Voluntourism with Kids

By: Amanda Coggin (View Profile)

Globe Aware
With exciting reviews by a nine, seven, and a five year old about discovering bats and waterfalls in Thailand, parents will be excited to share the world and its inhabitants with their children. Globe Aware wants families to immerse themselves in the communities they are helping, while providing some fun on the side for the young ones. Kids can sing along with local schoolchildren while helping to build their schools, or play games with young monks while teaching them their favorite English words. All projects either create infrastructure, environmental improvement, or preserve a cultural heritage, which are learning experiences best taught when young. Travel to Laos, Mexico and China, or help kids at a blind orphanage in Peru, any of the trips that Globe Aware provides will bring people and projects together in a joint effort toward discovery of self.

Earthwatch Institute
Earthwatch combines fun with learning on their ten-day family expeditions for those who want to interact with marine friends. While most lodging includes a swimming pool for kids, that won’t be necessary when your ten-year-old is swimming with sea turtles in Trinidad, or canoeing for Diamondback Terrapins in the salt marshes off the East Coast. Earthwatch also created teen trips so your adolescent could get on track to becoming the next Cousteau.

When kids return, Saturday may very well become the day to volunteer at the soup kitchen rather than the day to play videogames.

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posted: 08.10.2008
Seagalgirl
One great organization not mentioned is Global Volunteers. It is one of the the first volunteering vacation organization and has programs all around the world. I just returned with my 16 yr. old grandson from Crete. We taught English conversation 4 hrs. per day to children in a small city, then had the rest of the day and evening for day trips and the weekends for longer excursions around the island. The cost is relative to meals and rooms and transportation of other vacations and is tax deductible too. A great way to bond as a family and provide needed service to persons around the world. My grandson is hooked and I plan to take my 16 yr. old granddaughter next summer. Maybe to the Cook Islands. An absolute perfect travel option.
posted: 04.08.2008
Gail Johnston
Thank you for putting all this valuable information together! I have bookmarked it and will go over it with my husband next time we discuss vacations. Thanks again!
posted: 03.01.2008
CG
Nice, Amanda -- "voluntourism" is the wave of the future. I've been on / led about a dozen such trips, mostly "builds" with Habitat, and final took two of my own kids on such a trip last week to the Dominican Republic (with my own Habitat-like non-profit, Cambiando Vidas, www.cambiandovidas.info). They'll never forget the experience...and know, now, that you can be dirt-poor and still (relatively) happy, and that Western-style "things" can get *in they way* of happiness and friendship. I suspect my kids (17 and 14) will want to do this sort of trip again, and maybe every year!!!!
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