Star quality isn’t just reserved for the rich and famous. GoVoluntouring helps travelers of all kinds connect with their ideal volunteer vacation in locations across the world, including those that the celebs hold dear to their hearts:

Angelina Jolie fights poverty in Cambodia

This Oscar-winning actress who often graces the “most beautiful woman” list can be found in Cambodia. Whilst filming Tomb Raider, Jolie was touched by the plight of the poor and impoverished. See for yourself the source of Jolie’s inspiration with Globe Aware’s Cambodia Rediscovered program. Even though the tourism trade is blossoming in Cambodia, a large percentage of people still live in poverty. With a street-child problem and an underfunded education and medical system, volunteers will be working on a variety of projects. However, they will still have time however to visit the ancient temples that feature in Jolie’s Tomb Raider movies.

Natalie Portman loves them big and hairy

From black swans to mountain gorillas, Natalie Portman trekked into the rainforests of Rwanda to raise awareness of these beautiful giants. Gorillas share 98% of their genetic make-up with humans and volunteers can get involved with their plight by joining the Peaks Foundation. The organization runs a one-week trip where volunteers climb Rwanda’s highest peak, Nyiragongo (an active volcano), in support of the conservation efforts at Virunga National Park.

Elton John turns tragedy to triumph

St. Lucia is where celebrities are usually snapped lounging on the beach or private yacht, however this is one of the places where volunteers are needed to help educate the local people about HIV and AIDS. Elton John has seen many of his friend’s succumb to this disease and has channeled his grief into fund raising efforts, providing money for research and vital services to those in need. Join African Impact in the impressive setting of the Greater St. Lucia Wetland Park, a UNESCO world heritage site, as they help the local orphans and raise awareness of HIV and AIDS.

Jennifer Lopez helps women around the world

After learning that 350 young women have been killed in areas of Mexico since 1993, causes for women took precedence with this Latino songstress. These issues are certainly not unique to Mexico; volunteers with Kaya Responsible Travel will be improving the future of abused women in the Philippines. This project is about empowering women through encouraging social engagement and teaching them about their rights.

GoVoluntouring is an online community for volunteers, overseas teachers, and learners’ abroad that allow users to perform detailed searches from a huge database of projects and programs. With thousands of programs to choose from, GoVoluntouring offers pre-checked charities and non-profits the chance to connect with the volunteers they desperately need, with no added cost to the user or the volunteer organization.  For more information visit www.govoluntouring.com.

Enjoy!

A modern day conundrum: You want to go on holiday, but you feel bad for just lazing around for a week and you are really just harming the environment with your carbon footprint….but you reeeeally want a holiday. What do you do?

Become a Volutourist.

It’s a surprisingly short time ago that volunteering  became so wide-spread and easily available. These days you can volunteer from one week to two years, but this is a relatively new phenomenon. The most recent development for volunteering  is ‘voluntourism’. This is, as the name suggests, where you combine vacation travel with volunteering  at your chosen destination. Typically a two-week holiday will be split between the two ‘themes’ of the holiday. By doing this, it creates a far more personal experience to any holiday as well as giving you a different insight to a country you might not have visited before. Volunteering will inevitably introduce people on vacation to the people and culture’s rather than just the tourist spots and crowds. The idea of it is connected to ‘sustainable travel ’, defined as “lessening the toll that travel and tourism takes on the environment and local cultures.”

There are many bonuses to volunteering while on holiday, cost being a huge one. Not only do you feel like you have really earned your holiday by helping out, it also can cut the price quite significantly. Europe and North America are home to the highest amount of voluntourists, with the majority heading to Asia, Africa and South America. While anyone can benefit from voluntourism, people with a vocational skill can be especially beneficial to the people of the country they are visiting. Doctors, carpenters, construction workers, teachers to name but a few can really help to lead a team through experience and maximise the short time spent with a community.

As I mentioned earlier, volunteering will often take you away from the crowds and into the smaller villages and the ‘real’ cultural centres, which is why more people are turning to ‘voluncations’.

While there are the “pro”s to holidaying this way, there are of course some negative factors to consider. The main one is this: What happens after you leave? Is there a constant stream of people to volunteer, or is it only seasonal? You want to make sure the community is actually benefitting from your cumulative weekly volunteer groups, and not damaging their infrastructure. You also need to make sure the organization you have booked through has an in-country contact and a reasonable orientation programme.

It is also vital to remember that you don’t have to leave your country to help make a difference. In situations of national disasters, as much help as is possible is needed. Think of the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina that required such huge manpower to help clear and feed the thousands left homeless.

There are multiple companies that specialize in voluntourists. Globeaware.org and womeninprogress.org have specifically women-based volunteer help to help teach skills so these women can make a living for themselves.

Voluntourism is great for people who have not traveled alone abroad much, but who have the desire for adventure and interest in learning, as well as busy people who cant take a long time off to volunteer, but who want to help and also relax!

What is voluntouring? Voluntouring is a cultural emersion volunteer experience that gives you a chance to lend a helping hand while experiencing other cultures and countries. Voluntouring creates stimulating, service-oriented vacations.

Voluntourists embark on trips to serve, to learn and help others. They return with new skills, life-experiences, and understanding.

Voluntourism advantages for the individual volunteer:

• Participating in meaningful service and having a deep impact on a community
• Developing new skills
• Interacting with locals and experiencing new cultures
• Seeing and exploring places you typically wouldn’t go to as a tourist
• Creating friendships and memories
• Experiencing true satisfaction from your vacation leisure time

Want to get involved and find vacations you can serve with?

Globe Aware is a great organization that helps people search and sign-up for vacations that give more. Globe Aware coordinates, organizes and leads volunteer vacations, service vacations, working holidays and service trips to places all over the world. Get out of the cold, and try your hand in some voluntouring!

The entire article is here, enjoy:

Water for San Pedro de Casta

Gainesville women ‘vacation’ in Andean town for a cause

Published: Saturday, October 29, 2011 at 6:01 a.m.

The ideal vacation is rarely one where water is a precious commodity. Resort destinations don’t usually advertise vacationers digging a well, educating school children and traveling on a treacherous, one-lane road in the only vehicle in the village. But for some, to sunbathe on a beach just doesn’t cut it.

Three Gainesville women recently returned from a “volunteer vacation” to San Pedro de Casta, Peru, where they worked in rustic conditions for one week helping dig and build a well and teaching children English.

But their work just scratched the surface, and on their return, the women decided to host a fundraiser for the 999 residents of the small village. “Bring Water to San Pedro de Casta” is scheduled from 7 to 10 p.m. Nov. 4 at the United Church of Gainesville.

Beth Karbe, an acupuncturist and herbalist, said she and her friends worked from dawn to dusk and stayed in a hotel with little water and no heat in the Andes Mountains.

“If you could call it a hotel, it was more like a building,” she said. “There were no showers and the toilet only flushed every three or four times.”

San Pedro de Casta, which is at an elevation of 12,000 feet, is only 50 miles east of Lima, Peru’s capital, but it takes 5 ½ hours to get there due to its remote location.

Karbe said she discovered the volunteer vacation after her first trip to Peru, where she traveled on her own to an orphanage that housed 50 young children. On her second trip in August, she traveled through Globe Aware, a U.S. based non-profit organization that arranges supervised volunteer vacations all over the world to “promote cultural awareness and sustainability,” according to its mission statement. This time she traveled with two other Gainesville women, Judy Keathley and Carol Barron.

About 30 percent of San Pedro’s residents are children, and about 80 percent of them are malnourished, according to Karbe. The lack of water means little grass for cows to feed on, which in turn causes the animals to fail to produce milk.

The absence of water creates other difficulties as well, such as sanitation.

Two members on the trip were sick with dysentery, and had to walk a mile to the well to get fresh water, said Barron, the director of construction for Alachua County Habitat for Humanity.

“It was primitive and very intense,” she said. “The people there that were 40 looked 65 because they’re so dehydrated.”

Barron said that for more than 50 percent of their trip there was no running water, and for the other half of the time the water was freezing.

Karbe said the now dry town was previously a lush plateau, but climate change and global warming has resulted in water becoming scarce.

Karbe said the women were unsatisfied with their progress by the end of the week and wanted to help more.

“As hard as we worked, we didn’t really accomplish that much.”

So to compensate, they’ve planned a fundraiser with a goal of raising $22,000 to bring an irrigation and water system to the town.

The “Bring Water to San Pedro” fundraiser includes wine and cheese, a silent auction and live performances of Peruvian music. Tickets cost $35, or for those who are unable to attend the event, a monetary donation can be sent electronically to the Bring Water to San Pedro de Casta Project at the Internet link, Globeaware.org/sponsor-volunteer-vacationer and enter “Bring Water to San Pedro” in the field.

The cost of the trip — not including airfare to Peru, which the women paid for themselves — covered food, guides, travel costs within the country, tools and their gift to the area — a water heater for the local school.

Karbe said there are no volunteers scheduled for travel to Peru for the next year, likely due to the rustic living conditions.

“Every time I turn the water on to brush my teeth, I’m grateful,” Karbe said.

Copyright © 2011 Gainesville.com

Increase Health by Helping Others

Created 10/17/2011 – 06:27

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.”

One of my favorite Buddhist quotes reminds me that happiness never decreases by being shared.

Sharing and spreading your happiness does nothing but increase happiness in your community and make the world a better place. Happiness and good deeds really are contagious.

Speaking of contagious, ever wonder what kind of health benefits come from those fuzzy feelings that come from helping others and spreading your joy?

Well let me tell you, my friend!

Numerous studies have found that volunteering has a huge impact on lowering rates of depression, especially for folks over 65. More specifically, a Duke University study concluded that individuals who participated in volunteer activity after having heart attacks experienced less despair and depression, which is often liked to mortality in post coronary artery disease patients. So ultimately, these happy, uplifting feelings can increase longevity and save your life!

In addition to reducing depression, volunteering has also been found to help chronic pain sufferers. A Boston College study examined how pain, depression, disability, and self-efficacy were affected through volunteering. Results showed that pain, depression and disability improved through volunteering, concluding that chronic pain may be alleviated through volunteering.

Volunteers report having an increased sense of connectedness through helping others — an important aspect to spiritual health and wellness. In addition to an increased feeling of connectedness, helping others gives you a greater sense of purpose and meaning in life.

So often in the news today, our attention is brought to harsh and negative realities. Helping others makes it easier to focus on the positive aspects of life, thus increasing happiness that can be easily spread.

Start small by holding open a door, smiling at a stranger, paying the toll of someone behind you, or simply going out of your way to help a friend in need.

Or go big by planning a volunteer vacation. My good ol’ mom racked up enough miles to fly to Thailand and build houses through habitat for humanity, a life-changing and rewarding experience.

You don’t need to leave the country to volunteer, help others, and feel good! You can get an overall increased sense of well being, better mental and physical health by helping others in your community today.

Globe Aware , a nonprofit 501 (c) (3) develops short-term volunteer programs in international environments that encourage people to immerse themselves in a unique way of giving back.

Globe Aware has been featured and profiled in numerous news outlets, among them: CNN, The New York Times, Business Week, NBC Today Show, NPR (National Public Radio), Newsweek, Budget Travel, Travel&Leisure Magazine, Men’s Fitness, Toronto Globe and Mail, and many others. Globe Aware has also been the subject of several major documentaries, among them a 9 part series titled Journeys of the Heart shot in high definition chronicling a group’s developments in our Care for Cusco program. This series, produced by Concrete Productions, runs on the Dish Network’s Equator Channel. Another documentary on Globe Aware was produced by Asterisk Productions called Vacations from the Heart which aired several times coast to coast in Canada on the Global Network and in the UK. Asterisk is a world renown production company with a special interest in social and environmental issues, for more on their inspiring work, see http://www.asterisk.bc.ca/.

Every activity in which we engage is intended to accomplish one of two things: promote cultural awareness and/or promote sustainability. For us the concept of cultural awareness means to recognize and appreciate the real beauties and real challenges of a culture, but not to change it. The concept of sustainability is to help others stand on their own two feet; to teach skills rather than reliance.

Chosen projects meet several key criteria: safe, culturally interesting, genuinely beneficial to a needy community, and involve significant interaction with the host community. Globe Aware reviews volunteer feedback on a weekly basis to incorporate changes, and continually meets with the communities to monitor and review projects. Simultaneously Globe Aware organizes several optional cultural excursions throughout every program, designed to highlight local culture in a way the typical tourist can rarely experience. The organization has no political or religious affiliation.

Volunteers help to empower the host communities in creating renewable, sustainable programs. While Globe Aware’s financial assistance benefits the community economically, it is actually the involvement and collaboration between the volunteers and community that is the greatest mutual benefit. Globe Aware is not a foundation that focuses on giving out charity, but rather an organization which focuses on creating self reliance.

We feel it is of supreme importance to respect the culture and heritage in which the volunteer is working. The goal is not for volunteers to change the host communities, but rather to help them in the needs that the host community has identified as important. Those who will enjoy the experience the most are those who bring an open mind and willingness to help. The natural, healthy exchange of ideas and opinions lead s to a mutual understanding of cultures.

Unlike a regular vacation, during which you may spend a good deal of time on a tourist bus and in lines at museums, our trips allow you to learn things such as how to cook local cuisine, sing with local school children, work side by side on local community projects. Few vacations provide a way to bond so closely with local cultures in so short a time. The experience will likely change how you see the world.

Together, Globe Aware’s founders have been arranging cultural missions for 15 years in developing nations and organizing volunteer missions since 2000. The first programs were run in Peru and Costa Rica, with several in Asia to follow.

indiaLocations are chosen based on a huge number of factors, but generally are communities that are safe, genuinely needy, organized (in terms of proper NGO status), with significant cultural differences from the typical North American lifestyle, and willing to accept our involvement. Our nonprofit status was recognized in 2003.

In addition to being granted not-for-profit status by the United States Internal Revenue Service, Globe Aware is also registered with The Texas State Attorney General’s Charities Bureau which is responsible for supervising the activity of charities to ensure that their funds are properly used.