Family Volunteering Vacations

June 8, 2004 -- A family vacation can be doubly rewarding when it's combined with doing good works. "Volunteer vacation" options for families range from trips as close to home as a state park to destinations as distant and exotic as Tahiti or Sri Lanka.

Be it volunteer work in a Costa Rican cloud forest or in South Dakota's Black Hills, the formula is roughly the same. Families put in work time, but get fun time as well. It's often a Monday through Friday work week with weekends off for exploring. There often are late afternoon weekday breaks for local sightseeing as well. A park volunteer might work part time and still have time for a short hike or a little fishing.

A volunteering vacation can be costly, but the rewards can be quite plentiful, as well. Lisa and Kevin Kaija of Reading, Vt., took their five children to a small village in the Costa Rican rain forest over the Christmas holidays.

They spent two weeks building a retaining wall around a school yard in an ongoing project intended to transform a mud patch into a grassy school yard for local children to play in. The Kaija children, ranging in age from 13 to 5-year-old twins, helped with tasks such as pushing wheelbarrows, mixing cement by hand, scraping, painting, planting grass and preparing meals.

They also found themselves drawn into the community, becoming close friends with village children. Thirteen-year-old Gretchen was invited to sleep over at one of her new friends' houses and learned to make tamales from scratch, starting with grinding corn.

Eight-year-old Oliver clicked with a village boy about his age. Dad Kevin spoke no Spanish, but loved the hard, physical labor and the comradely rhythm he developed with village workers. Gretchen described the vacation as a transforming experience that made her thankful for all that she has.

The wet climate made the project muddy work and the children adored that, according to Lisa. "It gave them permission to be muddy all day long," she says.

There was plenty of adventure as well. On a trip to a coffee plantation, local youngsters taught the Kaija children how to watch out for dangerous snakes. There were night walks in the cloud forest nearby, visits to an insectarium, a river trip near the Nicaraguan border and an expedition to a volcanic lake.

Lisa found the experience an excellent antidote to the commercialism and materialism of the Christmas season.

Barb De Groot, media relations manager with Global Volunteers (www.globalvolunteers.org), a non-profit group that organizes short-term volunteer projects in more than 20 countries around the world, which put together the program the Kaija family participated in, says that they are getting a growing number of queries from families.

"Parents want their kids to interact with people from other cultures and learn about the world firsthand," she says. Children learn an important lesson about how most of the rest of the world lives. And it also gives them an outlet for their idealism.

"Kids are so idealistic and it's a way for them to act out their idealism," De Groot says. It's also an opportunity for children to test their skills and abilities, and impress their parents in the process.

"Often the parents come back and they are just blown away by their children," says De Groot. "They saw their children in a new light, saw them growing up in front of their eyes and being responsible. "

Learning Experience for Parents

David Minich, director of the global village program for Habitat for Humanity International, says not only children can do more than their parents think, so can parents. He says it might seem as though Habitat for Humanity, which builds houses, would just need carpenters. But actually they need people with a variety of skills.Generally, volunteer groups work in communities with a strong local program that is well supervised, highly organized and equipped with adequate materials.

Frequently, regulations prevent anyone under the age of 16 from doing demolition or working on a roof, but there are plenty of other jobs — being a runner, delivering nails and screws, painting, varnishing, keeping a work site clean, helping to make lunch and so on.

Minich says that parents with very young children might alternate working with taking care of the kids. And there are always kids around — either volunteers or locals.

When working with families, Minich tries to match families with destinations that offer an interesting blend of geographic, history and habitat work. Hawaii, Alaska, Appalachia, the Mississippi Delta, New Mexico pueblos, Indian reservations in the Dakotas are all typical domestic destinations.

Overseas, volunteers can find themselves in Honduras, Tahiti, Thailand or Sri Lanka. Global Volunteers has programs in Europe and the U.S. as well.

Expect to Pay

Costs vary, with families generally shouldering the fees for getting there, accommodation and meals. Some organizations, such as Habitat for Humanity, generally book enough travel that they can offer families some breaks on the airfares. Accommodations can be modest — a church basement in Alaska, a mid-level hotel in Hawaii, a campground in Virginia. Local transportation costs and sightseeing also are the families' responsibilities.

It can be expensive. Daily costs for Habitat for Humanity vacations can average about $100 per person, depending on the destination and the accommodations, although it can be less, especially for children. Global Volunteers' program fee is $1,395 to $2,995 for overseas programs, $750 for one-week U.S.-based programs, not including transportation. Airfare adds up, too. These are all tax-deductible expenses.

However, a volunteer vacation can definitely be a budget vacation. The American Hiking Society's (www.americanhiking.org) volunteer vacations are one of the best bargains around — just $80 per person, plus your transportation costs. Among some of their summer projects, the family-oriented project at Virginia's Blue Ridge Center for Environmental Stewardship July 18-24.

It's aimed at parents and/or grandparents with children or grandchildren to do trail maintenance, build foot bridges, garden, work with farm animals, etc. State and national parks volunteer jobs usually mean camping out, and depending on the situation, that fee can be waived or discounted.

Using the Web

The Web is an excellent resource for researching and booking volunteer vacations. Most state parks and the National Park Service have volunteer divisions with opportunities listed on their Web sites. While they don't have specific family programs, they do welcome families.

Work at a state park could include campground hosting, checking in campers, selling entrance licenses, answering questions, doing maintenance work such as mowing, planting and painting. Volunteers help with programs — nature walks, arts and crafts, history. There can be time requirements, however. South Dakota state parks, for example, requires volunteers to work in 30-day stints. It provides them with sites in campgrounds, most of which have water, sewer and electricity

A family could opt for such a program and just have some family members work or have family members alternate doing work, according to Lynn Spomer, game, fish and park program specialist for South Dakota state parks. She and other state park managers see more individuals and couples volunteering than families, but say families are welcome.

The American Hiking Society (www.americanhiking.org), which has its own volunteer vacation program, is hosting a pilot project this summer geared just for families.International organizations such as Habitat for Humanity (www.habitat.org), and Global Volunteers (www.globalvolunteers.org) are experienced at matching families with appropriate projects both overseas and in the U.S.

See our resource page, linked above right, for more.