The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life Part 12

When volunteers are not working, they have time to enjoy the city's rich legacy of architectural masterpieces, including the Church of St. Elijah the Prophet, built on the spot where the "wrestling match" took place. It was later made the focal point of Catherine the Great's historic vision of urban planning, along with the Epiphany Church-replete with frescoes and paintings by Russia's simple peasant artists-and the Monastery of the Savior, whose white walls dominate the center of town.

Volunteers are also invited to attend Russian culture and language cla.s.ses, take excursions to local villages, and hear guest speakers on Russian history, politics, traditions, and cuisine. They might hear a local psychologist discuss Russian fairy tales, for example, or meet a World War II survivor. They can take in a production at a local puppet theater, attend the ballet, or visit markets where old women haggle over cheese and sausage. It's also entertaining to simply walk the tree-lined streets, where Yaroslav's huge student population (this ancient town has 18 scientific research and project inst.i.tutes, 10 higher educational establishments, and a university and academy) stroll in and out of cafes.

Cost for a three-week volunteer post in Yaroslavl, Russia, including lodging and meals at the same hotel where you sleep, runs $2,994 to $3,219.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Cross-Cultural Solutions, 2 Clinton Place, New Roch.e.l.le, NY 10801, 800-380-4777, www.crossculturalsolutions.org.

THE ALPINE FUND.

take at-risk kids to the kyrgyzstan mountains.

BISHKEK AND OSH, KYRGYZSTAN.

The mountains give kids independence and confidence.

-Garth Willis, founder of the Alpine Fund.

42 The Alpine Fund, a small nonprofit in the former Soviet country of Kyrgyzstan, takes at-risk kids from Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan on hiking trips in the mountains. It was started in 2000 by American climber Garth Willis, who hiked most of Kyrgyzstan back in 1995, learning Russian and working as a U.S. government aid worker during the three years he was there. He runs the nonprofit on a shoestring budget of less than $20,000 a year. If it wasn't for the volunteers, who teach computer skills, English, and AIDS prevention to children from area orphanages and street bazaars (in addition to leading the overnight camping trips), Willis would never have been able to help the thousands of children whom he has helped.

A small, impoverished nation of five million people, Kyrgyzstan is 95 percent mountains-ideal for sightseeing, but murder for an economy seeking development. To better provide for their families, many adults end up emigrating in search of work, leaving children, more than 50 percent of the population, at home to fend for themselves. As Willis says, "Just about every kid in Kyrgyzstan is at risk." Children living in orphanages are often required to leave when they reach the age of 16, leaving them with few options.

Volunteers come, usually for two months or longer, to help Willis keep the commitment that he made to the children who, he says, "get gifts from foreigners and then never see them again." Volunteers help Willis offer twice-weekly physical training at the orphanage and lead weekly hiking expeditions into the mountains overlooking Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan's capital. Fifteen kids go on each trip that includes camping and trash collecting, plus learning survival skills, discipline, and respect for nature.

"These kids are surrounded by beautiful mountains and they never get to go up them," Willis says, emphasizing that "soft aid" to these Muslim countries is more effective at cementing international relations.h.i.+ps than military might. "We give them something to look forward to. In the schools, the teacher-student relations.h.i.+ps are very rigid, Soviet-style," he remarks. "And here are we, adults who play soccer with them, hike with them, and yell at them to make sure their backpacks fit correctly. Once they realize that we are coming every week, it isn't hard to earn their trust."

When they're not in the mountains, volunteers teach English and computer cla.s.ses, usually holding a one-hour lesson in each discipline twice each week. Providing Internet access is another way that the fund helps expand the young people's education and opportunities in Kyrgyzstan.

A FAIRY-TALE ENDING?.

The fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty was first published in 1697 by Frenchman Charles Perrault, but it's possible (not that I'm accusing anyone of plagiarism) that he absconded with the tale of a princess doomed to p.r.i.c.k her finger from a legend in Kyrgyzstan. Way back in the 10th or 11th century, when Balasagun-now a ghost town in Kyrgyzstan's Chui Valley-was a bustling stop on the Silk Road, a local king was warned by a witch that his one and only daughter would be bitten by a scorpion on her 16th birthday. The king, having the power and authority of most kings, built a 150-foot tower to protect the precious princess, who the witch also predicted would die. But alas, legend tells us that despite his best efforts, the servant who delivered her food each day unwittingly carried in a scorpion amid a plate of grapes on her 16th birthday. And unlike Sleeping Beauty, who merely fell asleep for a hundred years, this princess died.

The remains of the tower, Burana, lie 50 miles from Bishkek. Some believe that it was a minaret that stood nearly 150 feet tall, though the structure was reduced to about 80 feet by earthquake damage. The site also includes a museum, some grave markers and mausoleums, the ruins of a castle, petroglyphs, and stone sculptures known as bal-bals. It is such a landmark in Kyrgyzstan that it has been featured on postage stamps.

The Alpine Fund also offers local children interns.h.i.+ps, jobs, and other leaders.h.i.+p opportunities. Those who really excel in the program get a chance to continue their education. One way that you can help-without even traveling to the mountains of Kyrgyzstan-is by donating money to the Alpine Fund's Path to the Summit Scholars.h.i.+p (Pa.s.s), which helps young people with leaders.h.i.+p abilities to get through college. Pa.s.s will support tuition at a local university, plus a stipend to cover living expenses, clothes, and school supplies.

Most important, all of the programs sponsored by the Alpine Fund give the young people here hope that they can create brighter, more prosperous futures for themselves and their families.

Volunteers, Willis says, are asked to stay for two months or longer (although it's not written in stone), giving them time to figure out how to best run the programs, get to know the youth, experience a culture from the inside, and explore a region with amazingly beautiful mountains. Volunteers who are interested in doing more for the fund can help in the office with fund-raising, writing grants, and updating the organization's website.

Although there is no charge to volunteer with the Alpine Fund (there's so much to do that Willis would never charge), volunteers are responsible for their own housing, transportation, and living expenses, which Willis says average about $250 a month.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

The Alpine Fund, Box 583192, Minneapolis, MN 55458; Kyrgyzstan contact: Ahunbaeva 119A #502, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, 966 312 47 16 35, www.alpinefund.org.

GLOBE AWARE.

a.s.sist europe's marginalized gypsies.

TARLUNGENI, ROMANIA.

cause there's good deeds and there is good intention they're as far apart as heaven and h.e.l.l -Ben Harper, singer-songwriter, "Ground on Down"

43 Romania officially joined the European Union on January 1, 2007. While this event provided an enormous economic boost for the former Iron Curtain country, its Roma people, who have long suffered discrimination, have reaped few, if any, of the benefits.

In the United States, Gypsies, as Roma are generally known, elicit an image of romance and intrigue. In Europe, however, the stateless ethnic group has endured a long history of persecution. Adolf Hitler killed 500,000 Gypsies during his genocidal frenzy; they were the only ethnic group besides Jews to be targeted.

Since the Roma left India at the beginning of the last millennium, they have been deported, homeless, stateless, and forced into incarceration. In Romania, they worked as slaves for 400 years until 1864, when the inhumane practice was finally abolished. Even today, Roma are often scapegoats for most anything that goes wrong in the country. Most Romanians, eager to modernize and catch up to the rest of Europe, view their horses and carts as an embarra.s.sment and their sometimes noisy nighttime parties as a disruption.

Although the Roma have spread out across Europe, Romania has the largest population-more than two million, 63 percent of whom live below subsistence levels. Thanks to widespread discrimination and stigma, large numbers of Roma still lack schooling, jobs, proper housing, and basic nourishment. They live in crowded, ramshackle huts and get pa.s.sed over consistently for jobs and benefits provided to the rest of the population.

VAMPIRE-INSPIRED TOURS.

Braov is located in Transylvania; unsurprisingly, there are tours inspired by Count Dracula. Although Dracula is a fictional character popularized in Bram Stoker's infamous, eponymous novel, he was inspired by a well-known figure from Romanian history. Vlad Dracula, nicknamed Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler), was a ruler of Wallachia between 1456 and 1461. Important historical places to learn about Vlad Tepes are the 14th-century town of Sighioara (the house where he was born is now a restaurant and museum of medieval weaponry); the Snagov Monastery (where he was allegedly buried after his a.s.sa.s.sination, www.snagov.ro); the village of Arefu, Braov (where Vlad led raids against greedy Saxon merchants); and, of course, Curtea Domneasca, Vlad's palace in Bucharest; and Bran Castle-sometimes called Dracula's Castle-a clifftop fortress where Vlad was briefly imprisoned that once served as the royal family's home and is now a museum (www.brancastlemuseum.ro).

Globe Aware (GA), a Dallas-based nonprofit that dispatches volunteers to 14 countries, offers a unique chance to help these marginalized people. Working with a nongovernmental organization in the fairy-tale medieval town of Braov, Romania, Globe Aware gives volunteers the chance to build homes, mentor children, and help with a mult.i.tude of necessary tasks, determined by the Roma themselves. According to Chris Saucedo, Globe Aware's office manager, "We just do whatever the community feels that they need. We don't like to get too specific, because we want the community to decide what is best for the community on each project. We have built stoves and taught English in the past. The best thing is to look on our website."

Volunteers stay in a community center (designed by student architects from four European universities) in Tarlungeni, on the outskirts of Braov.

The seven-day post with Globe Aware runs $1,390 and includes lodging in the dorms in the community center and three meals per day.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Globe Aware, 6500 East Mockingbird Lane, Suite 104, Dallas, TX 75214, 877-588-4562, www.globeaware.org.

ECOVOLUNTEER.

save the rare, 5,000-year-old breed of karakachan dogs.

PIRIN MOUNTAINS, BULGARIA.

What is the nature of a species that knowingly and without good reason exterminates another?

-George Small, author of The Blue Whale.

44 Cruella de Vil has nothing on the Bulgarian Communist Party. Not only did the communist government that ruled Bulgaria from 1944 to 1989 sell the pelts of Karakachan dogs to make fur coats, but they took them away from their owners and crossbred them with St. Bernards, shepherds, and other breeds to distill their unique characteristics.

For 5,000 years, these dogs protected the sheep and goat herds of Karakachan nomads who summered near the Aegean and Black Seas and wintered in Bulgaria's wide alpine meadows. During communist rule, when livestock was seized and Karakachan nomads forced to settle down, these faithful dogs that served their masters so well all but died out.

By 1990, when Bulgaria finally became free, Sider Sedfchev, a graduate student in Sofia, tried to find a purebred Karakachan to breed with the Karakachan pet he had grown to love. It proved to be a difficult task. He and his brother hiked Bulgaria's mountains in search of communities that still had a pure strain of the dogs that immigrated to Bulgaria with their nomadic masters. It soon became apparent how rare the ancient breed had become. Sedfchev started Semperviva, a nonprofit working, along with the Balkani Wildlife Service, to restore the nearly extinct breed. As both groups are well aware, the rare breed of dogs play an important role in the natural, cultural, and historical heritage of Bulgaria.

Although the dog breeding project began in the backyard of Sedfchev's grandparents' home in Sofia, it has since moved to Pirin National Park, a World Heritage site in southwest Bulgaria with pine forests, waterfalls, 70 glacial lakes, and hundreds of endemic and rare species.

DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES.

Bulgaria is the world's second largest exporter of bottled wine, second only to France. The Brits, it seems, can't get enough of the country's robust red and white wines. In fact, Winston Churchill was an early fan, ordering 500 liters of the country's melnik wine every year from the Kordopulov cellar. Even during World War II when German soldiers traipsed across Bulgaria, the British prime minister managed to sneak out two aging barrels of his favorite elixir.

According to legend, Bulgaria's melnik wine, which was mentioned in Homer's Iliad, is so thick it can be carried in a kerchief.

Volunteers who come in from across the globe feed and care for the dogs, whose populations have thankfully been restored to several hundred. In addition to the dog project, Semperviva is also working to insure the legacy of Karakachan horses, a small, hearty horse also used by the nomads, and Karakachan sheep, a long-haired sheep whose wool is used in Karakachan handicrafts.

Volunteers, working through Ecovolunteer, spend a week or more (some stay for several months) on this important biodiversity project. They alternate between a home in the village of Vlahi that serves as a dog and sheep breeding station and a sheepherder's hut in the Pirin Mountains. While tracking sheep and wild horses, volunteers work on horseback. Duties include feeding dogs, bottle-feeding lambs, making cheese and yogurt from sheep's and goat's milk (the long-haired Kalofer goats are another local breed being revived by the group), and leading horseback riding tours of beautiful Pirin National Park.

On those trips through the alpine mountains of Bulgaria, volunteers camp out and spend evenings around the fire listening to shepherds' stories. Spring-when puppies, lambs, and foals are born-is perhaps the busiest time, but volunteers are useful throughout the year.

This volunteer trip that includes meals and lodging (in the beautifully restored village home and in shepherd huts on mountain treks) runs 439 euros ($555) for a week with discounts for consecutive weeks.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Ecovolunteer uses the Great Canadian Travel Company to book trips for American and Canadian volunteers, 158 Fort Street, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3C 1C9, Canada, 800-661-3830, www.ecovolunteer.org.

WORLD WIDE OPPORTUNITIES ON ORGANIC FARMS ITALIA.

work on an organic farm.

FARMS ACROSS ITALY.

It's good for a city girl to get her hands dirty.

-Pamela Newton, WWOOF volunteer in Italy.

45 Whether you want to pick olives, keep bees, grow vegetables, or harvest medicinal herbs, there's an organic farm in Italy that needs your help. For a mere 25 euros ($30), you can join World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) Italia and receive the list of more than 250 Italian farms that will provide you with a bed and three square meals in return for five or six hours of work a day.

The beauty of a vacation with WWOOF Italia is that the farms on the list, spread across Italy from Aosta to Puglia, are far from the well-known tourist paths. Not only do you learn about organic and biodynamic farming in some of the most serene settings in Italy, but you get the rare chance to meet real down-to-earth Italian families. Away from the big tourist traps, you'll find farms where olive trees are still pruned by hand, where milk arrives warm in pails, and where goats and a new litter of puppies share the same 300-year-old stone barn.

And as for those three squares a day? It's Italy, after all, where food is practically a religion. You'll come in from the fields to find steaming bowls of rigatoni with pesto sauce and fresh grated parmesan or smoky chestnut flour cakes, served with fresh sheep's milk ricotta and honey. In Italy, it should go without saying, there is true respect for the art of growing, cooking, and eating food. Eating locally isn't a catchphrase here-it's a way of life.

WWOOF, a worldwide organization with branches in most of the world's countries, was started in 1971 by Sue Coppard, a London secretary who recognized the need for a city girl like herself to experience the countryside. She organized a trial weekend at a farm in Suss.e.x for four people she met through a cla.s.sified ad. Her experiment was such a success that WWOOF quickly spread from England across the globe. Although WWOOF international provides loosely followed guidelines, each country hosts its own list of farms and runs its operation separately.

WWOOF Italia was started in 1999 by Bridget Matthews, a British expat who got tired of city life. She bought a farm in Tuscany in the late 1980s and, with a couple partners, organized the WWOOF organization ten years later. It has grown from 89 farms and 182 WWOOFers, as volunteers call themselves, to 283 farms and nearly 2,000 WWOOFers per year.

As Matthews points out, it's a win-win for everyone involved. Volunteers learn about organic farming and green living and get a rich cultural experience while doing so, and their hosts get much-needed help. Keep in mind that you will work hard on a WWOOF trip, and you will be expected to pitch in with both household and farm ch.o.r.es, from the exotic to the mundane-whatever your hosts need help with.

The variety of farms on WWOOF Italia's list range from a tiny farm near Castagneto Carducci where volunteers keep bees and make tinctures from wild echinacea to a 1,235-acre vineyard owned by a famous Italian artist. There's everything from mountain refuges an hour's walk from the main road with no phones or electricity to goat and sheep farms on the island of Sardinia. There's even a castle on the list.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

WWOOF is a suspiciously canine-sounding acronym for an organization whose name has gone through several incarnations in its first decade of existence. The WW in WWOOF originally stood for Working Weekends. Then the first two words were changed to Willing Workers. Finally, those two words starting with the letter w ended up being World Wide, after immigration authorities in some countries suspiciously eyed WWOOF, apparently viewing it as a clandestine migrant worker organization.

WWOOF can be used in every part of speech.

As a verb: "I plan to WWOOF next summer in Italy."

As an adjective: "Welcome to our Sicilian WWOOF farm."

As a noun: "I am a WWOOFer and I'm making plum preserves."

As a gerund: "My WWOOFing last summer was both delicious and educational."