Volunteer Vacations

A couple’s Caribbean cruise honeymoon is booked and paid for when the bride-to-be decides against setting sail.

 

The year is 1979. Michele Gran has just seen news accounts of Vietnamese people losing their lives while trying to float to freedom in rickety boats.

 

As her now husband, Bud Philbrook, tells it, taking a cruise didn’t seem right. They compromised and took a non-traditional honeymoon — one week volunteering in a Guatemalan village and one at Disney World.

 

Afterward, the Minnesota newlyweds’ friends and colleagues were intrigued by the volunteer trip. “Part of the conversation was, ‘I always wanted to do something like that,’” Philbrook recalls.

 

Philbrook, an attorney with a master’s in international economic development, and Gran, a public relations professional, knew they were on to something. “We decided we would do one of these trips once a year for our friends, and it just grew and grew,” he describes.

 

In 1984, they launched Global Volunteers. The non-profit sends participants on volunteer vacations to such destinations as China, Ghana, Costa Rica and an American Indian Reservation. This year, 2500 participants will volunteer in 110 communities in 21 countries on 5 continents. The couple’s three adult sons, who grew up volunteering around the globe, now work with their parents.

 

Global Volunteers allows children as young as 5 to participate at some sites. Age requirements differ by project and location. The youngest volunteers often simply play with other children, but can soon graduate to doing more.

 

Planting trees and painting school bleachers were two highlights of Sonia Picard’s experience during the week she celebrated her 8^th birthday on Montana’s Blackfeet Reservation, where Global Volunteers has sent volunteers for nearly 10 years. “It felt really good,” she says, looking back on the 2006 trip.

 

In addition to diverse service projects, her Kensington, Maryland family of five also enjoyed communal dinners, participated in a powwow and explored Glacier National Park. “We worked really hard. We played hard,” describes Sonia’s mother, Suzanne Picard, a Peace Corps alum, whose family had taken several vacations out West and wanted to make this one about giving back.

 

“It’s kind of like a landmark in my childhood. Later, when I’m going through my memories... it will be something I'll always be happy to think about,” shares 13-year-old Greg Picard. He recently collected backpacks and school supplies for children on the Blackfeet Reservation for his Bar Mitzvah service project.

 

“Everyone really found their niche,” says Matthew Picard, who wanted to instill in his children “some insight that even with a small amount of effort, you can make a difference.” He appreciates that his children, who at the time ranged from 8 to 14 could see results, such as the painted bleachers and describes the experience as “eye opening” for them.

 

 “Their whole perspective of the world is enriched,” says Philbrook about the impact on young participants. “It doesn’t mean they won’t want to come back and play with the Nintendo or the Xbox or whatever they have, but it does put in perspective that kids elsewhere may not have electricity let alone an Xbox.” 

 

He credits Global Volunteers’ ongoing presence in communities for its results. “Not one of our teams of volunteers will build a school, but over a year a school gets built,” he says, sharing the same applies for teaching children conversational English over the years or building a health clinic.

 

The tax-deductible participation fees for the one to three week volunteer vacations range from $995 for domestic service programs to $3195 for international ones, depending on the service program and location. The fees directly support ongoing work in the host community and cover project materials, meals and lodging, ground transportation, emergency medical evacuation insurance and other related expenses. There are discounts for students, families and companions. Airfare to the site is separate.

 

Global Volunteers has been profiled widely on TV and in print. Philbrook says that Global Volunteers was granted Special Consultative Status with the United Nations in 1999 and that the organization provides the UN counsel and supports its initiatives, “such as Millennium Development Goals to ensure the safety and development of children and end hunger and poverty worldwide.”

 

Twenty-five years after starting the journey, Philbrook is continually touched by such stories as the grandmother who took her granddaughter to give her “a gift of values.” 

 

He explains, “You get to make a difference in someone else’s life in a way that is difficult to describe or quantify, but you know it happened because of the way the person says thank you…”