A trip to bountiful experiences

By MARTHA STEVENSON OLSON, New York Times, published May 28, 2000

Whether you're refurbishing school rooms or helping on an archaeological dig, vacations centered on volunteering offer many riches in return.

An increasing number of altruists are spending their vacation weeks on volunteer or service efforts, performing tasks from clearing waste ditches in Mexico to reintroducing Przewalski horses in Mongolia.

Among these travelers are college students seeking an inexpensive, meaningful summer abroad, professionals on sabbatical, and other people who want a grass-roots sense of the cultures they visit and an engagement with local people that cannot be had from a cruise ship or tour bus.

As these "vacations" become more popular -- Habitat for Humanity fielded 700 volunteers in 1994 and expects 3,000 this year -- more options become available and the possibilities can be bewildering:

Service can be a weekend or two years; lodging can be in tents or in a villa; volunteers may get a small living expense, along with free room and board, or they might pay a fee (possibly tax-deductible) that approaches the cost of a regular tour.

A good primer is Volunteer Vacations, a guide by Bill McMillon (1999), published by the Chicago Review Press, that lists organizations and agencies, cross-referenced by expense, region and type of project. Most riveting are returned volunteers' articles, ranging from a witty account of helping to restore Stowe Landscape Gardens in Britain to wrenching memories of the Home for the Dying and Destitute in Calcutta.

Many of these writers found their service rewarding. "I received much more than I gave," was the echoing summary.

The Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service, created in 1948 under the aegis of UNESCO, helps coordinate voluntary service, especially the work camps, worldwide. It publishes a guidebook, How to Be a Volunteer in Europe, Africa, Asia and America.

The Internet has several useful sites. One of the best is http://wwwidealist.org, with links to many United States and global agencies; it freely accepts listings. Another is http://http://www.avso.org, which has a youth orientation.

Many organizations' Web sites offer links to accounts of returned volunteers, or to the volunteers themselves, so it is worth researching as much as possible.

While here, as elsewhere, the level of comfort and security most often rises with the amount of money expended, the mantra of this kind of experience is: "Keep your sense of humor, learn to operate as a group, and don't expect everything to go exactly as planned."

Since 1976, with former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, as high-profile participants, Habitat for Humanity has built more than 85,000 houses, with "sweat equity" from the prospective residents, in more than 2,000 communities around the world.

Habitat's Global Village program now mixes tourism with its missions. For example, a 19-day Botswana trip includes side trips to Victoria Falls, white-water rafting, a game drive and cultural exchanges, along with the building activities. The cost to participants is about $4,000. That fee covers a donation to the building fund in Kasane, medical insurance, housing, ground transportation, meals, administration fees and round-trip air fare to Africa.

The American Friends Service Committee has projects around the United States. It also provides links to service organizations with long- and short-term volunteer opportunities. For instance, Quaker Workcamps International specializes in rebuilding burned churches in the United States.

Other programs focus more on cultural exchange and economic self-sufficiency. Participants might spend weeks helping to teach English, refurbish school rooms, assist in vocational programs or engage in agricultural or community development. Costs, about $500 to $1,000 depending on whether the destination is domestic or international, include most expenses but not air fare.

Two of these organizations, the Global Citizens Network and Global Volunteers, are headquartered in St. Paul, Minn. Each sends small teams of volunteers to help communities on projects they initiate. These might include helping Tibetan refugees in camps in Nepal, refurbishing a preschool in Guatemala's highlands, or teaching English and helping build a school in Ecuador.

Amizade began with an orthopedic-shoe workshop in Santarem, Brazil, in 1995. Its programs have grown to include building a vocational school for Santarem street children, as well as projects in the Korrawinga aboriginal community of Queensland, Australia.

Another group of agencies serve as clearinghouses for voluntary service worldwide, often for college students or youths who are willing to rough it in exchange for a meaningful experience abroad in relatively secure conditions.

These generally charge an administrative fee of $500 or less. They typically require participants to pay their way to and from the work site and to serve two to three weeks, mostly during the summer months, with basic room and board often provided free or at less than $10 a day.

One of the largest, oldest and best known of these is the Council for International Educational Exchange, which claims an international staff of nearly 800 in more than 30 countries.

Volunteers for Peace, founded in 1982, originally focused on exchanges across the Iron Curtain. It now has more than 1,800 programs in more than 70 countries. Listings range from looking after children orphaned by AIDS in Thailand to helping stage a music festival in Denmark.

Other organizations combine volunteerism with eco-tourism. Earthwatch is probably the best known, with expedition teams of scientists, educators and the public.

Offerings can range from a Discovery Weekend cataloging plant specimens at Kew Gardens in London ($150) to a two-week expedition to Ladakh, in India, tracking snow leopards ($2,495); neither price includes air fare.

The Oceanic Society offers expeditions to research sea birds and marine mammals including whales, dolphins and sea turtles worldwide, from the Amazon basin to Monterey Bay.

Researching and saving coral reefs is the mission of Cedam, or Conservation, Education, Diving, Awareness and Marine Research, which organizes expeditions to coral cays in the Caribbean and Pacific regions, with volunteer divers (and nondivers, should they wish to sign up) helping researchers document reef life.

The Sierra Club has a large listing of domestic and international trips, including "service trips" often geared to clearing or building trails in the wilderness; some of these are directed at teenage girls and their mothers, or to women or single hikers.

Arguably more rugged but much cheaper are the American Hiking Society's volunteer opportunities, also clearing and building trails, in some of the most beautiful natural areas of the country.

A range of agencies fields archaeology volunteers. Passport in Time, a program of the U.S. Forest Service, welcomes people who want to help excavate and preserve historic and prehistoric sites on public land.

Historical sites in the Caribbean are the focus of volunteers with Caribbean Volunteer Expeditions, who work with local museums, universities and national parks on the islands; Elderhostel also participates in some of these trips.

Mobility International USA aims to assist people with disabilities who want to teach, study, research, work or volunteer overseas. Its affiliate, the National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange, can help plan programs to fit a volunteer's interests and resources.

For more information

Contact the following organizations:

American Hiking Society, 1422 Fenwick Lane, Silver Spring, MD 20910; (301) 565-6704; fax (301) 565-6714; e-mail at volvac@americanhiking.org; http://www.americanhiking.org.

Amizade, 367 S Graham St., Pittsburgh, PA 15232; (888) 973-4443, fax (412) 648-1492; e-mail volunteer@amizade.org; http://www.amizade.org.

Cedam International, One Fox Road, Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520; (914) 271-5365; fax (914) 271-4723; e-mail cedamint@aol.com; http://www.cedam.org.

Council for International Educational Exchange, 633 Third Avenue, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10017; (212) 822-2600; fax (212) 822-2649; e-mail info@councilexchanges.org; http://www.councilexchanges.org.

Caribbean Volunteer Expeditions, Post Office Box 388, Corning, NY 14830; (607) 962-7846; fax (607) 936-1153; e-mail ahershcve@aol.org; http://www.cvexp.org.

Earthwatch Institute, 3 Clock Tower Place, Suite 100, Box 75, Maynard, MA 01754; (800) 776-0188 or (978) 461-0081; fax (978) 461-2332; e-mail info@earthwatch.org; http://www.earthwatch.org.

Global Citizens Network, 130 North Howell St., St. Paul, MN 55104; (800) 644-9292; e-mail gcn@mtn.org; http://www.globalcitizens.org.

Global Village, Habitat for Humanity International, 121 Habitat St., Americus, GA 31709; (800) 422-4828, ext, 2549; e-mail gv@hfhi.org; http://www.habitat.org.

Global Volunteers, 375 E Little Canada Rd., St. Paul, MN 55117; (800) 487-1074; fax (651) 482-0915; e-mail at email@globalvolunteers.org; http://www.globalvolunteers.org.

Mobility International USA, PO Box 10767, Eugene, OR 97440; (541) 343-1284; fax (541) 343-6812; e-mail info@miusa.org; http://www.miusa.org.

Oceanic Society, Fort Mason Center, Building E, San Francisco, CA 94123; (800) 326-7491; fax (415) 474-3395; e-mail ross@oceanic-society.org; http://www.oceanic-society.org.

Passport in Time Clearinghouse, PO Box 31315, Tucson, AR 85751; (800) 281-9176; fax (520) 298-7044; e-mail pit@sricrm.com.

Quaker Information Center, 1501 Cherry St., Philadelphia, PA 19102; (215) 241-7024; fax (215) 567-2096; e-mail quakerinfo@afsc.org.

Sierra Club Outings, 85 Second St., Second Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105; (415) 977-5522; fax (415) 977-5799; e-mail national.outings@sierraclub.org; http://www.sierraclub.org/outings.

Volunteers for Peace International Workcamps, 1034 Tiffany Road, Belmont, VT 05730; (802) 259-2759; fax (802) 259-2922; e-mail vfp@vfp.org; http://www.vfp.org.

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