The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life Part 10

FIVE MORE THOUGHTFUL, COMMITTED CITIZENS: THE HILDEBURNS.

Charles and Colleen Hildeburn didn't want their three children thinking that everyone in the world lived like they did in Orinda, California, an affluent suburb of San Francisco's East Bay. For several years, they talked about taking their kids, Jane, 17, Chase, 15, and Mary, 12, overseas to show them the developing world. They wanted the kids to appreciate what they had in America, but also to realize that they, as global citizens, had a responsibility to uplift the rest of the world.

"We'd been scheming for months about the possibilities of taking some time off to show the real world to our children," Charles says. "We enjoy relative luxury compared to a lot of the rest of the world and we wanted the kids to experience what the rest of the world was experiencing. We had both spent time overseas and felt we'd gained a lot from those experiences."

Their dream was to spend an entire year traveling, volunteering, and exposing the kids to other cultures. "I didn't want us to travel with a selfish, please me, entertain me att.i.tude," Colleen says. "More than seeing the world, I wanted us to go in the spirit of how we could bless people along the way."

In April 2008, their volunteering adventure simply fell into place. Colleen stumbled on a relevant Bible study lesson: "You cannot stay where you are and go with G.o.d." Then Charles, an international stockbroker for Merrill Lynch, was offered early retirement. ("I qualified by exactly ten days," he says.) The kids, albeit hesitantly at first, agreed to take a year off from school. They rented out their home for ten months and hit the road.

The Hildeburns trolled the outdoor markets in the Cote d'Azur, France, hiked through the Swiss Alps, biked through Ireland, punted the River Thames in England, and played Family Von Hildeburn in Salzburg, Austria.

They also did lots of good works along the way. They taught English to children at a summer camp outside Warsaw, Poland, through Global Volunteers, a Minnesota-based nonprofit featured throughout this book. "It was really great, being able to work together as a family," Charles says. "We taught English in the morning and the kids were able to partic.i.p.ate in all the activities with the camp kids in the afternoon. Our family got as much or more than the Polish kids."

Twelve-year-old Mary agrees: "There are so many people who need help. No point in just sightseeing when we could be helping the people who live there. Even though I am giving to others, I always feel like I get more out of it."

In Spain, the Hildeburn family volunteered for La Gota de Leche (A Drop of Milk), a nonprofit that serves breakfast to 50 at-risk children each morning. In Patagonia, they helped build a Bible college. In Peru, they worked in an orphanage that a.s.sisted adolescent mothers who make crafts. Along the way, their blog (www.5blest.blogspot.com) kept their friends abreast of their activities.

THE NATIONAL TRUST.

work for britain's national trust.

LOCATIONS THROUGHOUT ENGLAND, WALES, AND NORTHERN IRELAND.

The need of quiet, the need of air, the need of exercise, and...the sight of sky and of things growing seem human needs, common to all men.

-Octavia Hill, one of three philanthropists who started Britain's National Trust.

37 Britain's National Trust runs approximately 450 working holidays every year offering volunteers a chance to do everything from herd goats to paint lighthouses to garden the grounds of a famous Elizabethan manor.

Founded in 1895, Britain's National Trust was set up to thwart uncontrolled development and guard the country's threatened coastline, countryside, and historic buildings. Its popular working holidays range from two to seven days, from outdoor farm ch.o.r.es such as hedgerow laying to indoor activities like serving as a temporary room steward at a 16th-century Tudor island castle. Because the options are so many and diverse, we'll list just a sampling from the trust's wide variety of vacations categories to whet your appet.i.te: Maintain a historic estate: Attingham Park, a 3,800-acre estate with an 18th-century mansion and a medieval deer park, uses volunteers to lay and plant hedge, make corridors for wildlife, and practice traditional countryside crafts.

Weed and prune celebrated gardens: Volunteers spend six days weeding, pruning, and creating bonfires from their cuttings at the celebrated gardens of Sissinghurst Castle, once the home of writer Vita Sackville-West and her husband, Sir Harold Nicolson.

Scrub a Gothic chapel: The chapel at Clumber Park in Sherwood Forest requires a yearly scrub-volunteers clean everything from candlesticks to choir pews. You'll stay in a converted gardener's cottage on the 3,800-acre estate.

Coppice beautiful woodlands: The trust owns 2,100 acres of land around Stonehenge, one-third of the World Heritage site, and volunteers are needed to coppice the nearby hazel woodland. Coppicing, in case you're not familiar with that verb, is a method of cutting down trees where their stumps are encouraged to grow thin stems that are used to make brushes, hurdles, and besom brooms. You'll bunk at the Stourhead Estate in Stonehenge's renovated stables.

BY JOVE, I NEED A SPOT OF TEA.

While your special National Trust volunteer card offers free admittance to the more than 140 tea rooms operated by the National Trust, it unfortunately doesn't throw in the scones and clotted cream. But don't let that stop you. Here is a short list of the trust's many historic tea rooms: Buckland Abbey. Once home to Sir Francis Drake, these 700-year-old buildings in the secluded Tavy Valley are rumored to be haunted by the famous Elizabethan seafarer and accompanying "h.e.l.lhounds."

Lindisfarne Castle. This romantic 16th-century Tudor castle perched atop a rocky island crag has a charming walled garden-designed by Gertrude Jekyll-and views of Farne Island.

Mottisfont Abbey Garden, House and Estate. This 13th-century former priory in the River Test Valley features walled gardens of the National Collection of old-fas.h.i.+oned roses.

Survey sand lizards and nightjars: Hindhead Commons, one of the trust's first acquisitions, uses volunteers to survey sand lizards and nightjars, clear paths, and monitor vegetation amid stunning landscapes of lowland heath. You'll stay at the restored Swan Barn Farm, tucked away in the Surrey Hills.

The trust's working holidays at more than a hundred beautiful locations throughout England, Wales, and Northern Ireland average about 60175 ($90$270) per week, plus a 5 ($7.70) transferring fee for out-of-country volunteers, and include food and lodging. In most cases, you'll stay at one of the trust's 31 base camps, which range from farmhouses and cottages to converted sheep shearing sheds. After completion of your working holiday, you'll get a National Trust admission card allowing free admission to all properties owned or managed by the trust for an entire year.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

National Trust Central Volunteering Team, The National Trust, Heelis, Kemble Drive, Swindon SN2 2NA, England, 44 1793 817632, www.nationaltrust.org.uk.

OFFENE HaUSER (OPEN HOUSES).

restore medieval castles, churches, manors, and rectories.

WEIMAR, GERMANY.

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.

-Dr. Seuss, children's book author, The Lorax.

38 Thanks to eccentric King Ludwig II, and Walt Disney, who copied his Neuschwanstein for Cinderella's digs, everybody knows about Bavaria's castles. But other regions of Germany-Thuringia, Saxony, and Altmark, to name a few-also have castles, and many of them could use some tender, loving care.

Enter Offene Hauser (OH), a group of innovative do-gooders who not only restore such German castles as Lorha, Oberau, and the Ollendrof Water Castle, but they invite anyone from anywhere to show up and help. That's why they called themselves Open Houses, as in open doors, open att.i.tudes, open arms.

Formed in the mid-1980s to renovate castles, churches, rectories, and manors in what used to be East Germany, this group headquartered in Weimar, the town where Goethe made his name, believes property-or at least their property-should be open to the public. And their international work camps, organized throughout the year, consider the goal of creating community and new ideas to be as important as the historic restoration work they're undertaking. They see construction and the maintenance of historic buildings as a way to bring people together, to facilitate learning, and to encourage an exchange of ideas. The aim is to fill the old rooms with new life, free from economic restraint, bureaucracy and inst.i.tution, something a mere craftsman's work cannot achieve.

Volunteers can choose between technical building camps, art camps, general work camps, and family camps, all which take place communally with jobs ranging from chopping wood to clearing horse stables.

Part of their vision, stated on their website, is to "offer shelter to all who come to us with the will to join. Anybody without warning, night or day, can turn up at the door, walk in and stay for a day, a week, a month-as long as he is prepared to join his efforts to those who are already there."

Each year, this idealistic group sponsors skilled carpenters, stonemasons, bricklayers, and other tradesmen from foreign countries for what they call European Craftsmen Exchanges. These several-months-long apprentices.h.i.+ps give eastern Europeans the chance to travel to a new country while helping restore important historical monuments. These skilled volunteers also teach nonskilled volunteers from around the world the ropes of, say, making a mortise or replacing a warped beam from the Middle Ages.

ODE TO A GREAT IDEA (THE VISION FOR OPEN HOUSES).

Open Houses

room open for those

who come along.

Open Houses

no empty buildings, but places with visible and invisible traces of history,

places which have grown and decayed

during the centuries,

which were shaped by those

who lived there long time ago

and those

who left only yesterday,

places which will be shaped

by each of us

who lives there

or who comes as a guest.

Open Houses

room

which wants to be filled

with dreams and ideas,

with meetings and exchange,

by people of different backgrounds,