Change youth, change the future
Young people now not only have a better chance of volunteering abroad, they have a broader array of opportunities. For example, many developed nations now offer large numbers of volunteering opportunities that combine creative/cultural education and tourism promotion.
These nations frequently involve volunteers with their local arts and cultural or environmental issues, giving rise to things like "wine-tasting volunteering," "Vicky the Viking volunteering," "archaeological volunteering," and "World Heritage environmental volunteering." By contributing their mental and physical labor, volunteers get to participate in in-depth cultural and environmental tours.
Another interesting trend is the coupling of simple volunteer services to major global issues. This allows young people to gain a first-hand perspective on and understanding of some of the issues confronting our planet, and may motivate them to make changes in their own lives.
Zheng Keming, currently a student in the Department of Recreational and Sports Management at National Taipei University, was a participant in an international environmental work camp in the Philippines, where he helped residents of Cebu City's Sudlon district and of Olango Island's Suba area clean up beaches, plant trees, and work on mangrove and wetlands recovery. Zheng says that even though he was just providing basic physical labor, his interactions with locals made him profoundly aware of the severity of the impact of global warming on global ecosystems.
"The locals told me that the sea-level rise from global warming has in the last couple of years led to flooding of the homes they've built along the coast and to severe declines in their catch of fish," says Zheng, who had never previously been much concerned about global warming. But seeing these people suffering made the phenomenon into something real and tangible. After returning to Taiwan, he began riding busses and the subway rather than his motorcycle in an effort to do something for the planet.
In this age of globalization, young people's fates are tied to that of the global village. If they can utilize their short stints as volunteer tourists to develop a more international perspective, we should certainly encourage them. By donating their efforts to other communities, they come into contact with issues in other nations that urgently require resolution. This gives them a sense of being connected to the furthest corners of the earth and the feeling that we are all in this together. In short, these adventures better connect them to our globalized world, while also transforming their perceptions of themselves and of the world we all live in.
Children at remote mountain elementary schools in Nepal have access to few educational resources. Young volunteers are visiting schools and designing interesting interactive courses to give kids more contact with the larger world.
Volunteer tourists not only cut their travel expenses and make friends from around the world, they also gain firsthand experience with global issues and forge connections with the larger world. The photo shows young volunteers in the Philippines gathered together in a circle symbolizing the idea that "we are all one family."