As we enter the 21st century, the thirst for self-knowledge is epidemic and with it, the knowledge of other cultures and ways of living. With more affluence, it seems everyone is traveling. Feeling disconnected from family and community in modern society, we hope that by traveling we can find something lost in ourselves. We take package tours to Spain, cruises to the Mediterranean and the more adventurous climb sacred Buddhist shrines in Java or exotic locales in the Amazon. But this type of travel only serves to ...
Read More
As we enter the 21st century, the thirst for self-knowledge is epidemic and with it, the knowledge of other cultures and ways of living. With more affluence, it seems everyone is traveling. Feeling disconnected from family and community in modern society, we hope that by traveling we can find something lost in ourselves. We take package tours to Spain, cruises to the Mediterranean and the more adventurous climb sacred Buddhist shrines in Java or exotic locales in the Amazon. But this type of travel only serves to highlight the problem that sent us here: the problem of separation. All of this travel still keeps us distant from the very cultures we have traveled to see. This travel still puts us outside watching the pot not inside as part of the stew. On a trip to Thailand, we may see an elephant but we do not feed the elephant or wash her or walk with her or help in her rescue. According to the Travel Industry Association of America more than 55 million Americans have taken what can be described as a volunteer vacation and nearly twice that are considering doing the same. ?It is just the beginning of the volunteer travel boom,? said Marcia Selva, president of Global Spectrum. Travelers especially the high-end travelers want to accomplish something. Today they build clinics, houses, libraries and wells. People now want to get dirty.? It is not just seeing the tree or the monkey: it is not about simply learning facts about the environment. It is about being made aware of and helping the world and its people ?with as little impact as possible, of course. The real benefit of taking a volunteer travel vacation is that it fits the current desire to explore, learn, expand the mind and experience something different while enriching our lives. A green volunteer guide with a list of opportunities is helpful but it is not the complete approach. A guide cannot answer these questions: Can a woman take this trip safely alone? What are the problems? What is the work like? What are the costs? What is day-to-day life like? A guide will not fire the desire because it lacks the real life ecovolunteering experiences. There is no book on the market today that answers these questions. Smiling at the World combines travel narrative, first hand day-to-day experiences volunteering at wildlife sanctuaries and other projects with information on how to follow the same path. Reading about the author's candidly revealed excitement, fears, and personal challenges, the reader shares her adventures and feels the changes in each new place. After adventuring with the author, the reader can design her volunteer trip even for two weeks. As a public speaker about volunteer travel, I have observed three reasons why people want to travel and volunteer. First, they do not want to be a ?tourist who just looks at things.? Secondly, they want to learn, do something new, and give back to a world that has been generous to them. They want to travel with a purpose that will make them feel good at the end of their journey. In need of a pathfinder, they want to know what to expect and how to make a good choice. The third reason so many women and men today want to travel and volunteer is that they want to explore the globe, its people and its cultures. Smiling at the World will provide the intimate details of the author's experiences, frustrations and changes adapting to each different culture as each chapter highlights a different project and a new country: the emotions, the feelings, the problems, the joys, the experiences of a real woman, not a super woman, setting out to journey around the world as a volunteer. This shared excitement of the joy and struggles of being in different cultures can be used as a guide for a woman traveling alone as she feels an immediate fellowship with the author. The author's mishaps become the reader's; her perceptions remind us of our own. Along with the compelling story full of pluck and wits, t
Read Less
