The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life Part 15

A NEW DEVELOPMENT MODEL.

The creative lifeblood of the fis.h.i.+ng village of El Max pumps from the Gudran a.s.sociation for Art and Development, a collective of artists, writers, filmmakers, and dramatists who decided to abandon the galleries and theaters and instead connect art to the streets and souls of Egyptian communities. Although Gudran's name means "walls" in Arabic, it's meant as walls to paint, not to divide.

In a 2007 interview with writer Mich.e.l.le Chen, Gudran program organizer Abdalla Daif remarked, "Development is just learning how to accept change...How can you reach change without imagination?...Development is to be able to change your life, to reach a better future.

"So, here is where the art arrives," he says. "To improve the imagination s.p.a.ce."

Volunteers may make kites, perform theater, and paint murals. But Halawany and Gready are very clear that there are no rules, no t.i.tles, and no punishment in Gudran's programs. Just a lot of creative work done together.

Program organizer Abdalla Daif says, "You're not discussing political stuff, or religious or cultural differences. You just get together and begin to paint. So, art here is really the neutral s.p.a.ce, the neutral area for dialogue."

Cost for the three-week art camps, including lodging in cottages by the beach and such simple meals as bread, fish, and fava beans, runs about $370.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Gudran a.s.sociation for Art and Development, Tolombat El Max Street, El Max, Alexandria, Egypt, 20 1011 70800, www.gudran.com.

ANOTHER THOUGHTFUL, COMMITTED CITIZEN: IAN MCKILLOP.

After reading an article about international volunteering in Canada's Globe and Mail, Ian McKillop, a risk a.n.a.lyst from Halifax, Nova Scotia, decided to spend his next vacation helping others instead of just taking a break from work. He mentioned his holiday plans at his office and before he knew it, 12 co-workers from Flagstone-a global reinsurance company-offices around the world had decided to join him. David Brown, Flagstone's chief executive officer, even decided he'd pay for it all.

In May 2008, Flagstone sent 13 employees from nine offices in four countries to Costa Rica to build trails through a rain forest, work in a b.u.t.terfly garden, and paint the community center in Quebradas, a remote community in a biological reserve.

"We called our trip 'Flagstone without Borders,'" McKillop says. "Working together for a common cause was a life-changing experience for all of us."

Enlisting the help of United Planet, a U.S.-based nonprofit that offers what they call Volunteer Quests in 50 countries (see Chapter 4 for more on one of United Planet's projects in Jordan), McKillop and his team met up in Costa Rica to work together in Quebradas.

"I thought that this endeavor would be a great opportunity for team building-a chance for people from our different offices around the globe to get to know one another, put a name to a face, and at the same time, help a community in need," McKillop explains.

The Flagstone volunteers lived with Costa Rican families, sharing humble meals and life experiences. "They kept apologizing to me for not having more to offer me, but what they offered me was priceless," says Alison Thomson, a Flagstone employee from Switzerland.

Rennika Trott, an administrative a.s.sistant in Flagstone's Bermuda headquarters, agreed: "This is the best thing I've ever done in my life. It opened my eyes to a whole new world."

McKillop, who created a 12-page report about the two-week trip, complete with color photos, says corporate social responsibility is even more important for a global company like Flagstone with offices in nine countries. "It's imperative that people see the divide," he says. "There are lots of people who want to alleviate themselves from poverty, but don't have the means and opportunities to do it. A small little push is all people sometimes need."

As for next year's vacation? McKillop is already planning Flagstone without Borders, Redux-either to Siem Reap, Cambodia, or the Carpathian Mountains of Romania.

SAR-EL.

maintain an israeli military base.

MILITARY BASES THROUGHOUT ISRAEL.

A short period on an army base is good therapy.

-Ira Zimmerman, U.S. volunteer with Sar-El.

53 You'll live in barracks, wear an Israeli Defense Force uniform, and work side-by-side with the 18-to 21-year-old Tzahal soldiers who will think you've lost your mind for choosing (they have no choice-all Israeli citizens are drafted at 18) to take a tour of duty with the Israeli Army.

Granted, your tour is shorter (three weeks compared to three years for men, two years for women), and you won't be on the firing lines (volunteers aren't even issued weapons). Yet you can feel good that you've helped defend an independent state that has enormous importance not only for the region, but for the world.

Thousands of volunteers come every year, from all over the world, to test communication equipment, pack intelligence maps, build fences, and clean medical supplies. This allows the conscripted soldiers to spend their days doing the higher level jobs for which they are trained and saves the Israeli Army millions of dollars.

Sar-El (a Hebrew acronym that means "service for Israel") began in 1982 when Israel was in the midst of the Galilee war. Since the majority of able-bodied Golan Heights settlers were tied up defending their country, their farm fields, ripe with crops, were going unpicked. Dr. Aharon Davidi, former head of IDF Paratroopers and director of the Golan Heights settlement, sent a recruitment team to the United States to beg for help. Within a couple weeks, some 650 volunteers showed up to save the crops.

The volunteers decided the once-in-a-lifetime chance to support this little country they loved should be continued. The following year, Sar-El was officially founded as a nonprofit, nonpolitical organization. Today, it brings in volunteers from 30 countries, many whom return year after year.

And as for why they travel as far as 5,700 miles to "join the army," Janna Walsh, a volunteer from Richboro, Pennsylvania, explains it like this, "In my 'real' life as a consultant, the work I do takes a very long road before it benefits anyone directly.

CAN'T KEEP A GOOD CITY DOWN Each Sar-El "tour of duty" includes off-base excursions and usually one of those tours takes volunteers to Jerusalem, a controversial religious hub divided into three sections. One of the world's oldest cities, high in the Judean Hills, it has been around since 4000 B.C., and was founded by King David.

The city's biggest claim to fame, however, may be its astounding resiliency. In a 2004 book, Jerusalem Beseiged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel, George Was.h.i.+ngton University professor Eric H. Cline uncovered "at least 118 separate conflicts in and for Jerusalem during the past four millennia-conflicts that ranged from local religious struggles to strategic military campaigns and that embraced everything in between."

According to Cline, despite often being called the city of peace: "Jerusalem has been destroyed completely at least twice, besieged twenty-three times, attacked an additional fifty-two times, captured and recaptured forty-four times, been the scene of twenty revolts and innumerable riots, had at least five separate periods of violent terrorist attacks during the past century, and has only changed hands completely peacefully twice in the past four thousand years."

At my base, I was sc.r.a.ping Israeli mud from hand suction pumps that had been used-and would be used again-by medical corpsmen to save a soldier's life."

During the work week (Sunday through Thursday), you'll be on duty from roughly 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. A madricha (liaison in Hebrew) will see to it that you get your fatigues and boots, daily a.s.signments, off-base excursions, and a chance to hoist the blue-and-white Magen David at the early morning flag-raising ceremony. Evenings are often filled with activities and presentations on such topics as the Hebrew language, Jewish holidays and traditions, and social and political issues in Israel. Just don't expect to talk politics over lunch with soldiers, as political discussion is strictly forbidden.

Weekends are free to sightsee, attend military functions, and take part in weekly Shabbat. Cost for a three-week Sar-El "tour of duty" is $80 (returning volunteers pay only $50) and includes shared accommodations in a spartan barrack, three kosher mess hall meals per day, and the privilege of temporarily joining the Israeli Army.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Sar-El recruits volunteers in the United States through Volunteers for Israel, which has 11 regional offices. Find out which one handles your state by calling 866-514-1948 or visiting www.vfi-usa.org/contactus.html.

ZAYTOUN.

help palestinian farmers bring in the olive harvest.

SALFIT, WEST BANK.

Even if you are at war with a city...you must not destroy its trees for the tree of the fields is man's life.

-Deuteronomy 20:19-20.

54 Farmers in America stress over weather, fuel costs, and the roller-coaster ride known as average price per bushel. But compared to the difficulties faced by Palestinian olive farmers, these issues seem almost petty.

The Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, like farmers everywhere, depend on their crops to feed their families. Yet they also worry about whether or not they'll even be allowed access to their own olive groves. Most of these groves, after centuries of being in the same family, are now surrounded by Israeli settlements. Many years, it's difficult for farmers to even see their crops, let alone pick them.

The farmers deal with hara.s.sment, blocked roads, and checkpoints with armed soldiers. Just getting from their homes to their fields, often blocked by concrete barriers, walls, and fences, can entail endless delays and questioning.

Since September 2000, more than a half million Palestinian olive and fruit trees have been bulldozed and destroyed by the Israelis. Those that remain are deemed to be in what the Israelis call "closed military zones." And these aren't just any old olive groves. The Palestinian olive groves that go back generations are among the world's oldest, some dating back as many as 2,000 years.

Every year, Zaytoun ("olive" in Arabic), a U.K.-based nonprofit that helps marginalized Palestinian farmers and their families harvest and sell their olives, hosts trips for volunteer harvesters. Working with the International Women's Peace Service (IWPS) that has a base in the Hares settlement, Zaytoun recruits volunteers and IWPS arranges the housing, the meet-and-greets with farmers, and a celebration of the harvest's end.

Volunteers not only physically pick olives alongside Palestinian farm families, but also negotiate their safe pa.s.sage and provide witness for the farmers and their crops. An Israeli soldier is less likely to point a gun at a Palestinian teen if an international team is looking on.

Volunteer Jenny Bell describes her Zaytoun trip as follows: "In 2006 I went to see with my own eyes the Palestinian olive harvest in the West Bank under occupation. As a country woman myself I could not believe how difficult the Israeli government has made it for farmers and the population as a whole to live a normal life and pick their own olives from their own trees. The sufferings inflicted on ordinary families in that country are a disgrace and a cause for shame. I believe Israeli security depends on Palestinian economic viability and we must work together to achieve this."

Harvest volunteers may share the problems of daily life with Palestinians, but they also get to experience legendary Palestinian hospitality. Along the way, they learn the dabkeh, an ancient Middle Eastern dance, and share bread baked in a taboun, a traditional oven heated with pressed olive pits.

Zaytoun sells fair-trade olive oil pressed from the Palestinian olives in Great Britain; one reviewer described it as "in the rich nouris.h.i.+ng cla.s.s of the best of the fruity Sicilian, Cretan, and northern Spanish oils."

Cost for the ten-day trip runs approximately 60 ($88) per day.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Zaytoun, 33 Carronade Court, Eden Grove, London N7 8EP, England, 44 845 345 4877, www.zaytoun.org.

SOAP FOR THE QUEEN.

The soapmakers of the West Bank's Old City of Nablus can't imagine why anyone would make soap out of animal fat. They proudly make their soap out of all-natural virgin olive oil-70 percent, in fact-and consider its production a treasured art.

The virgin olive oil is mixed with water and a salt compound, and the mixture is cooked over low heat for around five days. It's then poured over a large area on the floor, cut into individual blocks, and stamped with the traditional nablusi seal. But before it can be packaged and s.h.i.+pped, it's stacked into towering pyramids and left to dry for up to 30 days.

As early as the tenth century, Nablus's famous olive oil soap was exported across the Arab world and as far afield as Europe. Sabon nablusi was reputedly the soap of choice for England's Queen Elizabeth.

ANOTHER THOUGHTFUL, COMMITTED CITIZEN: MATT HARDING.

Matt Harding, a Connecticut-born video game designer, didn't set out to uplift the planet. In fact, if it wasn't for his traveling companion saying, "Hey, do that weird dance you do," one day in 2003, he'd probably be back at a desk, designing the next game adolescent boys can't get enough of.

The weird dance is a kooky arm-flapping, marching step that those same adolescent boys perform at middle school sock hops. His buddy videotaped him performing it on the streets of Hanoi. And then in Tonga. And then the Philippines, Mali, and the Panama Ca.n.a.l. His sister, who was trying to keep up with her vagabond brother, asked him to start a website so she could follow his progress around the world.

The video on the resulting website, "Where the h.e.l.l Is Matt?," showing a grinning Matt bouncing up and down in 69 countries, spread from computer to computer like a virus, achieving an unplanned side effect. It made people smile. And if you don't think making people smile is a n.o.ble cause, you haven't read a newspaper lately.

While Harding would be the last person to call himself a do-gooder, he is aware that his little four-and-a-half-minute video (and two more he's filmed since then) shows a different view of the world.

"All we see on the news media is misery and people suffering," he says. "It's important to know those things, but it's also important to realize that's not the whole picture. It [the video] shows people having fun."

So far, Harding's three videos have been viewed more than 30 million times on YouTube and brought him a weird sort of fame. Not only has he been interviewed by everyone from the Was.h.i.+ngton Post to Jimmy Kimmel, but Visa hired him to do a TV commercial, Stride Gum asked to sponsor him, and NASA featured one of Harding's three dancing videos on their Astronomy Picture of the Day website. t.i.tling it "Happy People Dancing on Planet Earth," NASA stated that "few people are able to watch the above video without smiling."

"We're bound together on this planet in ways it's hard for us to even understand," says Harding, who is highly amused by the videos' success. "It shows that people in other countries aren't the enemy, they're just us in different costumes."

What's more, the underlying, if unplanned, message of unbounded human joy and connection comes across loud and clear without being preachy. "There are no words on the video and I'm not trying to get anybody to do anything," Harding says. "It just makes people happy."

See Harding's att.i.tude-changing videos at www.wheretheh.e.l.lismatt.com.

africa.

It's one thing for Oprah or Bono to do these big things. But normal people can make a difference, too.

-Susan Nordenger, who has made numerous volunteer trips to Africa.

Africa is the poorest continent on the planet. Millions of people die there each year from completely preventable causes. This should have every last one of us up in arms. We should be marching in the streets protesting the fact that thousands of children die each and every day simply because they have no access to clean water. The millions of African children who have lost parents to AIDS should prevent us from sleeping at night.

But no, most of us just switch the remote to American Idol and pretend it's a problem over there.

Thankfully, over there has moved into the hearts of thousands of volunteers who head to Africa every year to build homes, hug AIDS orphans, and coach soccer teams. Still others volunteer to work on wildlife conservation projects, monitor elephants, count sharks, and bottle-feed nyalas.

Dozens of organizations offer volunteer trips to Africa, not to help "the poor unfortunates," but to allow everyday people from developed countries the chance to make new friends, to immerse themselves in a new reality, and to finally see what the world is like beyond a 26-inch plasma screen. And the funny thing that happens when these volunteers return home? They realize they're the ones who have been helped the most.

CENTER FOR CULTURAL INTERCHANGE.

jump-start woman-owned businesses.

PORTO NOVO, BENIN.