Along with Scott will be 24 other firefighters from Richmond, B.C., who are using their vacation time to help build a medical/dental centre at Sahana Children’s Village in southern Sri Lanka.
What Scott and his workmates are doing is called voluntourism, a fast-growing trend in the tourism industry catering to people who want to do something meaningful while experiencing another culture. In other words, travel that combines a vacation with service.
Scott, who volunteered in Sri Lanka after the disastrous 2004 tsunami and later on projects in Thailand and El Salvador, says he has no misgivings whatsoever about giving up his vacation time for a good cause.
“This dental/medical building that we’re going to be doing, it’s going to be standing for 100 years because it’s going to be built right. And because all the civil unrest has subsided, you know it’s going to be there and it’s going to be used. So we’re effectively impacting generations. It’s a really good feeling,” he says.
