Voluntourism as a Honeymoon Option?

Interesting article about honeymoons and voluntourism – it seems to be a growing trend, are you finding that with your company? Is it possibly a market you should considering targeting?

http://www.dailycamera.com/lifestyles/ci_13271856

(and yes I admit this is a shameless plug for an article I helped with, but on a FAM this week and no time to write a real post =)

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To Have and To Hold – and to Help

Many newlyweds opt for candles, champagne toasts and rose-petal-covered beds, but Meghan Courtney and Rich Shaner had a different idea of romance.

Their honeymoon was a little dirty. And sweaty. And exhausting. And not at all what you’re thinking.

Courtney and Shaner, who were married Aug. 1 in Pennsylvania, honeymooned in Boulder to help build a house with the Flatirons Habitat for Humanity.

“We wanted something other than the standard Hawaii trip, a different take on the honeymoon,” Courtney said. “They had some pretty elaborate honeyteering trips abroad, but they were too extreme for us, so we looked to create our own and give back.”

Honeyteering. That’s the media-coined phrase for volunteer honeymoons — lumped in with another word fusion: voluntourism.

Despite the economy and its gloomy tourism numbers, voluntourism is still booming, according to the State of the Volunteer Travel Industry survey by Littleton-based Lasso Communications. In fact, 61 percent of travel companies surveyed said they expected to send more volunteers abroad this year than last, and 16 percent expected the same amount.

About 9 percent of these people travel with their partner, according to another study, Volunteer Travel Insights 2009 by GeckoGo.

Not many. Yet one of the greatest complaints about volunteer vacations is that people get lonely and want someone to decompress with, the studies found. Not to mention, the GeckoGo study found that 99 percent of participants thought their trip was meaningful or very meaningful. Some respondents said it was the best experience of their lives.

Sharing that with your new life partner can deepen the relationship, advocates say.

Alexia Nestoria, of Littleton, is a consultant for the volunteer travel industry who writes the blog voluntourismgal.com.

She attributes the volunteerism growth to an extension of the green movement; a weak job market that has pushed graduates to look for alternate kinds of experience; and layoffs that have left Americans with more time on their hands.

“I think honeymoons are changing, to be honest. It’s no longer a booze cruise or lying on the beach,” Nestoria said. “Budgets are tighter, and people want every dollar to count.”

Plus, the generation that is getting married right now is more aware of the need to help. They are savvy travelers who ask questions and want to know where their dollars are going.

http://www.dailycamera.com/lifestyles/ci_13271856

American International Volunteering Time Valued at $3.5 Billion

Paul Joss sent me this press release that the BBC put out in conjunction with the Hudson Institute – interesting figures below, what do you make of them? $3.5 Billion in volunteering time!

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American International Volunteering Time Valued at $3.5 Billion

WASHINGTON—Based on an analysis of data from the U.S. Census Population Survey’s (CPS) annual volunteering supplement and Independent Sector’s annual calculation of volunteering time, Americans contributed an estimated $3.5 billion in volunteer time to the developing world in 2007, according to the recently released Index of Global Philanthropy and Remittances published annually by the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Prosperity (CGP).

This year’s Index reports that in 2007 more than one million Americans traveled abroad to volunteer, contributing $2.7 billion in volunteer time. Additionally, 341,000 volunteers contributed their time to international organizations in the U.S. amounting to $780 million.

“This recent data from the Index of Global Philanthropy and Remittances reinforces what we are seeing and what we’re working for,” says Paul Joss, Managing Director of the Building Bridges Coalition, a consortium of 210 member organizations working to increase the number, quality and positive impacts of international volunteer efforts.  “As more people volunteer their time towards global causes, the size and impact of this force for good becomes enormous.  There are so many well-run programs that opportunities for international volunteering exist for nearly anyone who is interested.”

Americans are finding many different ways to contribute their time and energies to worthwhile causes overseas.  Many Americans volunteer through international volunteer organizations and faith-based mission agencies that connect volunteers with grassroots organizations in the developing world and manage all of the necessary trip logistics.  Students are taking service-oriented alternative spring break trips and volunteering during summer break. Corporate America is also involved.  According to a recent survey of 43 Fortune 500 CEOs by the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP), 42 percent of respondents had at least one International Corporate Volunteering (ICV) program.

The Index is the sole comprehensive guide to the sources and magnitude of private philanthropy from U.S. foundations, corporations, private and voluntary organizations (PVOs), volunteers, colleges and universities, and religious congregations to the developing world. This year’s Index finds that these sources contributed a total of $36.9 billion in 2007, over one and one-half times U.S. government aid for the same period.

For more information about the Building Bridges Coalition efforts to increase international volunteering, visit www.buildingbridgescoalition.org.  To view the new Index of Global Philanthropy and Remittances, visit Hudson Institute’s CGP on the Web at www.global-prosperity.org.

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Hudson Institute is a nonpartisan policy research organization dedicated to innovative research and analysis that promotes global security, prosperity, and freedom.

The Building Bridges coalition is a consortium of leading international volunteering organizations, corporations, colleges & universities and government agencies working collaboratively to double the number of people volunteering overseas by 2010.  The Building Bridges Coalition is a project of the Brookings Institution’s Initiative on International Volunteering & Service.

Volunteer Vacations: Save the Sea Turtles, Save the World?

Awesome article just out from Julie at PeterGreenberg.com, I took her on this FAM back in the day to Gandoca – really interesting perspective and honest look at voluntourism.

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On her last volunteer vacation to Costa Rica, Julie Manis was tested to her limits while helping to save the Leatherback sea turtles. Here, she explores how would-be voluntourists can thoroughly vet a program before signing away their vacation time.

“That’s crazy.”

This was my friend’s response when I told him about a recent trip to Costa Rica, where I’d spent my vacation trying to help save endangered Leatherback sea turtles.

He got right to the point: “So wait a minute. People pay their way there. They work for free. And they also pay for the privilege?”

Trying to explain voluntourism to a pragmatic person isn’t easy.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand the desire to help. Everyone is aware that the world is full of hunger and hurt, and that our planet itself is in dire need of care.

The truth is, local volunteerism is at an all-time high. VolunteerMatch.com recently reported that they’ve made more than 4 million referrals to people who have visited the site looking for ways help out in their community.

Even President Obama is encouraging American citizens to engage in volunteer service. Free work is the new donation. But Americans shouldn’t confuse volunteer trips with charity, at least as far as taxes are concerned. According to IRS publication 526, travel costs can be deducted only if there is no “significant element of personal pleasure, recreation or vacation in the travel.”

But paying to work? And working during your vacation time? Some would say that smacks of workaholism. Of course, you’re not doing your own work, you’re in an interesting setting, and—given the right project—you have the opportunity to change, if not the world, at least a tiny part of it.

Those who have ever considered becoming a voluntourist, have probably shared some of my friend’s concerns. “How are you sure they even know what they’re doing?” and, “All this money you’re paying—where does it go?”

Actually, it’s hard to know who’s doing what. The first thing to realize when looking for the right volunteer trip is the over-abundance of possibilities.

Google a country and the word “volunteer,” or even a specific interest, and you’ll be overwhelmed with hits. Does a fancy Web site with all the bells and whistles mean the charity has its act more together? Does a plain Web page mean it’s more sincere, giving more of the proceeds directly to the project? Both are silly ways to evaluate an organization, but it’s hard not to be swayed by a poignant photo.

Read the full article here: http://www.petergreenberg.com/2009/06/22/volunteer-vacations-save-the-sea-turtles-save-the-world/

CNN Covers Voluntourism (Again!)

According to our survey results which will be released in the next couple weeks and the abundance of recent press – voluntourism is definitely on the rise!

Below the latest story from CNN. Question: Do you really feel there is an increase in boomers volunteering? I have heard a lot of you talk about expecting a surge but not many that have actually experienced it.

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More Older Americans Signing on to Volunteer Abroad

By Stephanie Chen

(CNN) — When Autumn Preble was a teenager in the 1960s, she spent hours gazing at black-and-white LIFE magazine photographs that documented the journey of Peace Corps volunteers all over the world.

George Stouter, 67, is helping build mental health programs in Saint Kitts for his Peace Corps stint.

Preble, of Whidbey Island, Washington, wanted to join, but after college came marriage and a child.

Now at 58, with her son off to college, she has begun her two-year stint as a Peace Corps volunteer working in the public health sector in Francistown, Botswana, where nearly one in four individuals are infected with HIV.

“I’m getting to experience what it’s like to live in another culture, and that has a lot of value to me,” Preble said from her simple two-bedroom bungalow in Botswana. Preble is known to natives in her community as Masego (Ma say ho), which means “many gifts.” “This is the kind of travel that I’m interested in.”

Forget the mapped-out cruises or packaged vacations to see the world. A growing number of Americans over 50 are dedicating time in their golden years to volunteering abroad. The decision is becoming more attractive with a sickly national economy sparking more layoffs and early retirement packages.

“The economic crisis is giving them an opportunity to take a break,” said Vanessa Noel, an associate director in the nonprofit department of Alliance Abroad Group. The Austin, Texas-based company offers work, teaching and volunteer programs to students and graduates in the U.S. and abroad. Noel coordinates volunteer trips abroad that typically last between two and 12 weeks.

Inquiries from eager adults over 50 have flooded her office in recent months — so much so that she is creating new programs this summer to Costa Rica and Ecuador tailored to older volunteers that will last several weeks. “Life is short, and now they can seize the opportunities out there.”

Applications for the Peace Corps from adults over 50 have spiked 44 percent in 2008 compared to 2007, driven largely by the weak economy and a campaign launched in 2007 to lure mature volunteers. All applicants to the Peace Corps — a federal program created in 1961 that puts Americans overseas in places of need — must pass background checks and a health test. Married couples are allowed to join together.

To read the full article visit:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/04/23/older.volunteers.abroad/index.html

NY Times Covers Voluntourism Again

Voluntourism is going strong. The below article gives a sneak peek at what our survey is confirming, most volunteer travel operators are growing in this recession!

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Getaways that are ‘Guilt Free’ – by Michelle Higgins

SURE, you’d like to take a vacation. But with layoffs hitting your best friends and your own company hinting at pay cuts, how can you justify it?

Readers’ Comments

Consider the guilt-free vacation. To counter customers’ reluctance about jetting off for conspicuous consumption during a recession, travel companies are pushing trips that emphasize service, values and personal fulfillment. The message: If there is more involved than frivolous pleasure, you don’t have to feel bad about dropping all that cash on a splashy vacation.

Abercrombie & Kent, a high-end tour operator perhaps best known for its elite safaris, is offering Philanthropic Journeys (www.abercrombiekent.com/philanthropy), a collection of luxury tours that include elements of volunteering or giving back to the visited community. On sale now is a two-week trip, Fighting Climate Change in Antarctica, from $5,697 a person if booked by June 30. Travelers see penguin colonies, visit a working scientific station and help deliver equipment designed to measure the impact of global warming in the region.

Taking a slightly different tack, Virtuoso, a network of upscale travel agents, is using the banner slogan “Return on Life” to promote trips. “It’s about spending time on what matters most to you,” says the pitch on www.virtuoso.com/returnonlife, its Web site. “Maybe it’s a personal journey to your favorite destination. Perhaps it’s creating wonderful vacation memories with family, friends or your significant other. It may be that you want to get back to nature.” The destinations include 10-night family trips to Vietnam and Cambodia from $3,605 a person or seven-day Alaskan cruises for $3,295 a person.

“Even people who have money to spend are feeling somewhat a sense of guilt in spending money when reading and hearing of difficult times for so many other people,” said Edward Piegza, president of Classic Journeys, a tour operator based in La Jolla, Calif. “But if they can see their spending is actually having a positive impact in some way, they are more able to justify to themselves that their travel is doing good.”

IN January, Jill Stanley, a retired personal assistant from Washington, took a 12-day Conservation Safari, operated by Abercrombie & Kent as part of its Philanthropic Journeys program. The trip demonstrated joint charity work the company has done with Friends of Conservation, an environmental organization that works with locals to develop sustainable ways of living in harmony with nature. “We did the safari thing,” she said, “but they also took you around to see what A & K and the F.O.C. had done to help the area.”

On the trip, which cost about $10,800 a person, Ms. Stanley visited an orphanage for children whose parents had died of AIDS and spent time with a Masai village and learned about reforestation efforts in the region. “It made me feel good that we were able to plant trees or give in our name for somebody in the Masai Mara,” she said. “It’s much more rewarding than going and sitting on the beach.”

Companies offering more affordable volunteer vacations report that bookings for do-good trips haven’t dropped as much this year as those for more traditional vacation packages. Sierra Club Outings, which offers a series of “service” trips in which volunteers can help eradicate invasive plants in Channel Islands National Park in California ($695) or maintain trails in the Red River Gorge in Kentucky ($375), said its domestic trips were down by 16 percent for the first three months of the year overall, compared with the same period last year. But service-trip bookings were down just 9 percent.

In some cases, volunteer vacations have even been growing. Projects Abroad, which runs volunteer programs overseas, said bookings were up 20 percent this February from February 2008, with some of the travelers recently laid off but others simply looking for vacations that involve service. Options range from teaching soccer in Moldova for two weeks ($1,795) to teaching English in Nepal for three months ($3,295).

For other travelers, the urge to imbue a trip with a sense of purpose is fulfilled in more personal ways.

“We are getting more requests for trips they can share with family and friends, such as celebrating a milestone birthday or anniversary,” said Pamela Lassers, a spokeswoman for Abercrombie & Kent. “They want to rent a villa or a barge in Europe and then invite friends and family to join them. Or plan a private tented safari to celebrate a 50th birthday. Or host a family reunion at a ranch in Colorado.”

Virtuoso’s Return on Life campaign was created in response to a similar trend toward trips that focus on spending time with loved ones. “I really think people are putting their lives in perspective,” in light of the recession, said Kristi Jones, president of the travel agency network. “There is this need for people to feel reconnected and rejuvenated, but not in a self-indulgent way.”

For Globus, a major tour operator, bookings are down overall, said Steve Born, vice president of marketing, but religious tours, family packages and dream trips like Galápagos cruises “are stronger or on pace with last year.”

Faith-based trips, like pilgrimages to Jerusalem or other places of religious significance are resilient partly because travelers view them not just as vacations but also as “an expression of faith,” Mr. Born said. “It’s not a commitment they feel they can break.”

Globus is also offering another kind of vacation customers may find easy to justify — the fast, affordable trip. The company recently introduced 14 Guilt-Free Getaways from 4 to 10 days each, starting at around $100 a day — trips “that won’t tax pocketbooks or keep travelers away from their daily responsibilities too long,” according to its Web site, www.globusjourneys.com/Guilt-Free-Getaway-Vacations.

For families limited by school and activity schedules, Mr. Born said, the timing of vacations is pretty much predetermined, and even this year “it’s just a matter of where and how.” And given the stress of the economy, many people may feel they need a vacation now more than ever.

“I think people need things to look forward to in this economy,” said Jill Walsh, a mother of three from San Diego, who along with her in-laws has been planning a summer family trip to celebrate her husband’s parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. “What do you work hard for and save for if it’s not something to have memories?”

To keep costs down, the family plans to rent a house in Glacier National Park in Montana. “Four to five special days just with the family — who knows if that opportunity with Grandpa going on 82 will happen again?” she said. “It’s an investment in memories for a lifetime.”

Financial Times Covers Voluntourism

Going on a Trip to Count Kenya’s Elephants By Michelle Jana Chan

There are grey elephants and brown elephants and black elephants – but nothing compares to the red elephants of Tsavo. Elephants may be created equal but, after a vigorous wallow in mud, the Tsavo breed of south-east Kenya are ablaze in the colours of terracotta, vermilion and claret. It is as if they are anointed by the burning equatorial sun and the rich, brick-red African soil.

I first saw them when I was seven. There were herds so vast that my dad turned off the engine of our rental car for half an hour until they had all crossed the road. Drought in the 1970s and the “ivory wars” of the 1980s decimated the population. At the last census, there were 12,000 elephants in Tsavo, one of Africa’s biggest national parks. Even after two decades of recovery, that number is one-third of what it was 40 years ago.

On this trip, I was coming back to count elephants as a volunteer on an Earthwatch conservation project. Travel industry pundits are calling this type of holiday “voluntourism” or, worse, affluent activism. A trip like this costs roughly the same as a beach holiday in Lamu in the Kenyan archipelago, with about the same time commitment, meaning you don’t have to quit your job or take a sabbatical.

Our group met in Nairobi at the Fairview Hotel. It turned out we were all women, which is not uncommon, according to Earthwatch. There were six of us, aged between 22 and 60 years, from Australia, the US, Japan and the UK. One was a student, one unemployed, another had a sparkling law career. It turned out we were all single – either widowed, divorced, broken-hearted or looking for love. Two had never seen an elephant in the wild; one was on her third “Elephants of Tsavo” expedition.

To read the rest visit: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/51a4ff34-09dd-11de-add8-0000779fd2ac.html

Want a better, safer world? Volunteer

Voluntourism covered in the Christian Science Monitor again! Who says this story is dead???

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Want a better, safer world? Volunteer By Michael Honda and Thomas Petri

Washington – To say that the Peace Corps changed our lives, our perspectives, and now our modus operandi as members of Congress, is a sweeping understatement. Serving in El Salvador and in Somalia respectively, we returned to the United States fundamentally transformed.

The impact was so profound that we are eager to urge every young American to consider serving in the Peace Corps or a domestic equivalent. Aside from the potential personal influence programs such as the Peace Corps can have on the individuals who volunteer, the capacity building is exactly what the world needs during these economic times.

If we could make assignments available to the 15,000 some Peace Corps applicants who applied in the past year, we would. If we could provide all the countries, who would like to host volunteers but don’t, with the human resources necessary to be successful, we would. If we could appropriate sufficient funds so that returning volunteers could continue to give back to underserved communities in the US, we would.

At the crux of this is the concept of service – service to our neighbors, near or far, in desperate need of a helping hand.

This is the ethos that was at the epicenter of Sargent Shriver’s work when he became the first director of the Peace Corps, as well as when he founded VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America), the domestic equivalent. The model for these and other service programs is to recruit, train, and fund volunteers to work in local communities, enhancing skills, capacity, and knowledge in the areas such as education, health, business development, environment, youth, and agriculture.

While the Peace Corps is rightly oriented toward helping the global poor in the far reaches of the developing world, here in our own American backyard we have ample service opportunities – especially in the midst of our economic recession.

America is struggling. It ranks highest among developed nations in inequality levels and poverty rates.

Since joblessness often stems from lack of skills and poor education, one way of increasing employment is to better fund capacity-building service programs within high-need, low-income communities. By doing this, we can equip poor populations with the tools needed to better their economic situation.

Increased service in America can simultaneously make our country and global community safer because employment, education, and peace are interlinked. Statistics tell us, for example, that a 1 percent increase in unemployment is accompanied by a 6 percent increase in homicides. They tell us that a 10 percent drop in male enrollment in secondary school increases the risk of violent conflict by roughly 4 percent. And they show that the higher the percentage living in relative poverty, the higher the number of violent offenses.

Now apply these numbers to a city such as Baltimore, with relatively high unemployment and school dropout rates approaching near-pandemic levels. Baltimore maintains one of the lowest secondary school graduation rates in the country, only about 34 percent who enter, graduate. The fact that the city also tops the charts on violent crime with five times the national murder rate, three times the national robbery rate, and nearly three times the national aggravated assault and arson rates, is not lost on city educators and labor departments.

Or apply these numbers to the US security quagmires, such as the tribal regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where unemployment rates are staggeringly high, educational enrollment is low, and average income rates are as meager as $15 per month. The violence there, too, is not coincidental.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0306/p09s02-coop.html

Domino Features Volunteer Vacations

Cynthia really tried to capture the essence of a volunteer vacation in her article below, we talked a lot during the whole process and I think its a great summary of voluntourism. To read the full article have a look at:

http://www.dominomag.com/howtos/2009/03/vacation

I couldn’t believe it took only two days to construct a stove.

Every so often I look out my cubicle window at all the skyscrapers and think, How did I end up in corporate America? Wasn’t I going to save the world? It might be too late for that (besides, I like my husband and my comfy house), but maybe not for a new kind of vacation I’d heard about, where you do a mini Peace Corps–type stint—as short as a week, as long as a year—and even get to have some fun. After a little research, I called an agency named Global Vision International and signed up for two weeks in Guatemala.

“Stovers and teachers, up to the terrace,” said our group leader, a charismatic Owen Wilson look-alike. All 15 of us were gathering at the staff house, a typical expat flat with tiled floors and scrounged furniture. A British computer programmer who’d already been there for six weeks led me upstairs, where I was introduced to an airline executive from Los Angeles and a middle-school teacher from Nevada. Local hosts were putting us up in Antigua; each morning, we’d be driven to the villages to help the Maya, who make up a majority of the country’s population, and who, in many communities, have an illiteracy rate of 80 percent and earn about $1 a day.

The women cook on open fires in the middle of their small bamboo-and-cane huts. Not only is the smoke extremely carcinogenic, but kids sometimes fall into the flames.

For our jobs, we got to choose between teaching Spanish to Mayan children or building stoves. Choosing the latter was a no-brainer (and not just because I don’t speak Spanish well). A stove, which pipes the cancer-causing smoke out of the hut, can add 15 years to family members’ lives and cut firewood usage by 70 percent, saving tons of trees in an area that’s rapidly being deforested. Figuring out how I felt about the rest of my situation was more complicated. The thing I like about traveling is what Spalding Gray called the “perfect moment”—that sudden feeling you sometimes get on a trip when you are so alive, so at one with the universe, that you can go home knowing the possibility of perfection is out there. Would I get it from being in homes so devastatingly different from my own? Or would I simply feel guilty about my fat-cat First-World life?

http://www.dominomag.com/howtos/2009/03/vacation

CNN Features Voluntourism Again

It’s that time of the year for the mandatory alternative spring break article, interesting though how its about domestic volunteering and not international travel this year.

FYI – Better Homes & Gardens’ March issue has a whole story on international voluntourism in the back as does Delta’s in flight mag.

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(CNN) — This spring break, thousands of college students will ditch the bars and the beaches to do something more meaningful with their vacation time.

Brad Vonck (bottom, left) and other student volunteers worked with the Cherokee Nation in Stilwell, Oklahoma.

Brad Vonck is one of them. A sophomore at the University of Illinois, Vonck will travel to San Juan, Texas, in a group of 13 students to volunteer with La Union del Pueblo Entero, an organization that helps strengthen the communities and lives of farm workers and their families.

“Learning about different cultures is very important to me,” Vonck said. “I like to engage in different areas of life that I don’t really understand.”

Every year, more and more college students, like Vonck, are choosing to spend their valuable time off from school participating in “alternative spring break” programs — community service-based opportunities dealing with the most pressing issues of the day, including hunger and homelessness, disaster relief and global warming.

“If you can name a social issue, then students are doing trips around it,” said Jill Piacitelli, executive director of Break Away, an organization that trains and helps colleges across the United States promote alternative break programs.

For the past six years, these programs have been growing in popularity among college students. Break Away estimated that this year, nearly 65,000 students will participate in its alternative break programs, an 11 percent increase from 2008.

“It’s a student-led social movement. … This is a group that very much wants to be involved in the world around them,” Piacitelli said of the volunteers. “They’re solution-oriented. They want to innovate and lead and involve their peers.”

The average domestic trip costs around $250 or $300, Piacitelli said, which includes “housing, travel, social activities, food and often a donation to the community.”

Many university programs offer financial aid and the option to raise money to help pay for trips. “It is rare that anyone who wants to go on a trip cannot go,” Piacitelli said. The affordability is part of the reason why so many students return for second or third trips.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/getaways/03/04/alternative.spring.break.travel/index.html

Globe & Mail – People Turn to Voluntourism When Economy Declines

I worked with the reporter on this story and she really did a great job, worth a read!

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Back in May, 2007, Jean-François Gagnon’s ticket to self-discovery came in the form of a pink slip.

At 27, he’d just been laid off from his communications job at Collège Boréal, a francophone school with an office in Toronto. He’d always wanted to work abroad, but the daily grind put an information technology internship he’d wanted to do, with Aides Médicales et Charité, on the backburner.

“It wasn’t my first idea, ‘I’m getting laid off so I’ll go overseas,’ ” he says. “But then I had this package, time to think. I thought, ‘This may be time to just do it.’ “

He applied and by September he was in Togo, where he built and managed computer databases for HIV/AIDS research statistics.

Jean-François Gagnon’s volunteer work in Togo led him to a new career in international development.

After returning to Canada and starting the job hunt, Mr. Gagnon found the volunteer experience was often brought up in interviews.

“When they asked ‘What is one of your biggest accomplishments?’ I always said it was this.”

Volunteering abroad is looking more and more appealing to those stuck at home mourning the loss of their 9 to 5 because of the economic storms that continue to fuel job losses across the country.

It’s also attractive to employers who have in recent years included corporate social responsibility in their mandate. Non-profit/relief/charitable organizations say they’re fielding more calls from people who say they’d rather put their time to good use than spend hopeless months trying to tap into a bone-dry job market.

Read the full article at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090202.wlvolunteer02/BNStory/lifeWork/home