Leone village might spring to mind – the idea has reached far beyond that to become accessible, and highly popular, among travelers of all types and ages. Companies and websites specializing in voluntourism have sprung up by the hundreds, and volunteer vacations can be found in all parts of the world, doing all kinds of activities – from working with children such as Evans experienced, to digging wells for clean water in South America or protecting endangered species in South Africa.
Travelers are growing increasingly interested in such experiences, and not only out of a sense of guilt or responsibility. A 2008 Travelocity poll found that 38% of more
than 1,000 respondents were interested in taking a vacation where they could give back and make a difference during their stay. The benefits of such travel are numerous, creating a much deeper experience that enriches travelers’ lives long after they return home. As Marcel Proust wrote, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
You Are Lending a Helping Hand
“With voluntourism, when a responsible travel provider is utilized, a visit to a community can change lives,” says Barbara Joubert, the travel coordinator for The Miracle Foundation. The organization’s trips are generally 9-16 days in length, during which time volunteers play with the children, act as caregivers, help teach English and learning games, and mostly are just there to show the children that they are cared for and special. Joubert also arranges extensions for volunteers to visit the Taj Mahal and other sites. “It’s a rare opportunity to spend time with the world’s children in a way that most people couldn’t imagine,” she says. “Our trips to India combine sightseeing in one of the most interesting places on our planet with serving those who are in need.”
The Miracle Foundation’s voluntourism program creates a sustainable resource for the children they support, because most participants on the trips become sponsors with long-term relationships to their child and often recruit additional sponsors. “Our Ambassador program is not profit-generating; it's sponsor-generating which is more valuable to our children,” adds Joubert. “And of course the trip itself is feel-good for everybody.”
Many organizations rely on such volunteers to carry out their daily missions. David Clemmons, founder of VolunTourism.org, stresses that both skilled and unskilled workers are needed in placements. Health care professionals, for example, present an amazing opportunity to greatly impact communities with greatly needed medical care. But those without medical experience or knowledge can still help build clinics and provide clean water.
“Visitors have never truly been seen as a resource, a true asset, other than the economic impact that they represent,” says Clemmons. “But visitors can be much more than ‘money bags’ walking around urban and community settings. These individuals are an incredible resource.”
You Get To Experience Real Immersion in the Culture
There is a vast difference between a trip in which you dutifully leave your chain hotel, follow the tour guide to the “must-see” sites which are seen through the viewfinder of the camera, and watch local life pass by outside the windows of the tour bus; and a trip to the same destination where you stay in a locally-run inn or home exchange to experience life the way the locals do – perhaps even being willing to get lost. True cultural exchanges bring the world closer together, providing lasting effects to the visitors and giving something back to the indigenous communities rather than merely taking away or, even worse, exploiting.
Clemmons adds another perspective – the value that is created when people of different cultures become role models for each other. The influx of foreign voluntourists into isolated villages and impoverished communities provides a direct contact with alternative cultural traditions, especially for girls. “Seeing a woman from another country bending over a shovel, digging a canal or irrigation ditch, may influence the adult women and their daughters in ways that we are not currently aware,” says Clemmons.
Cultural Embrace, an Austin organization that provides volunteer, learning and teaching vacations, places a high emphasis on international understanding. As their tagline “Discover the Similarities, Share the Differences” implies, the goal for travelers is to bring good will and show the positive strengths of your own culture, while at the same time appreciating and learning from the cultural differences of your foreign surroundings. Emlyn Lee founded Cultural Embrace in 2002 as a response to 9/11, to give people opportunities to learn and embrace other cultures by integrating with other communities rather than relying on media and textbooks for information.
“We believe that visiting a place firsthand allows one to truly experience the authenticity of a culture and develop one's own impressions,” says Lee. “Our goals are to provide quality service and to create opportunities for people to explore our world and enlighten their eyes, minds and hearts. Traveling is a reciprocated flow of communication and interaction between people...the more you seek, the more you learn.” Costa Rica is Cultural Embrace’s most popular destination, and Teach Abroad the most popular program, although Lee provides programs all over the world and customizes meaningful group tours tailored to fit the group's schedule, budget, interests, passion and goals.
You Support Sustainability and Local Communities
Sustainable travel is a way of traveling responsibly that seeks to minimize the environmental and cultural impacts of tourism, with the premise that tourism does not have to threaten the cultures and environments of popular destinations and fragile regions. It respects and protects the natural and human environment, benefits the host community, and allows indigenous people the right to control their own future.
Joubert had been a travel professional for over 20 years before she began organizing Miracle Foundation volunteer trips. “I was tired of being part of the problem,” she says of her switch to nonprofit. “Besides bringing in dollars for the few rich who own the travel companies, and who pay low wages to people who make up the bulk of tourism employees, there is very little value added for the people of the communities that are visited. But when a trip is planned that will benefit the community that is visited, travelers begin to get creative about ways to ensure they leave a place better than they found it."
Like Joubert, Emlyn Lee had also managed high-end luxury tours before starting Cultural Embrace. “There were times on safaris in Africa, or tours through SE Asia, that I would deviate the itinerary and ask our guides and drivers to stop by a local school, orphanage or village, and it became the highlight of the trip,” she says. “There is an unique connection, when you can get off a bus from a tour and extend your arm to shake someone's hand. While the sites, history, food and hotels open the eyes of tourists, getting immersed with the local culture opens your mind and heart as a global citizen.” Cultural Embrace offers visitors to Austin the same type of exchange with its new Volunteer in Austin program, aimed at attracting international travelers to experience Austin while providing a community service locally, with options to take English language lessons.
You End Up Receiving More Than You Give
Virtually everyone who takes a volunteer vacation comes home raving not about the contributions they made, but about what they got out of it. CONTACT _Con-3A6D85D530 Kathleen Evans has made two subsequent trips to India with The Miracle Foundation, and has no plans to cease her volunteer travels. “Each time I get more out of the experience,” she says. “The attachment to the children, the beauty of the people, and the fascination with a culture and religion so different than my own are the main reasons I keep going back. These children have taught me that as long has you have your basic needs met – clean drinking water, food, healthcare, education, love – then you really don't need all the material things to make you happy.”
After two decades in the travel industry, CONTACT _Con-3A6D85D535 Barbara Joubert believes more than ever that travel is the key to changing the world. “What has surprised me most has been the reciprocal impact made between our Impact Travel Volunteers and the children we visit. Many people begin this journey with the idea that they are there to help our children. Yet somewhere between the chaos of Delhi and the presence required to be with up to 200 children at a time, most volunteers discover that they have been given much more than what they gave.”
Cultural Embrace
7201 Bill Hughes Road, Austin, TX 78745
Phone: 512-469-9089
Website: www.culturalembrace.com
The Miracle Foundation
1506 W. 6th Street, Austin, TX 78703
Phone: 512- 329-8635
Website: www.miraclefoundation.org
VolunTourism.org
717 Third Avenue, Chula Vista, CA
Phone: 619-434-6230
Website: www.voluntourism.org