Elisabeth Eaves recently visited the Caribbean island of St. Vincent to voluntour with the Reef Environmental Education Foundation. The scuba diver spent her underwater time identifying and cataloging glassy sweepers, barracuda and other assorted fish, all for the benefit of ecology and science. “These days, lots of organizations send travelers on ‘voluntours,’ wherein you pay for the privilege of doing a short stint of conservation work—on turtle hatcheries in Central America, bear-tracking missions in the high Andes, or wildlife parks in East Africa, to name a few projects,” she wrote in a series of stories for Slate. “What do-gooderism I possess is tied to Jacques Cousteau fantasies. Maybe, just maybe, I can contribute a tiny little bit to marine biology.” So what does she think about voluntourism now? I asked her a few questions via e-mail.

Voluntourism, like all trends, is being scrutinized. Some suggest it’s not all it’s cracked up to be—that many outfits put profit ahead of doing good work, that all the money people spend on costly voluntourism vacations could be put to much better use. Any thoughts on that?

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Iconic destinations in Italy, Australia, California and the Pacific Ocean are at the top of travelers’ minds this week, as well as a topic that’s more controversial than Hillary Clinton. Here’s the Zeitgeist. 

Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
36 Hours in the Cinque Terre, Italy

Most Read Feature
World Hum (posted this week)
The Lost World of Nigeria

Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Through the Roof: A Tour of the Country’s Priciest Hotel Suite
* The cost to stay in the Ty Warner Penthouse at the Four Seasons New York? $30,000 a night. 

Most Viewed Travel Story
Telegraph UK (current)
Exploring the Great Barrier Reef

Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (posted this week)
Voluntourism: ‘Overpriced Guilt Trips’ or a ‘Real Chance to Save the World’?

“Hot This Week” Destination
Yahoo! (this week)
Hawaii

Most Viewed Travel Post
BlogHer (current)
The W Hotel: Form over Function?

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That’s how Time frames its recent story on voluntourism, or, as its headline states, “Vacationing like Brangelina.” Catchy, but not truly representative of the well-reported piece on a growing travel niche. 

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In our ongoing quest to chronicle the comings and goings in the travel lexicon we bring you “geotourism,” a term describing travel that, in the AP’s words, “focuses on a destination’s unique culture and history and aims to have visitors help enrich those qualities.” Coined several years ago by the National Geographic Society’s Jonathan B. Tourtellot, the term hasn’t yet caught on among most travelers. But according to the AP, “it’s on the lips of travel professionals who describe it as a step beyond the better-known environmentally friendly ecotourism. While geotourism encourages treading lightly on nature, it’s also about authenticity and making a place better by visiting and spending money.”

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The first time I ran into a couple of Flying Doctors was in the tiny, dusty Baja town of El Rosario, a wide spot in the two-lane Transpeninsular Highway about half a day’s drive south of the border. They’d just dropped in for a short while and were having lunch at Mama Espinoza’s. In addition to offering much-needed medical aid to locals, they seemed to be having the time of their lives. In Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle story about volunteer opportunities in Mexico, I learned The Flying Doctors also sometimes travel with mere civilians. Writes Janice Green, who volunteered with the group known in Spanish as Los Médicos Voladores: “Besides medical volunteers, LMV welcomes translators, pilots and unskilled folks like me—I learned to test for blood glucose levels a week before the trip.”

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Dear Rolf,

I’m planning on departing on a long-term round-the-world journey sometime in the next few years, and I was interested in volunteering throughout the journey. To learn more about this possibility, I checked out the Cross Cultural Solutions site and was excited to see the many different opportunities. However, I soon discovered it wasn’t free. It was, actually, very expensive!

—Ian

Dear Ian,

You bring up a good point. Volunteering is indeed a great way to experience the world, and it can be discouraging to discover that many volunteering opportunities are expensive enough to deplete your long-term travel budget.

With this in mind, I recommend that vagabonders look for informal volunteer opportunities on the road. That is, instead of applying in advance through a volunteering agency, just keep your eyes open as you travel, and donate your skills as you see a need. As a former teacher, I often drop by neighborhood schools in various countries to volunteer informal English lessons to local students and classes. Not only does this help kids practice their English and interact with someone from a different country—it also deepens my experience of travel, and it allows me to meet local people who aren’t tied to the tourism trade.

Similarly, if you have expertise in, say, computers, you might volunteer your time helping to improve online access at village Internet cafes. If you’ve been trained in law or health, you can probably find ways to help with refugee communities near international borders. Even simple willingness to lend a hand in extraordinary conditions can be a great way to reach out to your host community—and a good example of this came after the Asian tsunami of 2004, when scores of independent travelers in Thailand and Sri Lanka spontaneously pitched in to assist rescue, recovery, relocation and fund-raising efforts.

So as you travel, definitely keep an eye out for these types of spontaneous volunteer opportunities. Just remember to be sensitive to local concerns as you offer your time and labor. Volunteering expert Doug Cutchins (whose book Volunteer Vacations is in its 9th edition) tells me that “the concept of ‘volunteering’ isn’t universally held. There are some cultures and countries around the world where what you want to do won’t be familiar, or where your help—as an outsider from a country with perceived power—won’t be welcomed.”

Moreover, even as you plan to volunteer informally as you travel, I recommend that you be aware of the formal volunteer opportunities that are out there, even if they require a fee. Transitions Abroad magazine, for example, maintains great online resources for volunteering, and I recommend a subscription to anyone who is considering a long-term journey that combines travel with volunteering, work or study.

This in mind, I contacted Transitions Abroad editor Gregory Hubbs to sound off on a few of your volunteering concerns, and here are some outtakes from our Q&A:

Why does it typically cost so much to volunteer through an agency?

Gregory Hubbs: Primarily because most volunteers are more of a liability until they are trained to help the local community. Often the money spent volunteering is best spent on the local volunteers/people, particularly if the outside volunteer does not have medical, teaching, technical or other useful skills which would allow them to “hit the ground running.” In addition, it is usually very important for there to be continuity in a volunteer project for it to truly succeed in helping those who need it. Several online resources address this issue, including articles in Transitions Abroad, Verge Magazine and the Cross-Cultural Solutions website itself.

How does one prepare for a volunteering experience?

GH: You must decide the type of volunteer work for which you are best suited. It is very important that to make sure that you have both the interest and the physical ability to volunteer for a particular project, and this requires some self-analysis beforehand. You must also take into account many of the practical issues you will encounter abroad as a volunteer and plan how to handle them. Who pays for meals? Who pays for the room? Do you have health insurance while you travel, along with all required immunizations? Have you taken into account all transportation costs to and from the location(s) you choose to volunteer? A good article on preparatory issues which could apply to short-term volunteer work can be found here.

Where in the world can one volunteer?

GH: This can depend on whether your itinerary will be spontaneous or highly planned. If you tend to prefer some spontaneity, as do I, then doing research on a variety of programs up front is even more important in order to avoid losing any up-front registration money. Around-the-world trips rarely go as planned, nor should they. But to get to the meat of the issue: There are a couple of excellent “umbrella” organizations with volunteer programs that go on year-round:

• The primary resource and database is IVPA, where worldwide programs can be found in a database in the context of other helpful resources and advice, much of it pulled from Zahara Heckscher’s classic book: How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas.
• Volunteers for Peace has a searchable database of workcamps which cost in the hundreds, not thousands.
• The International Workcamp Directory lists a variety of workcamps.
• Workcamps really are the best bet, as they are low-cost and do not generally require any specific skill-set. Workcamps exist in locations around the world and allow people to live and volunteer together for a few weeks on grassroots projects often organized by local sponsors. Such volunteer projects are often most beneficial for the community, since income remains local and the cost of training volunteers is very low. A good participant report on the subject can be found here.
  

Volunteer Vacations author Cutchins suggests a few more options for less-expensive international volunteer placement agencies (most of them in Western Europe), including:

• The BTCV (used to be the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers; now just uses its initials), which offers a huge number of conservation-related volunteer trips. Most of their opportunities are in the UK, with more expensive ones in other countries.
• Vitalise, also in the UK, which accepts volunteers for a minimum of a week at a time.
• Rempart, which operates many archeological and historic renovation programs in France.
• WWOOF (World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), which may be your best bet. You join, and then are given a guide to organic farms around the world.  The details are up to you and the farmer, but usually you exchange your labor for room and board.
• Sunseed Desert Technology in Spain, which works on ways to “develop, demonstrate, and communicate accessible low-tech methods of living sustainably in a semi-arid environment.”

Columnist Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel.

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