Departures Travel Column

By Donovan Travel

Volunteer Vacations

The often-exclaimed phrase “I need a vacation” stirs images of relaxing beaches and not a worry in the world. But slip “volunteer” into the phrase and the concept of vacation takes on an entirely different definition.

A volunteer vacation can be one of the most soul-satisfying means of making new friends, gaining a sense of your global community and delving further into a particular region or culture than the typical tourist ever would or could.

Depending on what effort moves you most – whether it’s preserving the ecology of the Brazilian rainforest, saving the wildlife in Africa, or teaching English in China – there’s likely a volunteer vacation out there for you. You can stay within our own borders (Tauck World Discovery offers a Yellowstone Park volunteer effort with their Cowboy Country Package) or head to far off lands where oftentimes daily necessities are scarce. In both cases, lifelong, and life altering, experiences are in abundance.

Even pondering a volunteer vacation is a process of self-realization of your values, goals and determination. What’s my endurance? What can I go without? Which effort would I find most enriching? What sort of value can I bring? These are questions that will inevitably help you find the right volunteer service.

The duration of a volunteer vacation ranges from a few days or weeks to as long as a month or more. Costs vary as well, and in most cases it’s the volunteer who incurs the cost of transportation to the volunteer site and room and board, although with some organizations, room and board is covered in exchange for your work.

Many programs offer leisure time to allow volunteers to further explore their surroundings; some even offer coordinated excursions. In the case of more intensive programs that offer little or no leisure time, some volunteers opt to tack on an extended personal vacation once the work is complete.

There’s no denying a volunteer vacation is a deviation from the typical getaway, but if you have an enthusiasm to jump into the unknown, and are more than willing to lend a hand, it will likely become one of the more memorable vacations you’ll ever take. For more information on becoming a “voluntourist” and to coordinate your travel plans to your volunteer location, contact your local travel experts.