The desire to explore and travel while giving back led Jasmine Hooper, a 30-something African-American and Guamanian from Texas, to join Global Volunteers in a service program in Tanzania. During her service, Jasmine taught conversational English, conducted workshops and home visits, and assisted in the local clinic. In this guest post, Jasmine reflects on how […]
In this guest post, Peru volunteer Mark Bierbaum takes us on a journey to a caring community, Sagrada Familia, sheltering at-risk children in Ventanilla outside Lima. He writes about volunteering with his wife, Maggie, and their 17-year-old son, Michael, his nervousness about using his remedial Spanish skills, and his path to communicating cross-culturally with the […]
Elizabeth Wang, Senior Marketing Product Manager at Google, sought both a different way to travel and a meaningful way to give back to the global community. After reviewing several organizations online, Elizabeth selected Global Volunteers’ Vietnam service program. She served in Hanoi at Blind-Link, a non-profit organization which trains visually impaired adults in massage therapy […]
Personal referrals account for more than 40 percent of Global Volunteers’ team members, on average, each year. Not only do “word-of-mouth” recommendations lend credibility to our work, but they help us engage needed numbers of team members for each service program. Who do you know that would love to experience the fulfillment of volunteering with […]
“So how was your trip?” is a common question friends and family ask volunteers upon their return from a service program. How do you summarize in a few words – or even a few sentences – what waging peace through people-to-people service means? Anticipating this question near the end of his Peru service program, Mike, […]
For years, alumni volunteer Peter Dykstra stood on the southernmost point of Key West, Florida and imagined he could reach out over 90 miles of water and touch the Cuban coastline. But the country remained a mystery to him while it was “off limits” to Americans. But when Global Volunteers made legal Cuba service travel […]
It might be that there’s no farther point from the Cook Islands in the United States than Maine. But, that didn’t discourage University of Maine Honors College student Lucie Bonneville from traveling to the South Pacific with Global Volunteers. Undaunted by the 7,000 mile journey, she sought to help others in the global community and […]
A student volunteer group from the Wegmans School of Pharmacy at St. John Fisher College discovered their week of service on the Rosebud Reservation of South Dakota really does make a difference. Learn from their experience here! Just one week. Would that be enough time to truly have even a little impact on people’s lives […]
Septuagenarian Maggie Caison is a retired middle school teacher who, since retiring, finds herself busier than ever. Apart from volunteering internationally with Global Volunteers, she also volunteers with several organizations in her home town of Lenexa, Kansas. “I feel it’s an honor to give a little of what I can. I love teaching and volunteering […]
Global Volunteers Tom and Kathy Kromroy had already served together in the Cook Islands, India and St. Lucia when they decided their “gift” to each other would be to mark their 40th wedding anniversary volunteering in West Virginia. They said the opportunity to reflect on important moments together while they helped youth and adults brought […]