Is Volunteering Becoming Unaffordable?

           Increasingly young people are taking gap years to travel and do some volunteering abroad, while older people are taking career breaks to do the same. While volunteering is a great way to experience other cultures, meet the locals, brush up on your language skills and ultimately help people less fortunate than yourself, I often hear a lot of complaints that it has become an unaffordable activity.            

            Volunteer abroad companies regularly charge in excess of £1000 for the chance to help people and this is often on top of accommodation and food. The money to keep these organisations going and the local people employed has to come from somewhere, but is it right to take it from the young people who just want to help? Obviously you have to pay for your own flight, accommodation and food, but there are a lot of organisations out there who charge in order to profit.

            Volunteering is definitely worthwhile though, and some of these companies do a great service in educating, helping and saving people’s lives. Before you go make sure you research volunteer companies thoroughly, if they are charging you, don’t be scared to ask where your money is going. If it is being used for the up keep of the orphanage, school, hospital or whatever then consider paying the price, but if it is just going to the middle man sitting at their desks in the UK, then you might want to reconsider. Take a look at this article entitled The Cost of Volunteering, which explains where your money might be going. The best thing is to cut out the middle man altogether and contact the places you want to volunteer at directly, making sure your money is going to the right place.  

Here is a list of websites, where you can find free or reasonably priced volunteer programs and advice on volunteering.

http://www.volunteersouthamerica.net/

http://www.vaops.com/

http://www.otracosa.nl/

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/volunteer/

Small World

            Everyone always tells you that it’s a small world. I know what they mean, but it’s hard to agree, with over 6 billion people on the planet and so many countries and places to visit it could take you a lifetime. However, a few years ago I was faced with my own proof that the world is indeed small (in some respects anyway). I was reading a book called Take Me With You by Brad Newsham.  It was a true story about a man who travelled the world in order to find someone he could give a gift to and take them back to America with him for a holiday. Newsham travelled all around Asia and Africa and made lots of friends with locals along the way. When he returned to America, he wrote back to all the friends he had made. A few of these friends wrote back to him, these names he put in a hat to randomly choose whom he would invite to America. The person he chose was Tony, a man from a small village near the Banaue rice terraces in the Philippines.  He then brought Tony back to America to visit him and raised money to send Tony to a proper dentist and to get a proper glass eye, as he had lost his eye in an accident.

            I used to live in the Philippines and had actually trekked though the rice terraces in Banaue. In the book it mentioned that Tony had a wife called Rita. This sounded very familiar to me, as our guide for a 3-day trek through the rice terraces was a woman called Rita and her husband whom I had forgotten the name of. This was such a coincidence that I couldn’t help but wonder if they were the same people as in the book. I decided to find out, so I looked up Brad Newsham’s contact details on his website and sent him an e-mail telling him my story and asking him if he had a photo of Rita, to see if it was the same woman. A few days later a lovely e-mail came back with a photo of Rita, Tony and their kids. Rita was the same lady who had guided us around the rice terraces and her husband, Tony had come to find us in the terraces after he heard that some tourists had been attacked by rebels nearby.

            It was amazing to discover a whole book about these 2 people in a book, 6 years after I had met them in a tiny village in the Philippines. This showed me that no matter where you are in the world, it is a small place. 

Recipe for Indonesian Cold Noodle Salad

This is a dish that a friend made for me when I lived in The Philippines. It’s a really quick and easy dish that you can eat on your own as a ready meal or add to as part of a dinner party for guests. The flavours of this dish really bring back memories of travelling through South East Asia.

Ingredients: (Quantities don’t really matter in this recipe, it just kind of depends on how spicy, sweet or peanuty you like your sauce)

Peanut Butter

Garlic

Soy Sauce

Honey

Sesame Oil

Tahini (Sesame Paste)

Fresh Chillies

Spaghetti or Egg Noodles

Spring Onions

Put the spaghetti or noodles on to boil (spaghetti actually works better with this I find, as it doesn’t break up so easily).

While the noodles are boiling, mix all the wet ingredients together until they form a thick paste. The general rule is you want to add more peanut butter and soy sauce than honey and sesame oil and tahini. If you can’t find tahini don’t worry, it works just as well without. 

Next, finely chop the garlic and fresh chillies and add this to the paste.

When the noodles are ready, drain them and run cold water over them so that they cool quickly. Add the paste to the noodles and stir until all the noodles are coated.

Garnish with chopped spring onions.

Enjoy!

Armchair Travelling

Since I have not been able to travel much this past year, due to travelling for half of the previous year, I have had to fuel my thirst for travel with a bit of armchair travelling. Armchair travelling for me, is in the form of some great travel literature. This past year I have managed to travel around Central America, Spain, Italy, Indonesia and India, vicariously through my books.

I am currently reading Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, which not only takes us on a journey through Italy, India and Indonesia, but also through body, mind and soul. It is a great read for us travel enthusiasts, but also an inspirational tale for those of us going through difficult times in their lives. Elizabeth Gilbert shares with us her inner most desires, fears and conflicts and shows us that we are not alone in breaking down when our world’s collapse around us. She shows us that inner strength one can get through travelling and that it is always possible to over come adversity and to be happy in our lives.

This past year I have also read Travels on the Dance Floor by Grevel Lindop, one man’s journey to the heart of salsa. Lindop undertakes a journey through Central America learning a new type of salsa dancing in each one. His descriptions of Central America’s capital cities are vivid; as are the descriptions of the wonderful people he meets along the way.

Another great book, or trilogy of books are the Driving Over Lemons series by Chris Stewart, and although very popular a few years ago I hadn’t read them until recently. When I started reading I couldn’t imagine how I would want to read more than one book about a man starting up a farm in southern Spain, but Stewart writes in such an engaging and sometimes comical way that I found myself wanting to read on and on about his life on the farm.  I even found myself becoming interested in the things he was growing and methods he was using. I highly recommend.

Tip: When travelling, look at Lonely Planet’s guidebooks for great travel literature. When I travelled around South East Asia I did this for almost every country I visited and I began to appreciate each place even more, having read about the peoples who live there, the country’s history, troubles and triumphs. 

New Year Travel Predictions

A couple of years ago, while travelling through South America, the word on every travellers' lips was Colombia. I believe that 2011 will be Colombia's year to become recognised as a proper tourist destination. No longer do people fear the word Colombia, no longer does it conjure up images of drug lords and guns, but of friendly people and beautiful cities' waiting to be discovered.

I have heard that what makes Colombia so special are its people. A race of people so welcoming and so ready to show off their country to the world. Home to Cartagena, a beautifully captivating place and one of the best preserved Spanish colonial cities' on the continent, as well as glorious beaches, virgin jungles and rhythm-pumping, eye-popping festivals.

I myself have not yet been to Colombia, but as soon as I get enough money together, I am gone, so watch this space! In the meantime why not read up more about Colombia on the Lonely Planet website at http://www.lonelyplanet.com/colombia so that when the craze arrives you'll know all about it.