Volunteers Find Rewards in Working Vacations

VENTURA — The ideal vacation for Sandi Pierce? Two weeks in an impoverished sun-baked village on the outskirts of Istanbul, teaching English to 25 children, a job for which you get . . . no pay . . . and a hefty bill.

The Ventura resident spent two weeks of her summer in Turkey, where she and 12 fellow volunteers paid their own way to teach English in local schools. They worked five days a week, traveling from classroom to classroom, without so much as a drop of suntan oil to remind themselves that yes, they were on vacation.

Pierce wouldn’t have it any other way.

“It was wonderful,” she said. “The kids were very enthusiastic, very warm and loving to us. That was really our reward, our payback.”

This was Pierce’s third trip with Global Volunteers, a Minnesota-based program that organized 120 “alternative vacations” last year in 16 countries worldwide. Her first trip was to Poland, and last year she traveled to China.

The volunteers teach English or business, paint classrooms, build homes or donate health-care skills for two to three weeks.

You can’t impart much English in two weeks, but Pierce said she used games and exercises to teach the rudiments of the language. She also used song and dance--the kids learned about right feet, left feet, and other parts of the body by doing the hokeypokey.

On off days, they took field trips to see ancient ruins, museums and art galleries. Many of the kids, from 6 to 12 years old, had never met Americans before, and the exposure was good for both sides, Pierce said.

“I love kids, and they were so enthusiastic and gracious when we botched the pronunciation of their names,” she said, adding that she emphasized fun in her class. “I can be silly, I can be playful. They adore it and respond to it.”

Pierce is not alone in her preference for spending vacation time working for others instead of working on the perfect tan. Participation in Global Volunteers vacations has increased 30% annually during the last few years, following a period of much slower growth since its inception in 1984, according to officials.

“The interest in volunteer vacations is a trend that is increasing as volunteerism in general is becoming more popular,” said Nancy Groves, spokeswoman for Global Volunteers. “It’s quite an industry.”

Groves listed more than a dozen programs nationwide that offer similar travel opportunities. Among them are Habitat for Humanity, which leads home-building excursions across the globe, and Earthwatch, a program that conducts science-related volunteer trips internationally.

While each organization offers a different focus, volunteers share the common benefit of experiencing cultural immersion on a more personal level than a tourist would.

“It’s a different kind of vacation,” Pierce said. “You get to spend two or three weeks really getting to know the local people.

“There’s more to countries than just their museums,” she said.

During her stay, Pierce and other volunteers were invited into the homes of their students and families.

“We were a little bit of a curiosity to them,” she said.

But being foreign did not stop the volunteers from forming strong relationships with their students. On the group’s last day, one child gave Pierce a big hug and started sobbing.

“The children just make it so worthwhile,” she said.

Pierce, who spent about $1,800 for the trip to Turkey, recommends this type of vacation to everyone, with the caveat that flexibility and the willingness to laugh at yourself are mandatory prerequisites. “And you have to know how to play,” she added.

Though she is a property manager at home--not a teacher--Pierce said she plans to continue her new tradition of international education by traveling with a volunteer group once a year.

“My only problem is that there are so many countries and not enough time to see them all,” she said.

Global Volunteers will increase the number of trips it runs next year from 120 to 150, to accommodate an increase in volunteers. Ten new employees have been hired since March, raising the staff to 30 people.

Groves attributes part of the increase to the fact that people who volunteer once tend to volunteer again. In last year’s Global Volunteers teams, 26% of the participants had been involved with the program before.

Cynthia Bates and her husband, Marvin, have led numerous Global Volunteers teams in Russia, Spain and Mexico during the last four years.

The retired teachers, who live in Ventura, completed their eighth group trip to Mexico in July, overseeing 11 volunteers on a trip to the town of Dolores Hidalgo, where they tutored residents in conversational English.

“Few tourists stay there overnight,” she said, listing a small museum as the town’s sole tourist attraction. “There’s not too much to do there.”

But Bates and the other volunteers kept busy working to improve the residents’ education while increasing their own cultural awareness.

“We like meeting people from different cultures, getting to know them personally instead of just going places as tourists,” Bates said.

A typical day during the two-week project involved teaching English, learning Spanish and attending daily group meetings. Volunteers also had free rein of the hotel’s kitchen, where they prepared many of their own meals with groceries they purchased in town.

During daily group sessions, volunteers developed strategies for working together to solve problems. One barrier that Bates’ team worked to overcome was the group’s desire to reorganize parts of the project that were controlled by local citizens.

“Americans always want to dash in and get a system going,” said Bates, explaining that the locals’ way of doing things often involved a more casual approach.

“That’s not our place,” she said. “Our place is to be servant learners.”

After years of volunteering overseas, the Bateses are neither foreigners nor locals. Last year, they bought a house in the central Mexican city of Guanajuato, where they had volunteered on six excursions. Now they live there half the year.

Next month, they will return to Guanajuato for another volunteer vacation. While leading a Global Volunteers team, they will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

Bates considers it a perfect place to recognize the couple’s two major commitments: to each other and to the tradition of volunteerism.

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Volunteer Needs

Listings of short-term international volunteer opportunities are available at most bookstores and on the Internet. Some titles available through the online Amazon bookstore, at www.amazon.com, include the following:

* “Alternatives to the Peace Corps: A Directory of Third World and U.S. Volunteer Opportunities,” (Institute for Food and Development Policy, 1996, $7.96).

* “The International Directory of Volunteer Work,” (Petersons, 1993, $13.56).

* “Golden Opportunities: A Volunteer Guide for Americans Over 50,” (Petersons, 1994, $11.96).

* “A Student’s Guide to Volunteering,” (Career Press Inc., 1995, $8.79).

Anyone interested in receiving information on Global Volunteers vacations may call (800) 487-1074.