Stories from students, retirees, working professionals, couples, families, groups, solo travelers, first-time volunteers, volunteer veterans and everyone in-between from more than 20 countries around the world. Learn about your favorite country in their own words.
Ellen Shenkarow decided to spend her time in retirement helping where necessary through volunteer work. She volunteers with Catholic Social Services helping refugees and asylum seekers in Tucson, Arizona. This summer Ellen, a retired ESL teacher, wanted to spread the spirit of “doing good” with her family and teach her grandson what life is like […]
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 […]
Four-time Global Volunteer Doris Sweet describes her service projects and some of the logistical aspects of her service program in Cuba in September 2019. She writes about the lodging and meals she enjoyed while volunteering in Havana with her grandson. Read on if you are wondering what a day in service in Cuba looks like […]
Nathalie Oestmann and her sixteen-year-old daughter, Anna, decided to volunteer in Tanzania to learn about a new culture and work on meaningful service projects. Nathalie and Anna traveled from London to Ipalamwa, Tanzania in July of 2019. Nathalie said, “I came to Global Volunteers to do humanitarian work in a country different from those I […]
“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, […]
In this guest post, Ecuador volunteer Gordon Smith takes us along on his step-by-step discovery of service abroad with preschool children and their teachers in our partner community. Secure as a father and grandfather, he knew he’d relate well to small children – even if they spoke a different language from him. In surrendering to […]
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 […]
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 the USA. They said the opportunity to reflect on important moments together while they helped youth and adults brought […]
Global Volunteers Alumna Maggi Gallaher said retirement has liberated her to indulge her appetite for volunteering. For her fourth service program, she served at Sagrada Familia, a community in Peru serving 1,400 at-risk children, from one month to 17 years. The community shelters about 600 homeless and abandoned children and provides nutrition, healthcare and education. […]