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.
A nutrition centre that provides meals and classes for pre-school children is already up and running, as is an organic garden tended by local monks who sell the produce to sustain programs at the centre. The medical/dental centre is the next building to go up on the eight-acre block of land that accommodates the Children’s Village.
Connecting on a Deeper Level
“I think people are waking up and really wanting to improve other people’s lives in the world, and they know that by helping and giving to other people that they’re also improving their own life because of that satisfaction that you get from giving and being compassionate,” she says.
The voluntourism trend began growing as a result of the tsunami in Sri Lanka and surged again after the January earthquake in Haiti. After both disasters, people around the world who see themselves as global citizens felt compelled to pitch in to help in any way they could.
“People are feeling this sense of responsibility, duty, and commitment to their fellow human beings on the planet,” says David Clemmons, who has been writing about the phenomenon for over 10 years and is largely credited with shaping the industry.
“It’s a way to connect with the destination on a more authentic and deeper level—to get you underneath the skin of the destination, if you will,” he says.
“And from everything that I am reading in terms of discoveries and research that’s going on at the academic levels, it really seems like people as consumers are looking for that deeper experience.”
Voluntourists can plan their entire vacation around lending a helping hand to the people and places they feel could use it the most, or simply devote a few days of a “leisure vacation” to a cause they believe in.
Opportunities abound, such as trips to Peru offered by Waves for Development, in which voluntourists can have a surfing holiday while teaching local youth to surf. U.K.-based Blue Ventures, which promotes marine conservation, has voluntourism projects on the go in Madagascar, Belize, and Malaysia.
Cheaptickets.com has teamed up with the United Way, offering travellers “volunteer vacations” to a variety of destinations.
Habitat for Humanity, a non-profit global organization whose best-known volunteer is former U.S. president Jimmy Carter, uses teams of volunteers to help build homes for the poor around the world.
In Canada, Kamloops-based Wayne McRann of Developing World Connections organizes voluntourism trips to Asia, Latin America, and Africa.
Domestic voluntourism also exists, as became evident in the U.S. after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and this year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Voluntourism picked up in China after the massive earthquake of May 2008.
Good Bang for the Buck
The price of voluntourism trips varies widely. AIM’s MacDonald says the Richmond firefighters will each pay about $2,000, which includes the flight to Sri Lanka and food and accommodation for two weeks.
The firefighters have fundraised for two years to raise money for the trip, and in addition AIM is hosting a gala benefit on Nov. 17.
“My goal is to create more of a connection between our humanitarian efforts in Sri Lanka and the local community,” says MacDonald, adding that 100 percent of the proceeds will go to the Sahana Children’s Village.
Scott says AIM gives “a better bang for your buck,” noting that with many charities, between 10 and 30 percent gets absorbed by administration costs.
“With AIM we know that every dollar goes directly to someone. There’s no administrative fee, it’s like 100 percent to the end user, and that is fantastic. You don’t want to be paying 70 cents on the dollar to the end user—that kind of defeats the purpose.”
As the industry continues to move forward, Clemmons foresees the emergence of do-it-yourself voluntourism, in which people put together their own itineraries, identifying volunteer service projects that they can connect with in a given destination.
He believes that over the next decade, tourism boards, destination-marketing organizations, and conventional visitors’ bureaus will also become involved.
But he notes that volunteerism “is not perfect, and it’s not for everyone.”
“It doesn’t mean that people can’t gradually progress to a point where they are ready for voluntourism, but for all travellers to think that they can naturally step into this—I really try to be very firm about the fact that that’s not the case. Nor would I say that anyone who volunteers [locally] on a regular basis could just step into a voluntourism experience anywhere in the world either. You know, it goes both ways.”
AIM’s “Elegant Evening Benefit” will be held at the University of British Columbia Boathouse in Richmond on Nov. 17. Raw food chef extraordinaire Chad Sarno is flying in for the occasion from Austin, Texas, and his canapés and organic cocktails will be served by the Richmond firefighters.
For more information visit http://www.aimias.org/events.htm
