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

Voluntourism Effective Practice Guidelines Published

A great piece of work by the good folks at PEPY Ride and Karina Kloos, what are your thoughts on the guidelines? How can they be improved?

Read the whole version here: http://lessonsilearned.org/2009/09/voluntourism101/

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Volunteer Tourism Effective Practices

Volunteer Tourism Effective Practices is designed for tour operators who are looking to or already incorporating volunteer projects into their trips. Additionally, we hope it will also serve development organizations, volunteer tourism participants and community members in helping to identify and engage in great volunteer projects. We gathered research, input and experience from many people working in the areas of voluntourism, development, and traveler’s philanthropy to create this guideline and are grateful for those who have contributed their input. This is a working, living resource, meaning that we are continually seeking feedback in the form of opinions, experiences, lessons learned and anecdotes relating to the outlined effective practices, and responses to the design and content of this guideline. Through our collective efforts, we hope to minimize potentially damaging consequences of volunteer tourism and maximize the good intentions of everyone involved.

I. PARTNER ORGANIZATIONS AND HOST COMMUNITIES

1. Responsibly identify partner organizations

This section is intended to help tour operators identify volunteer project partners (NGO, nonprofit, social venture). For tour operators organizing and offering their own volunteer projects directly to participants, the same indicators and questions apply with regard to the projects and host community relations.

Locally Run Community Programs

• Are project leaders based locally?
• Are project leaders working in close collaboration with the local community?
• Are project leaders familiar with the region: local businesses, organizations, government officials; customs, traditions, and laws?

Community Buy-In

• Was the volunteer project/ community interaction designed in consultation with the community based on community interests and needs?
• Does the project have the ongoing support and involvement of the community?

Long-Term Program Sustainability

• Does the partner organization have a stable relationship with the community?
• Can the partner organization be relied upon throughout the planning and implementation of the project involved?
• Is the project geared toward building capacity within the community to manage its own long-term development?
• Was the volunteer project/ community interaction designed to further progress on a larger goal, which existed before volunteers arrive and will continue after they leave?

Corruption Mitigation

• Has the partner organization developed relationships with community members?
• Has the partner organization set up a monitoring and evaluation system, which involves checks and balances as well as outsider input and assessment?
• Does the partner organization have a deep understanding of local customs and laws?
• Do project leaders speak the local language?
• If there are select beneficiaries (certain members or families within a community, or one community rather then another) of the program, is the selection criteria transparent?

Documentation and Reporting Structures

• Can the partner organization demonstrate reliable documentation, measurement and reporting about their organizational operations?
• Is the partner organization legally registered in the areas in which they work?
• Are they actively measuring and reporting the short- and long-term effects of their projects?
• Are the financial reports of the organization transparent, both annual and project-specific reports?
• Is the partner organization willing to openly discuss the use of the program budget?

Ethos and Ethical Alignment

• Do you share the social, environmental, and development values of the partnering organization?
• Do you have a similar philosophical approach towards community development, and ecological / heritage preservation?
• Do you share the same project goals?
• Is there clear discussion and understanding of any cultural or organizational differences?
• Have you consulted references from your own sources (not only sources provided by the partner), to better understand perceptions and impacts of the partnering organization?

2. Build relationships based on collaborative project management and assessment with the partner organization

The impact volunteer tourism trips have on the volunteers and host communities will depend largely on the partnership between the organization and tour operator. Miscommunication, misunderstandings and any problems that exist could potentially undermine the efforts of everyone involved and so it is important to think of how best to manage the communication and responsibilities of the organizers.

Project Monitoring and Assessment

• Are there communication channels in place for any project updates or changes?
• Are there monitoring structures in place to evaluate volunteer impact and the capacity to make any necessary adjustments?

Project Follow Through

• Are there clear expectations of how long the tour operator will provide volunteer support and how that aligns with the expected duration of the project needs?
• Are there built-in protections in the volunteer projects design against unpredictable fluctuations in the number of volunteer participants? (how might a decline in tourism affect the outcome of the project?)

Volunteer Planning

• Is it clear who is responsible for providing to volunteers any necessary pre-trip information regarding the issues the volunteer project addresses, the volunteer project itself the partner organization and the host community?
• Is the partner organization provided with information about volunteers?
• Is it clear who is responsible for any follow up information or activities with volunteers?

Memorandum of Understanding

• Have you developed a clear understanding of responsibilities and expectations for both organizations?
• Do you have in place structures for continual assessment and re-evaluation of partnership relations, project goals, volunteer experiences and community impact?
• Do you have documentation of all agreements?

3. Ensure beneficial relationship for partner organization and host community

With increasing interest in volunteer tourism, there are increasing demands on tour companies to incorporate volunteer projects in their tours. Tour operators “and volunteers “ should keep in mind how their efforts are actually contributing to the needs of the recipient organization and community.

Volunteer Contribution

• Do volunteers provide valuable services to the organization and community? (Some questions to consider: Do volunteers provide locally unavailable skilled labor? Do volunteers provide services that would otherwise be costly for partner organizations? Are volunteers taking the place of local jobs?)
• Does volunteer participation in the project contribute negatively to the local environment?
• Is volunteer participation culturally appropriate?
• Will the volunteer be employed in a position, which will create dependence or create a void when the volunteer leaves? Alternatively, will their position build the capacity of local people and programs to better sustain themselves once the volunteer is gone?  (For example, is the volunteer teaching English directly to children? Or teaching teachers how to improve their English thereby providing capacity building to the teachers?)

Financial Contribution

• Might the financial contribution be more effective than volunteers?
• Are the financial costs of hosting volunteers considered?
• Would a financial contribution help to sustain ongoing project needs?
• Would a financial contribution potentially create any dependencies?

II. VOLUNTEER PROJECTS

4. Design projects based on local needs and input as well as volunteer sustainability

Again, the increasing demands on tour companies to incorporate volunteer projects in their tours can potentially lead to poorly designed projects that cater to volunteers’ interests rather than – and sometimes at the expense of – the needs of the host organization and community. This section is intended to help ensure that projects are designed on a needs basis.

Project Planning and Design

• Is a representative from the partner organization and/or community involved in all steps of the volunteer project planning and implementation?
• Is the community directly contributing to the project in any way?  Did beneficiaries have to earn these contributions in some way?
• Does the short-term project contribute to the long-term goals and needs of the organization and community?
• Are volunteer projects adaptable? ie: if project timelines or community needs change, can the volunteer project be altered to meet the new demands?
• Are projects adaptable to changing tourism trends? ie: might  the project discontinue if tourism declines in that area?

Volunteer Contributions

• Are volunteers’ skills appropriately matched to the projects’ needs and activities?
• Are there valuable tasks accessible for non-technical or “unskilled” volunteers, especially if the trip is being solicited to unskilled volunteers?

Timing

• Does planning allow for flexibility if/when the project needs change?
• Would the timing of the volunteer project potentially keep the progress of the project or other related project on hold?
• If the trip is designed to be repeated, is there time allowed for potential changes to the volunteer interaction based on the assessment of previous volunteer projects?

Read the whole version here: http://lessonsilearned.org/2009/09/voluntourism101/

Research Project Seeks Voluntourists!

Dr. Jess Pointing is doing research on the transformative effects of voluntourism, if you want to help send this survey on to past travelers and let’s see what sort of results we get.

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Did your volunteer experience transform you? That’s the question being asked by Dr. Jess Pointing, Assistant Professor of Sustainable Tourism at San Diego State University.

There is just one question. You may write as much or as little as you wish.

Think about your volunteer tourism experience and ask if you think it has changed you in some way.  This could mean changes in the way you see yourself, changes in the way that other people see you, or changes in how you see the world generally.  Don’t rush your answer.  Take some time and think back to your experience and consider whether the person who has returned is in some way different from the one prior to departure.  When you have reflected on this and thought of something, please describe it in as much detail as possible.  You might begin by describing a specific event and then following up with an analysis of how it changed you.  Describe as many events and personal reactions as you feel are meaningful from your experience.

Please send your response directly to : jess.ponting@sdsu.edu

The information you provide will be analyzed and used as the basis for a major academic journal article. Your response will remain anonymous, you will not be identified in any way in published materials resulting from the study. You are free to withdraw from this research at any time without explanation. If you have any questions please direct them to Dr. Jess Ponting, jess.ponting @ sdsu.edu,  Ph: 619 594 8499.

Free Brand Monitoring Tools

With the rise of social media your brand is being talked about more than ever before, how are you engaging and listening to those conversations? If someone is complaining about their trip do you know about it? If so are you addressing it? You should be otherwise you’ll be looking at media coverage like the recent Guardian article.

Here are some tools I love using:

Google Alerts (oldie but goodie)

BoardTracker.com (to monitor discussion boards and forums)

Twitter Search

Backtype (to monitor blog comments)

Technorati (monitor blogs)

Another Voluntourism Bashing Article

Articles like this hopefully help operators reflect on the quality and sustainability of their projects. Real Gap and i-to-i, to name a couple, get called out – what have you done to ensure one traveler’s bad trip doesn’t end up as front page news?

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Frances Jaine was going to Thailand for her gap year with a friend. She had worked for months to save funds, and took care to book the trip with a firm that specialised in organising volunteering abroad.

“We hadn’t travelled without our parents before, and southeast Asia was a long way away,” she said.

The idea was that Jaine, then 19, and her friend would help out in a school in a remote Thai village for a month. They wanted to do something positive on their travels, rather than just loll around on a beach.

When they arrived they were in for a shock. They learnt that they were supposed to teach Thai culture, for which they were not obviously well equipped. “We ended up just doing drawing most of the time,” recalled Jaine last week, now 21 and a student at Leeds University.

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Worse, the school closed every day at lunchtime and Jaine and her friend were left with nothing to do. There was no sign of the local travel rep, who, it was promised, would guide them in local customs.

So just two weeks into their contracts they left the village. It was a bitter disappointment. Not so much for the money they had wasted — they had paid the firm £750 each to sort out the placement — but for the sense that they had been no help at all in the village.

Each year some 200,000 young people undertake gap-year projects, spending on average about £4,000 each. Many are drawn to “voluntourism” — a specimen of well-meaning travel that also attracted princes William and Harry.

The government recently announced plans to send hundreds of new graduates on similar trips — with the additional effect of keeping them off benefits in recession-hit times. These taxpayer-funded gappers will help to build schools and improve sanitation in remote communities.

That’s the idea, at least. A Sunday Times investigation has shown that the goodwill of young volunteers is exploited by some companies sending them overseas — and that the work young people carry out while there is increasingly regarded as positively unhelpful.

IF YOU Google “volunteer gap year” the company that comes top of the search is Real Gap, which has seen rapid growth recently and was sold last year to Tui Travel as part of a deal worth £43.8m. Real Gap offers would-be voluntourists projects teaching in schools, raising awareness of Aids, working with orphans, and turtles, and injured wildlife, learning medical skills at a bushman clinic and helping elephants and landowners to live in harmony.

The projects offered by other companies are similar. They appear attractive, but people who sign up are not infrequently disappointed.

Sarah Byrnes went with Real Gap to an orphanage in Thailand in 2006. The firm’s reps, she says, had promised locals that the volunteers would help to rebuild the orphanage and put in water systems. But the volunteers were surprised when the local co-ordinator asked them to contribute £200 towards this.

Read the full article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/news/article6788628.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

Voluntourism Catching On – Early Show with Peter Greenberg

Woo hoo – yet another morning show has covered voluntourism with our great advocate Peter Greenberg. Some of the stats he used to prove that voluntourism is a growing trend came from the very survey you all participated in months ago on the state of the volunteer travel industry. So well done everyone for coming together and providing some stats on the industry. I just got a call from another morning show wanting to feature voluntourism, so woo hoo, here we go!

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(CBS) About 100-thousand people each year take vacations focused on volunteer work, and that number is growing.

What’s behind the trend — and might such vacations be for you?

Travel guru Peter Greenberg observed on “The Early Show” Monday that volunteer vacations are one of the fastest growing segments of the travel industry.

Despite a tough economy, or maybe because of it, more and more Americans are taking a “volunteer vacation.” Some do it to give back to others, and some do as a result of a sort of indirect guilt trip, feeling it’s not right to spend big bucks on big vacations, so they get their reward through giving back.

YOU SAY THERE IS A VOLUNTEER VACATION OUT THERE TO MEET EVERYONE’S NEEDS. HOW DO WE DEFINE A VOLUNTEER VACATION?

You can dedicate a whole trip to volunteering or you can actually bookend the trip, meaning you can have a regular vacation and then do a few days volunteering at the end of the trip. Working or volunteer vacations are a great way to get a deal on a trip and also make a difference-without having to serve two years in the Peace Corps. Whether it’s helping to save Leatherback sea turtles in Costa Rica, delivering crucial medical supplies to an orphanage in El Salvador, helping to build a hospital in southern Thailand, or helping in the continuing efforts to rebuild the ninth ward in New Orleans nearly four years after hurricane Katrina,each trip allows us to make a real difference while exploring the world, getting immersed in a different culture and even learning a new language

WHY DO YOU THINK THESE TYPES OF VACATIONS ARE SEEING AN UPSWING?

It is one of the fastest growing segments in the travel industry, and despite a tough economy, or perhaps because of it, more and more Americans are opting to travel a little differently this year…they are taking a volunteer vacation. Part of the reasoning, of course, is to give back, to help others. And another driving force behind the growth of volunteer vacations is that they have in essence become a sort of indirect guilt trip — many travelers these days don’t feel right about spending ten solid days at a spa so they bookend their pampering with another kind of feel-good activity — giving back. Also, many of them are tax-deductible.

ARE THEY USUALLY CHEAPER THAN A REGULAR VACATION?

Depending on the organization they can be, but sometime they aren’t……it depends what type of trip you take…you can have some like the Airline Ambassador program which allows you to get most of the same perks that the airline employees get on airfares/hotels and then you have some that are much more high end-like the Earthwatch institute that can end up being quite costly.

WHERE DO YOU SUGGEST PEOPLE GO TO FIND OUT ABOUT THE ORGANIZATIONS THAT SPONSOR THESE TYPES OF VACATIONS?

The first thing to do is Google “volunteer vacations.” Narrow the many that come up based on your own personal interests.

Read the full story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/03/earlyshow/living/travel/main5205891.shtml

30 Free SEO Tools – Are You Using Them?

A great list of free SEO tools from the folks at SEOptimise, if you’re not using most of these you probably should be.

Keyword Research

• § Google Insights for Search
• § Google Adwords Keyword Tool
• § Google Trends
• § Wordtracker SEO Blogger
• § Wikipedia article traffic statistics

Site Check

• § Google Webmaster Tools
• § GSite Crawler
• § Google Website Optimizer
• § Yellowpipe Lynx Viewer Tool
• § Pingdom Tools

Link Tools

• § Yahoo! Site Explorer
• § Xenu Linksleuth
• § Majestic SEO
• § Link Diagnosis
• § Link Harvester
• § Social Media for Firefox

Ranking

• § KeywordEnvy Search Engie Rankings Tool
• § Rank Checker
• § Disable personalized search plug in
• § RankTracker

Analytics

• § Google Analytics
• § Woopra
• § Compete
• § Spyfu

Various

• § googlebar (not Google Toolbar!)
• § Quirk SearchStatus
• § SeoQuake
• § SEO for Firefox
• § SEOpen
• § Quarkbase

Call for Data – Media Request

PeterGreenberg.com is researching a story on voluntourism and they called asking if I knew an exact number of people that took a voluntere vacation last year within the US. I have numbers for those going abroad, but none for the US, anyone have any ideas?

Afraid of Voluntourism?

GREAT article by the Philanthrobuzz blog – are people afraid of volunteering abroad? What are you doing on your website to ease those fears??

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by Anis Salvesen

There’s a fabulous recent trend of people becoming really excited about volunteering.  However, there are still some of us who are sitting on the sidelines waiting for the perfect volunteer opportunity to come along before we jump in.

Recently I was baking cookies, and while they were in the oven becoming extra delicious, I decided to do a quick Google search on why people don’t volunteer.   Straight away, I came across a couple interesting links.

One was Top Ten Reasons to NOT Volunteer on Youthnoise.com.  It was a list that I suppose was meant to illustrate the lack of substance of most of our excuses for not volunteering.  Take, for example, reasons eight and nine:   9. I’m waiting for Spaceman Spinkeedoo to return from planet Zumar with the bag of cheese puffs he stole from me.   8. I’m counting the dust specks in the ray of light from my bedroom window.

Now, I have been guilty of coming up with some pretty creative excuses of my own in the past, but the one which I found deterred me the most was a fear of not liking the volunteer experience.  What if I volunteered at a soup kitchen and bumped into someone carrying a couple of pitchers of very hot coffee, and hot black liquid spilled all over that person and me and someone walking by?  What if after colliding with the coffee server I then slipped on the caffeinated liquid and pulled the person who tried to help me stand upright down too?  This sounds rather far-fetched, but I should tell you that I was one of the clumsiest people in college.  I managed to make myself bleed with a gummy worm and hit a tree trunk with the roof of my car without flipping the vehicle over.  Yes, I was that clumsy.

But what about most people?  Did anyone else share my fear of a bad experience?  In conducting my quick Google search, I did notice that at least a couple of sources also mentioned this fear of a bad volunteer experience tarnishing future efforts to volunteer.  It makes sense, but there’s something else I should add.   Actually, I’ll just paint a quick scenario.

Okay.  So say you decide you want to volunteer somewhere.   You know you want to go abroad, and you know you want to work with children.  So you go to http://www.universalgiving.org because you read our blog, and you like our site, and you select “children” as your focus area.  You get 168 results, and you’re really excited because you find a great project with a fantastic organization, and you know it’s fully vetted, or that organization wouldn’t be on our site.  So you get any vaccines you need, and you hop on a plane.  You get there, and then you realize that the two most obnoxious volunteers in the entire world are your new roommates.

Is this a perfect volunteer experience?  No.  Does it mean you’re not going to volunteer ever again?   Hopefully the answer is also a “no.”   Those two crazy volunteers may have driven you insane, but at least they make a good story.  They might even be fodder for that book you’ve been thinking of writing.

What I’m getting at is that even if one volunteer experience is far from perfect, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try again.  Last time we went camping, my husband and I had no tent, so we “slept” in the car with a puppy that refused to stop barking at the dog in the next camp site.  My husband burned himself making dinner, and in the morning he awoke to realize he had a really bad flu.  Our speedometer stopped working minutes after we got on the road to head home – this was after I awoke the entire campground by stepping on the gas instead of on the brake pedal on our way out.   We took a one hour detour to see a lighthouse that we ended up not actually being able to see because of the thickest fog ever, and then we narrowly missed hitting a cow that decided to wander onto the road.

We’re hoping to go camping again in August.  I hope if you’ve had a bad volunteer experience that you also try again.  Thanks for reading this blog post!

Scholarships and Voluntourism – How Can They Work Effectively?

David Weindling of the Farther Foundation talks about how they select students to support and travel providers to partner with in order to have the best shot at good outcomes.

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At Farther Foundation, we provide deserving, low-income high school students opportunities to learn, grow and succeed by participating in educational travel programs. We believe travel is singular in its ability to open the eyes and unbind the aspirations of students whose experiences rarely escape the boundaries of their own neighborhoods. Inspired by experience students become active and engaged learners, full of potential and more fully aware of the world and its opportunities. More and more these days, educational travel incorporates service as a key part of its itinerary.

Farther Foundation scholarship students are currently traveling and volunteering in Vietnam, Ghana, El Salvador, Argentina, Peru, Costa Rica and Hawaii. We do not require applicants for our support to choose a program that includes service learning, but our scholarship selection committee knows that such experiences can be particularly rewarding, inspiring and enlightening.

To ensure that the students we support have the best experience possible we look to work with the best possible partners.

The travel programs and providers we work with have established relationships with organizations that provide service opportunities that are designed and well supervised as appropriate for our high school aged participants. Our travel partners also make it a priority to reach out to underserved, minority and low-income students. They have developed an expertise in successfully integrating individuals of disparate backgrounds into a cohesive group that reaps benefits from its diversity. Travel providers our scholarship recipients are traveling with this year include: The Road Less Traveled, Putney Student Travel, Visions Service Adventures and AFS.

A successful outcome is not just contingent on the experience provided however, it is also dependent on the experiences and expectations each student participant brings to the program. We require all candidates for scholarship support to submit an application in conjunction with an “Education Partner”. Education Partners are schools and community based organizations that provide students with extra-curricular support such as; tutoring, mentoring, internships, after-school programming, leadership training, and college preparatory activities.  These partnerships ensure that our applicants are students who have been proactive in seeking opportunities and that they are receiving ongoing support to help them succeed.

It is neither simple nor easy to overcome negative influences and years of lost opportunity.  But, at Farther Foundation we believe that by building strong partnerships and augmenting existing networks of support with unique, inspirational and transformational travel experiences we can make a real and lasting difference in the lives of deserving students.

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Farther Foundation is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization providing scholarships to low-income students to inspire them to reach their highest aspirations through educational travel experiences. www.fartherfoundation.org.