The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life Part 14

INTERNATIONAL PALESTINIAN YOUTH LEAGUE AND ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER.

turn a military base into a school and garden.

BETHLEHEM, ISRAEL.

Jesus Christ wouldn't be able to leave Bethlehem today unless he showed a magnetic ID card, a permit and his thumbprint.

-Christian university student quoted by Jamil Hamad in Time 49 Mary and Joseph came into Bethlehem on a donkey. You'll probably come by taxi after being stopped at a daunting three-story concrete barricade crowned with razor wire. An Israeli soldier with an a.s.sault rifle will examine your papers and decide when and if to open the sliding steel door to let you in.

Such is the reality of everyday life in the birthplace of Jesus, a town the Prince of Peace could scarcely recognize-divided by religion, history, and years of bitter fighting. Christians, who once represented 90 percent of Bethlehem's population of 35,000, have mostly left town, no longer willing to live with the myriad cultural shifts and inconveniences brought about by the Israeli occupation and Islamic extremism. Still, their fearless leader, the one tourists come to honor, would never want them to give up-on peace, on love, on bridging the chasms that rip apart his hometown, and, indeed, the world.

Every December for the past several years, the International Palestinian Youth League (IPYL) and the Alternative Information Center (AIC), a joint Palestinian-Israeli political advocacy and gra.s.sroots activist organization, have sponsored an international work camp in Bethlehem. Volunteers from all over the planet come to this holy place to celebrate Christmas with Palestinians and to spruce up a former Israeli army base that has been turned into a residential village. IPYL and AIC are building a school, a hospital, a youth house, and a series of gardens there.

And while the work is extremely important in a city whose economic vitality has been depleted by the wall-an ominous gray snake started in 2002 that will eventually stretch 436 miles through the West Bank-the real mission of the project in Eish al Ghurab is to build bridges of understanding between people of various cultures.

SPRAYING A STATEMENT.

When Israel began building the controversial 436-mile-long security barrier to separate itself from the Palestinian Authority, it symbolized a blank canvas for graffiti artists, among other things. British guerilla artist Banksy, whose work has appeared all over the planet, twice has traveled to Bethlehem to decorate the wall, which he calls "the ultimate holiday destination for graffiti writers."

In August 2005, he sprayed nine images onto the concrete, including a ladder going up and over the wall and children digging a hole through the wall. In December 2007, he led a team of grafitti artists to Bethlehem for an installation they called "Santa's Ghetto Bethlehem 2007" (www.santasghetto.com). Taking ironic jabs at West Bank life, they stenciled a soldier checking a donkey's ID card, a young girl patting down a soldier, and a dove clad in a flak jacket bearing an olive branch in its beak. The artists-Eric the Dog, Peter Blake, Suleiman Mansour, Sam 3, Blu, Swoon, Ron English, James Cauty, and Abdel al-Hussein-created more than a dozen images on the wall and shaped a trail leading from the wall to Manger Square, where more of their art was exhibited indoors.

Sales of original art, reprints, and signed posters from the installation raised nearly a million dollars, which funded two-year art college scholarships for 30 local students and other community projects.

Besides painting, farming, and cleaning, volunteers learn about Palestinian culture, tour such well-known spots as the Church of the Nativity, visit Bethlehem's three refugee camps, and watch doc.u.mentaries at AICafe, a coffee shop run by AIC. They also spend time with Palestinian politicians, authors, and families who have been stuck in stateless limbo for generations. Many speak in wistful tones about their former homes, towns that have been erased from Israel's maps.

The two-week camp, including accommodations in a secure apartment in Eish al Ghurab, runs $530 and includes meals that you and other volunteers will cook together.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Volunteers can secure their place in these camps through Volunteers for Peace, 1034 Tiffany Road, Belmont, VT 05730, 802-259-2759, www.vfp.org.

PARTNERSHIP IN ENTERPRISE.

mentor a budding entrepreneur.

MOROCCO.

I never thought I'd be living off a street where there's a stall selling watermelons in between one that sells live chickens and one that sells DVDs!

-Ceri Evans, Morocco volunteer.

50 One out of every three people in Morocco is 14 or younger. That means a lot of people are soon going to be young adults who need jobs.

On this volunteer gig, administered by Projects Abroad, a U.K.-based business with more than a hundred volunteer projects across the planet, entrepreneurs are invited to spend a month or more mentoring brilliant under-30s who have a great idea for a business, but don't know how to find the starting line.

Budding entrepreneurs literally apply for mentors, detailing their business idea, their plan for making it work, and their dreams of what it might become. Volunteer entrepreneurs (and you don't have to be a billionaire like Virgin founder Richard Branson or Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to qualify-you can simply be an astute manager) also fill out paperwork, advising where they'd like to offer their services.

Any of the 24 developing countries where Projects Abroad (PA) has in-country managers is fair game-from Moldova to Fiji to Rabat, Morocco. You might mentor Vijaya Prakash, who wants to expand his organic farm in southern India, or Richard Brown, who hopes to send players from his football (soccer) academy in Ghana to teams in Eastern Europe, or Fernando Rosenberg, who hopes to offer ecotourists expanded knowledge of the wild through his rain forest lodge in southern Peru.

Partnership in Enterprise (www.partnership-in-enterprise.com) was launched by Peter Slowe, the geography professor who started Projects Abroad, Britain's largest volunteer travel company, and Nick Wheeler, who founded Charles Tyrwhitt Shirts-an upscale London shirtmaker with nearly a half million customers and branches in Kuwait, Madrid, Mumbai, New York, Paris, and Singapore.

Slowe and Wheeler decided the best way that they could help developing countries was to unleash their citizens' ideas, encouraging them to think and act in enterprising ways. Partnership in Enterprise volunteers help the young Moroccan population spot opportunities, marshal resources, and turn their ideas into reality.

Because Projects Abroad has an active volunteer operation running in Rabat, it's easy to slot a business mentor into the country. Morocco's PA director Saad Rbiai, a former psychologist for the Peace Corps and a coordinator for the U.S. State Department, sets mentors up with a host family in a traditional riad with inner courtyards and a maze of staircases within the peach walls of the old city.

Like all PA volunteers, business mentors share meals with their host families, giving them an authentic Moroccan experience. Host families speak Arabic and French; one family member usually speaks English as well.

The PA office is located in Rabat's Agdal district near the Mosque Badr. Partnership in Enterprise volunteers are invited to network with other PA volunteers, who are in the country working in orphanages, teaching English, and coaching soccer.

Cost for this monthlong Partnership in Enterprise volunteer gig is $3,995 and includes all meals and accommodations.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Projects Abroad Inc., 347 West 36th Street, Suite 903, New York, NY 10018, 888-839-3535, www.projects-abroad.org.

LIGHTS, CAMERAS, ACTION.

Morocco's King Mohammed VI is an avid movie buff and has even been known to help out the foreign film producers who swarm to this unlikely country for big shoots. For Alexandre Aja's horror remake The Hills Have Eyes, the king lent some hunting trailers from the royal palace.

Several movie studios, including Dino de Laurentiis' CLA Studios with its two large, sound-proofed, air-conditioned shooting sets, 20 makeup rooms, and four set construction workshops, make Morocco a popular port of call for big shoots that require sand or monumental sets.

Here's a partial list of movies that have been filmed in Morocco: *

* Alexander * Lawrence of Arabia * Babel * The Man Who Would Be King * Black Hawk Down * The Mummy and The Mummy Returns * Gladiator * The Sheltering Sky * Hidalgo * The TV mini-series The Ten Commandments * Kundun.

* Troy.

GLOBAL VISION INTERNATIONAL.

save the world's last mediterranean monk seals.

MERSIN, TURKEY.

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.

-E. B. White, Pulitzer Prizewinning author.

51 When Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World, Caribbean monk seals were nearly as abundant as sand. After several hundred years of hunting them for their oil and building hotels over their sunning beaches, Caribbean monk seals haven't been spotted since 1952. On June 6, 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service declared this shy marine mammal officially extinct.

Luckily, it has some cousins-the Hawaiian monk seal (there are roughly a thousand left) and the Mediterranean monk seal, with 400, at most, hanging on for dear life. In fact, the Mediterranean monk seal is one of the six most endangered mammals on the planet.

One of the monk seal's problems is that its historical habitat on the southeast coast of Turkey is mighty gorgeous. Hotel developers are l.u.s.tily eying the beaches and caves where it gives birth. And because the seal swims the seas between Greece, Syria, and Turkey, it's difficult to get governments to uphold international protections.

That's where you come in. You'll work with scientists from the Middle East Technical University's Inst.i.tute of Marine Sciences (METU-IMS), collecting data about global climate change, studying the seals' behavior, patrolling their protected waters, and promoting fishing methods that don't interfere with the seals' needs and habitat. Dynamite fishing, though illegal, is still being used in this area.

This important conservation project began in 1994, when a team of METU-IMS scientists conducted a brief survey along the sh.o.r.eline that uncovered the most prolific breeding monk seal colony in Turkey. They wasted no time setting up the research project, using volunteers to help with finances, data collection, and goodwill among the locals.

TIPTOE THROUGH THE TURKISH TULIPS.

Everyone knows that tulips originated in Holland, right? Well, no, the cup-shaped blooms are actually endemic to Turkey, along with 9,000 other species of flowers. The first tulips didn't get shipped to Holland until 1593, when a Belgian trader imported bulbs from Istanbul. In fact, the name "tulip," or tulband in Turkish, comes from the Turkish "turban," and the flower was a popular motif in decorative arts of all types in Turkey for centuries. Scholars believe the Turks cultivated tulips as early as A.D. 1000. They even named an important historical era-the years 1700 to 1730-the tulip period.

When the showy flower first appeared in Holland, a Dutch botanist tried to use them for medicinal purposes, such as treating gout, and to provide a cheap, albeit unpleasant tasting, source of nutrition. Although the botanist's experiments bombed, the tulips became popular among the Dutch, actually far too popular.

In the ensuing tulip frenzy during the early 1600s, some Dutch tulip bulbs sold for more than houses. According to Jon Mandaville, a.s.sociate professor of history and Middle East studies at Portland State University: "In Holland, one day in the early 1630s...a single Viceroy tulip bulb changed hands. Its price, paid in kind, was as follows: two loads of wheat, four loads of rye, four fat oxen, eight fat pigs, twelve fat sheep, two hogsheads of wine, four barrels of eight-florin beer, two barrels of b.u.t.ter, 1,000 pounds of cheese, a complete bed, a suit of clothes and a silver beaker. The whole was valued at 2,500 florins. About the same time, one bulb of Semper Augustus was sold for twice that sum, plus a fine new carriage and pair."

In the end, however, the market was irrevocably affected by a brisk trade in tulip futures. When the market for tulip bulbs ultimately collapsed, hundreds of Dutch families found that their a.s.sets were wiped out.

Although they were soon able to establish the area near Mersin as a marine protected region, they knew from experience that a law alone does not guarantee the safety of an endangered animal. Rather, that animal's habitat must be restored and then protected, and everyone-from government officials to local fishermen-must understand that protecting the monk seal is good for all concerned. To help reinforce those ideas, volunteers share information with tourists and give lectures at secondary schools about the precarious plight of the local monk seals.

While in Turkey, volunteers will have ample opportunities to gain hands-on marine biology experience by collecting data to support scientific research, such as tracking non-native species in the Red Sea and doc.u.menting the effects of global climate change. Other tasks may include monitoring the health of the sh.o.r.e habitat, taking photographs, snorkeling to conduct a visual fish census, experimental fishing, and monitoring and planting sea gra.s.s (Posidonia oceanica). They may also patrol the marine protected area to guard against illegal fishing practices, such as disturbing monk seal breeding areas, using explosives, bottom-trawling, or purse-seining-using a huge net with a drawstring closure between two boats to capture a larger catch.

Since the Mediterranean monk seals are identified and monitored based on photographs captured by remote cameras set up in the breeding caves, volunteers may also work on archiving photo data collected by the teams that are tracking the seals' behavior. The marine project team includes a project manager, four marine biologists, and a sociologist, plus one volunteer.

During much of this four-week project, volunteers live on the sea in a three-cabin research vessel recording data on not only the monk seals, but also on dolphins, two species of endangered turtles, an endangered sea urchin, birds, weather, and even boats that pa.s.s into the seals' marine habitat. If you go during whelping season, between August and December, you'll get the chance to monitor the breeding caves through infrared cameras, observing this annual ritual and counting new pups. If you're very lucky, you might even get to see one of the seals.

Working with a fishing cooperative in the village of Meydan, less than three miles from the Syrian border, volunteers get the chance to immerse themselves in Turkish culture, language, and food. They sometimes help the local fishermen prepare their catch to be sent to Istanbul.

Cost for the four-week project is $2,070 and includes accommodations and delicious Mediterranean meals.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Global Vision International, 252 Newbury Street, Number 4, Boston, MA 02116, 888-653-6028, www.gviusa.com.

GUDRAN a.s.sOCIATION FOR ART AND DEVELOPMENT.

save a fishing village.

EL MAX, EGYPT.

Our sense of life is the same, so why are we so apart?

-Muhammed Hosni, volunteer with Gudran.

52 In 2000, husband and wife team Sameh El Halawany and Aliaa El Gready devoted themselves to saving one of Egypt's last fishing villages. El Max, an impoverished community on the outskirts of ancient Alexandria, was in danger of being razed.

Most of El Max's 9,000 residents made their living through fishing, a career that has been becoming ever more difficult. Wedged between a military base and a petrochemical factory, the trench-as they call the ca.n.a.l that leads to the ocean where they fished-was becoming more polluted by the day.

Instead of focusing on El Max's problems, something that often happens in situations like this, Halawany and El Gready decided to focus on what was right with El Max, and on what is possible in this independent-minded town that supplies 35 percent of the fish for Alexandria, a city of seven million people.

As artists, the enterprising duo wanted to uplift the village through art. They hoped not only to beautify the simple concrete homes along the ca.n.a.l, but also to beautify the souls and dreams of the despairing people. Could we use art, they wondered, use sculpture, painting, theater, and drama to encourage pride of place, collaboration, entrepreneurship, and nonviolence?

With a $3,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, they bought a building next to the ca.n.a.l and turned it into the Gudran Art Center, a place to hold art and music cla.s.ses and all kinds of performances. At first, they appealed to the adults, but that idea went about as far as a one-legged camel, since El Max's grownups had a tendency to fear change, like grownups everywhere, and their sense of belief had dimmed and run dry.

So they turned to the town's children, inviting them to come in to experiment with paint and other materials and see what they could make. They chatted with fishermen in coffeehouses and enticed women to come out of their homes to display their embroidery and other crafts. And that gra.s.sroots approach began to change everything about life in the traditional village.

One by one, the cement block buildings situated along the ca.n.a.l were renovated, plastered, and painted in bright colors. Sculptures sprang up, music began being played on the streets. Life poured back into the town. Art, they found, was a potent form of cultural resistance.

Even the children's parents began to take aesthetic pride in their town. "Before" and "after" pictures of their homes serve as perfect metaphors for the villagers whose newly instilled pride helped them realize they could fight back against the government and corporations that were encroaching on their sacred fishing grounds.

Today, Gudran runs daily art workshops for children and adults, literacy programs, and public health campaigns. It hosts an Internet hub for youth and trains craftspeople to market and sell their work.

Wafaa Aly, whose colorful fabrics, skirts, and shirts are now sold in Gudran galleries, says the program enabled her to improve herself with art. "I've started to see," she says, "that there is something called a future that I should work for."

Every year, Gudran hosts three-week artistic work camps where international volunteers with an artistic bent (and as Gudran's founders are quick to point out, "everyone has art in them") come to work with the community to create art and inspire beauty.

In her online diary at Artthrob (www.artthrob.co.za/04nov/diary.html), South African artist and writer Sue Williamson describes how in the fall of 2004 she spent two and a half weeks with a group of artists in El Max. She recounts some of the pitfalls encountered along the way: "Since my work often involves listening to what people say, I find not being able to speak Arabic a major stumbling block, so I try to learn a bit, making lists of words each day and pinning them on my wall at night." Ultimately, her Gudran project ended up being "painting the statements people made about living in El Max on the outside of their houses." Further attempts to relocate El Max households were now met by homes painted in English and Arabic with such slogans as "We are like fish-we cannot live away from the sea."

Jean Christophe Lanquetin, a French scenographer and artist, installed a sculpture on the flat roof of a home across from the Gudran Art Centre. Another French artist, Gilles Touyard, created a "monument to love" constructed of wire rings and helium balloons.