The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life Part 21

"I made it my personal mission to visit and doc.u.ment every intertidal area of Singapore," she says, joking that her life is completely controlled by tides.

She also happens to know everything about volunteering in Singapore. At www.wildsingapore.com, she has compiled a comprehensive list for anyone interested in volunteering in Singapore, especially along its rapidly disappearing sh.o.r.es. She even throws in complimentary cheerleading, complete with inspirational quotes and reasons why everyone can make a difference.

BACK FROM THE DEAD.

Thanks to Ria Tan and other volunteers who are working to protect Singapore's wild sh.o.r.es, several species previously thought extinct have made comebacks: Until recently, the multiarmed basket star had not been seen since 1896.

The Malayan porcupine, a nocturnal burrower, resurfaced in 2005.

The Changi tree, a coastal tree absent for decades, reemerged in 2002.

The blue-spotted tree frog made its second debut in 1994.

The dwarf snakehead returned in 1989.

Peter Ng, a biology professor at the National University of Singapore, says, "When you have a second chance, you try not to screw it up."

Tan describes her own volunteer work as "almost mystical, filled with synchronicity at every turn." She counsels others who aren't sure what they have to contribute: "Have faith," she says. "In people, in yourself. Do what you can, what you must. The time, resources, money, and support will somehow be found."

Wild Films, started in 2004 when Tan and her cohorts invested in professional grade camera equipment, is currently working on a 12-episode series about Singapore's sh.o.r.es. Their motto is, "Shoot first. Ask questions later." And they like to say they have no budget, no time, and often, no clue. So far, their efforts have been seen in a collaborative venture with Singapore's Arts Central-a production called "Once Upon a Tree, Tides and Coastlines."

The group is always on the lookout for able bodies to schlep camera equipment and set up shots. As Tan quips, "Generally, it takes five highly evolved beings to ensure good footage of an invertebrate." However, she points out, "You have to be crazy about our sh.o.r.es to commit to the Wild Film project." Because super tides, the best filming tides, take place before sunrise (usually around 4 a.m.), the volunteer production crew starts at 2 a.m. The gla.s.s-half-full part of this equation is that you will be finished by sunrise, giving you plenty of time for other pursuits.

There's no charge to volunteer with Wild Films (except the cost of minimal sleep) or any of the other groups listed on Tan's Wild Singapore website.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Ria Tan, www.wildsingapore.com.

ANOTHER THOUGHTFUL COMMITTED CITIZEN: MINDIE DODSON.

Convenient is the last adjective Mindie Dodson would use to describe her recent volunteer gig in Myanmar (Burma). She'd just inherited a tick-infested puppy, she was moving her grandmother out of her home of 50 years, and her growing list of Rolfing clients demanded weekly, if not biweekly, bodywork. Plus, the friend who asked her to go to Myanmar gave her all of three days to get ready.

"I wanted to say no-or at least to put her off for a few weeks, but then she told me about what was happening over there. How could I possibly refuse?" Dodson said.

When Cyclone Nargis slammed through Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta on May 2, 2008, more than a million people lost their homes and food supply. Three weeks later, the displaced people were still without food and aid.

"It's hard to even describe the chaos over there," Dodson says. "The military junta has been trying to get rid of the ethnic tribes that live in the Irrawaddy Delta for decades. Even before the cyclone, they were systematically eradicating these people who have lived on this land for thousands of years because they wanted their resources (diamonds, oil, etc.)."

Even though Dodson had never traveled farther than England, she packed her bags and headed to an unfamiliar part of the world. She agreed to set up a media center in Mae Sot, Thailand, along with a team from Tim Heinemann's Worldwide Impact Now. Heinemann, a former Green Beret, had been working in the area for years, developing networks with the Karen people. His team-including Dodson and other friends of his daughter-became a liaison between the refugees and dozens of aid organizations. Dodson interviewed refugees in order to doc.u.ment human rights abuses of the military junta that was working to thwart the international aid that poured in after the cyclone.

Dodson calls the three-week trip to Thailand and Myanmar life-changing. "It completely turned my viewpoint upside down," she said. "People talk about starving kids in Asia. Now I know some. Personally.... I met a guy who watched his entire family get washed away by the flooding. I met people who haven't had a home for 30 years. IDPs, they call them. It means internally displaced person. They've been on the run, fleeing from a military that wants to kill them."

She also saw raped girls, starving mothers, and child soldiers. "Children are very different over there," she says. "There's a look in their eyes. They're not spoiled like kids here. When a mom there says, 'Shh!' it means the difference between life or death. A soldier with a rifle could be behind the next tree."

Dodson has posted iMovies online about her experience in Myanmar, hoping to educate people about the dire situation. She also raises money for victims: She has thrown a fashion show and an art show as fund-raisers.

THE MIRROR FOUNDATION.

join a merry band creatively boosting thailand's hill tribes.

CHIANG RAI, THAILAND.

Inspiration revises our self-image, from seeing ourselves as pa.s.sive victims to being active agents of transformation. This is the single most important factor in changing the human condition.

-Philip Rubinov Jacobson, artist, philosopher, teacher, and writer 75 Creating change comes in many forms. The traditional route involves education, legislation, and endless committee-formation, but all too often these roads wander off point or get bogged down in bureaucracy. Until there's a new vision-a crisp, unmistakable beacon of what is possible-many high-minded roads to change wind back to where they started. Yet artists, who visualize new possibilities and inspire others to see the world anew, create change by asking, "What if?"

What if Thailand's hill tribes, long the victim of prejudice and inequality, were to gain equal citizenship footing with their peers in Bangkok? What if they joined the digital age, sold their traditional crafts, and invited tourists in to experience their little-understood culture? What if they had their own museum, their own films, and their own ability to make a decent living?

Started in 1991 by a group of underground activists, the Mirror Foundation (then known as Mirror Art Group) began staging art and drama performances to promote social change. Under the protective umbrella of "entertainment," they addressed controversial issues like democracy, human rights, HIV, and s.e.x education, all without getting thrown into jail by the repressive regime that had taken over the country. They staged more than a hundred performances per year.

By 1998, the coup had long been overthrown; Mirror's focus turned to northern Thailand, where ethnic minorities were suffering from shocking levels of malnutrition, poverty, unemployment, and loss of traditions as their culture was being swallowed up by the modern world. Mirror left Bangkok (though there's now a branch office there) and began a gra.s.sroots nonprofit in Mae Yao, a rural district of rice paddies, forests, and mountains in Chiang Rai province. Honoring local needs led the group to expand its mission in order to a.s.sist the Akha, Karen, Lahu, and other hill tribes.

More than 2,000 volunteers have joined Mirror over the years to teach English, create doc.u.mentaries, establish craft cooperatives, and find creative solutions to the perennial problems of people who are not recognized by any government.

EARN YOUR ELEPHANT DRIVER'S LICENSE In Thailand, a perfectly respectable career is that of a mahout-or elephant trainer. And while most Westerners aren't chomping at the bit to make it a full-time occupation, being a mahout is a fun vacation diversion.

At the Elephant Camp at Anantara's Golden Triangle Resort & Spa, mahouts in training spend three days learning to bathe, feed, and care for an elephant. They master basic elephant commands (around 70, at last count) and how to communicate with the pachyderms by lightly touching them behind the ears. From the backs of the camp's colorful cast of jumbo beauties, they also explore the forests of northern Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma).

Mahout training is not for late risers. Elephants and their mahouts start their day at 6:30 a.m., when elephants are rounded up from the forest, driven back to the camp, and given a few moments for morning ablutions. From there, mahout wannabes are taught how to mount their elephants-either by climbing up the animal's side or by leap-frogging over its bowed head-and given time to acclimate to the big beasts' roll and sway.

After lunch, mahouts drive their trusty steeds to the Ruak River for their all-time favorite activity-river bathing. And, yes, trainees are expected to get in the water with their charges, since staying on their backs would be nearly impossible, especially if you happen to get Lawann, the village flirt.

After a driving test, mahouts get an official mahout driver's license.

And while there may be no such thing as a dumb question, if you ask "how?" during mahout training, the pachyderm you're driving is likely to come to a screeching halt. How, after all, means "stop" in elephant language. But never fear, a quick pai, which means "go," should quickly catch you back up to the rest of your cla.s.s. Another useful word is baen, which means "turn," which could come in mighty handy in an elephant camp that's located at the confluence of the Mekong and Ruak Rivers.

The resort's 160 acres of bamboo forest, nature trails, and river banks provide an ideal habitat for its four elephants, all of whom came here from the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre in Lampang, 375 miles north of Bangkok. Anantara Golden Triangle Resort & Spa, 229 Moo 1, Chiang Saen, Chiang Rai 57150, Thailand, 66 5378 4084, www.goldentriangle.anantara.com.

Here's just a sampling of creative projects that can use your help: Bannock TV: Thanks to prejudice and ignorance, Thai's ethnic hill tribes, often refugees from Tibet and Myanmar (Burma), are called by pejorative names like E-gaw, Maew, and Ga-rieng, terms that suggest backwardness. To counteract this unenlightened perspective, Mirror-with funding from the World Bank-makes educational doc.u.mentaries about these traditional cultures' ceremonies, songs, customs, costumes, farming processes, weaving methods, and hunting techniques. These doc.u.mentaries are, in turn, broadcast throughout Thailand.

Thai Citizenship Project: Lack of Thai citizenship creates a raft of problems for Mae Yao's hill people. They can't vote, buy land, find legal employment, or even travel outside their own province. They're not eligible for education or government health care. At last count, Mirror has helped more than 2,000 hill people (and is working with 4,000 more) navigate the complex process of becoming legal citizens.

Ecotours Project: Until Mirror stepped in, many Thai trekking companies were exploiting the hill-tribe villages by paying them the equivalent of 50 cents of a $40 trekking fee to be a cheap tourist attraction. Mirror is developing tourism projects that recognize the villagers' culture and lifestyle and raise money for their children.

Voice of Earth Clay: Thailand's marginalized hill-tribe people mold, fire, paint, and glaze clay whistles (ocarinas) that are sold on the Internet (www.ebannok.com) and at an on-site shop. Profits from these whistles and other handicrafts, such as cloth pencil bags, jackets, and pillows, fund scholarships for local children.

Volunteers can come for a maximum of three months and mainly teach English to hill-tribe schoolchildren, local trekking guides, and staff. When available, they can learn traditional weaving or bamboo work at an additional cost.

Volunteers live in housing on the Mirror community grounds with a two-night weekend homestay with host families (additional accommodation with families can be arranged). The five-day program costs 7,000 baht ($200), 10,000 baht ($290) for one to two weeks, 11,000 baht ($310) for three weeks, 12,000 baht ($340) for a month, and 300 baht ($9) for each week after a month. Fees include airport pickup, accommodations, most transportation, weekday meals, and an elephant trek as part of a three-day trek/homestay weekend at the Lahu and Akha hilltribe villages.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

The Mirror Foundation, 106 Moo 1, Ban Huay Khom, T. Mae Yao, A. Muang, Chiang Rai 57100, Thailand, 66 5373 7412, www.mirrorartgroup.org.

BAIRO PITE CLINIC.

fight rare diseases in the world's newest country.

DILI, TIMOR-LESTE.

Working together we have learned nothing is impossible.

-Dr. Dan Murphy, who started the Bairo Pite Clinic in September 1999.

76 Dan Murphy, an American doctor who runs a free health clinic in Dili, Timor-Leste (East Timor), the half-island nation that gained its official independence on May 20, 2002, after a 24-year brutal Indonesian military occupation, desperately needs volunteers. But don't expect him to offer accommodations and food. He's too busy treating the 300 or more patients who show up each day at the little clinic he manages to run on less than $3,000 a month.

In 1999, when Murphy first showed up in East Timor, one of the world's poorest countries, it was in violent upheaval. Traveling into mountain hideouts to treat wounded rebels, he says "killing, torture, and ma.s.sacres were a steady weekly diet." Hobbling rebels who had had the bones of their feet smashed to bits by members of the Indonesian Army were some of his first patients. "Soldiers would put a prisoner's foot under the leg of a chair and crush down on it," he says, "You know how many small bones there are in the foot?"

Having spent six years working at a farm clinic, fighting against pesticide abuse alongside United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez, he wasn't afraid to speak up about the atrocities. Three times, he was thrown out of the country, once for comparing the Indonesian occupiers to n.a.z.is.

Even now that Timor-Leste is finally free from its longtime shackles (before Indonesia's occupation, it was under Portuguese dominion), thousands of people are still without homes and such diseases as TB, malaria, leprosy, AIDS, and dengue run rampant. Murphy explains, "East Timor has suffered as much or more than any other country in modern times. We can attribute this to the inadequacies and designs of the Western world powers, as well as to Indonesia. East Timor is poor because for 500 years they have had a boot on their neck."

Before the Indonesian military finally pulled out in September 1999, it destroyed 70 percent of the country's infrastructure, including more than a third of its health facilities. Those that remained were looted, and their equipment was damaged or destroyed. Any doctor with a lick of sense had long since high-tailed it out of the country.

Murphy says all these problems only heightened his resolve. Digging equipment out of the ashes, he started the Bairo Pite Clinic (BPC). In addition to treating patients, the clinic trains student doctors whose careers were cut short during the crisis.

Volunteers of all stripes are welcome at the clinic, and while Murphy doesn't have lots of free time to set up logistics, Medical Aid East Timor (MAET), a nonprofit based in Madison, Wisconsin, raises money for Dr. Dan, as he's known to the grateful Timorese, and MAET's staff are always willing to help volunteers make arrangements. They even host a Tour de Timor, a bike ride fund-raiser for BPC, every year in Madison.

TO EACH HIS OWN.

Timor-Leste (or East Timor, as it was long known) is not only the world's youngest country, but it's also taking its first baby steps as a travel destination. If you're after a cookie-cutter holiday, expect sheets with high thread counts, or even want roads that don't stop until you get to where you're going, you might want to avoid this country.

But if you long to escape the shackles of mainstream tourism, here is what you can expect: A road less traveled. Friends of Timor-Leste, an organization trying to help this impoverished country, compare its north coast road to the legendary Highway 1 in Big Sur, California. However, in Timor-Leste, when you hit the fishing village of Com, the 150-mile-long road winding along the Westar Strait does a disappearing act. Instead, the final 20 miles of the journey to Tutuala's remote beaches is aptly nicknamed "pothole purgatory."

Transportation. Uh, sometimes. Timor-Leste's Jako Island, a marine park located in Nino Konis Santana National Park, offers everything from snorkeling to bush walking, manta rays to turtles. There's just one problem. There's no easy way to get there. Ask around and eventually you can probably talk a fisherman who is heading in that direction to drop you off.

PROVIDING PRIMARY CARE.

According to Dr. Dan Murphy, providing primary health care is a top priority for the Bairo Pite Clinic, which sees more than 600 patients each day. The clinic's services include: Dental services Health outreach In-patient services Maternity and infant care Tuberculosis (TB) treatment and control Vaccinations The Bairo Pite Clinic also provides training for local healthcare workers. In addition, the clinic, which has a water supply system and a power generator to supplement unreliable local supplies, operates a medical laboratory, pharmacy, kitchen, and laundry service.

There's no charge to volunteer at the clinic. Expect monthly expenses for room and board in this poverty-stricken country, the poorest in Asia, to run at least $75.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Medical Aid East Timor, 213 North Fifth Street, Madison, WI, 53704, 608-241-2473, www.aideasttimor.org; Bairo Pite Clinic, Box 259, Dili, Timor-Leste, 670 3324118, http://bairopiteclinic.tripod.com.

VOLUNTEERS FOR PEACE.

commemorate the 140,000 killed by the world's first atomic bomb.

HIROSHIMA, j.a.pAN.

To remember Hiroshima is to abhor nuclear war. To remember Hiroshima is to commit oneself to peace.

-Pope John Paul II 77 At 8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb, nicknamed "Little Boy," that killed 140,000 innocent people in Hiroshima, j.a.pan. Three days later, U.S. President Harry Truman ordered that a second atomic bomb be dropped on Nagasaki, which took the lives of another 80,000 people. The world must never forget these terrible events.

On August 6 every year, the survivors of Hiroshima commemorate these tragedies by burning incense, laying wreaths, and praying for the souls of the dead. Needless to say, they've become some of the world's most eloquent advocates for pacifism.

But perhaps the ceremony that draws the most attention is a beautiful lantern ceremony called Toro Nagashi. From the base of the Atomic Bomb Dome, the remains of one of the only buildings left standing on that fateful day, thousands of cube-shaped paper lanterns are set afloat down the Motoyasu River. It's a stunning spectacle that draws thousands to the city each year.

Started in 1947, two years after the devastation, the lantern ceremony takes place at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and invites individuals of all nations and faiths to design lanterns that represent their thoughts and feelings about personal loss, global peace, nuclear disarmament, and other relevant issues.

The park is dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realization of world peace. It houses the Flame of Peace, a flame ignited on August 1, 1964, that will burn until all nuclear weapons are gone forever. Next to the flame is a monument with the names of all the people who died-more than 181,000, including those who died in the next few months and years after the bombing from illness caused by radiation exposure.