The 100 Best Volunteer Vacations to Enrich Your Life Part 22

A THOUSAND PAPER CRANES.

Sadako Sasaki was only two when the bomb struck her city; she lived about a mile from ground zero. By the time she was ten, she, like many people in Hiroshima, developed leukemia-what her mother called "an atomic bomb disease." After she was hospitalized, a friend brought her a folded paper crane and explained the j.a.panese legend saying that if you can accomplish the feat of folding a thousand cranes, you'll be granted a wish. Sadako, weak from her disease, folded crane after crane, wishing, of course, for her own recovery. Soon after she completed folding the 664th crane, her leukemia got the best of her.

Her cla.s.smates, devastated about losing their friend, finished the task.

A statue of Sadako stands in Peace Park and kids from around the world send cranes to the Hiroshima International School students, who drape them around the statue. They even send out "1,000 Crane" certificates of recognition. If you happen to have a thousand folded cranes lying around, send them to Hiroshima International School, c/o The 1,000 Crane Club, 3-49-1 Kurakake, Asakita-ku, Hiroshima, 739-1743, j.a.pan.

Every year, Volunteers for Peace (VFP), in conjunction with the Hiroshima YMCA, organizes a work camp where volunteers from around the world come to do their part to insure that a travesty of this nature is never repeated. This work camp starts at a ski resort in the mountains outside Hiroshima. Volunteers from around the world join together at the Swiss-Mura Free School, an alternative school that offers farming, baking, and carpentry, as well as traditional academic subjects. You'll work with students who, for various reasons, are unable to partic.i.p.ate in traditional j.a.panese schooling; part of your job is to introduce them to your country and culture. Take photos, books, recipes, songs, and children's plays for show and tell.

You'll then return to Hiroshima to help the YMCA promote peace and raise international awareness of the tragedy created by the atomic bomb and by all warfare.

Cost for the two-week VFP work camp is $300 and includes meals and accommodation. During your time at the school, you'll sleep in a dorm with other volunteers. While in Hiroshima, you'll stay with a host family.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Volunteers for Peace, 1034 Tiffany Road, Belmont, VT 05730, 802-259-2759, www.vfp.org.

GLOBAL CROSSROAD.

teach english at an orphanage on the rooftop of the world.

LHASA, TIBET.

Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.

-Ryunosuke Satoro 78 Heinrich Harrer, the Austrian mountaineer who wrote Seven Years in Tibet about his remarkable experience with the teenage Dalai Lama, is probably Tibet's most well-known volunteer. While he was in Lhasa, he not only learned the Tibetan language, but he helped the Buddhist monks at Potala Palace-the Dalai Lama's winter home-build a sewer system and plant trees.

Like the famous Buddhist leader he befriended, Harrer fled in the 1950s when the Chinese invaded. Nearly 60 years later on the highest mountain ridge in the world, there's still plenty of work for able-bodied volunteers to do.

Global Crossroad (GC), a Dallas-based company that dispatches volunteers to 24 countries, partnered with an orphanage near Lhasa to offer an amazing volunteer project. As of this writing, however, the project that GC has run there for many years is on hiatus, pending reapproval by the Chinese government. GC hopes that the successful program will be up and running again soon. (In the meantime, interested partic.i.p.ants can volunteer in Nepal or China and go to Tibet for a travel program. Call or check the website for the latest information on the program's status.) Here's the lowdown about this project: Most of your 15 to 20 volunteer hours each week will be spent teaching English, an important skill for children trying to climb out of poverty. There are also opportunities to coach soccer, play games, or even lead rousing rounds of irreverent street songs, a favorite pastime of most Tibetans.

To raise money for the children's care, the orphanage also runs the Tibetan Medicine Center, the Tibetan Handicraft Center, and the Tibetan Paper Industry. GC volunteers are free to help with any of these projects.

Either way, you'll have plenty of time to check out Potala Palace, drink b.u.t.ter tea (the national drink that supposedly replenishes the body's stores of salt, fat, and water), and appreciate the scenery that-at 17,000 feet-is unlike any other. As American civil engineer Stanford Zeccolo said about his recent visit to Lhasa, "I have a son who I've visited in Montana, you know, the 'big sky country,' but Montana falls a little short compared to Tibet and the Himalaya. Every place you look is a Kodak moment."

LET THERE BE PEACE FLAGS IN TIBET.

Invite all parts of yourself to join you at the peace table in your heart.

-Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield, in A Path with Heart Although Americans hang colorful Buddhist peace flags across their porches, the tradition began in Tibet more than 2,000 years ago. The colorful squares in blue (for sky), white (water), red, (fire), green (air), and yellow (earth) of the Dar Cho unleash prayers as the wind blows through them. In Tibet, Dar means to increase life and good fortune and Cho means to everyone. As the squares fray and fade, the prayers are believed to be released to the heavens.

Many of today's prayer flags are made by Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal, and are stamped with prayers, mantras, symbols, and dharanis, which are magical formulas for conveying peace.

A student in Eugene, Oregon, who hung them outside her apartment reported that crime had decreased. She noted that it was probably a coincidence, but nice nonetheless.

Volunteers, who fly into Lhasa International Airport on the first and third Monday of every month, typically stay in Tibet for between one and twelve weeks. They live at a guest house in Lhasa and are provided with language training and cultural briefings before cla.s.sroom teaching begins.

Cost for a one-week post in Tibet runs $1,175 and includes breakfast and lunch only. When it's running, the program goes from April through October.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Global Crossroad, 415 East Airport Freeway, Suite 365, Irving, TX 75062, 866-387-7816 or 972-252-4191, www.globalcrossroad.com.

GAP YEAR FOR GROWN UPS.

be a zookeeper.

TAIPING ZOO OR ZOO NEGARA, MALAYSIA.

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it's at the end of your arm. As you get older, remember you have another hand: the first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.

-Audrey Hepburn, actress and humanitarian 79 There are 6,437 animals in Malaysia that could use your second hand. These denizens of two well-known Malaysian zoos-from endangered orangutans and black panthers to bearded pigs and storks-depend on volunteers sent by the U.K.-based Gap Year for Grown Ups (GYG), a company that organizes what they call life-changing outings to 45 countries, for their survival.

Volunteer zookeepers who fly to Kuala Lumpur on the fifth day of every month guide tours, feed the animals, clean their cages, and provide them with enrichment activities. Since the animals' normal routines-finding food and sp.a.w.ning progeny-have been nipped in the bud by encroaching development on the Malay Peninsula, enrichment gives animals something engaging to do.

For Wasabi, a four-year-old female orangutan abandoned by her mother, you might hide such treats as sugarcane and raisins (to encourage foraging) or wave palm leaves in hopes that she'll figure out that they make handsome nests. Gorillas, like cats, enjoy hopping in and out of boxes, pushing them across floors, and, if they're hungry, eating them as an afternoon snack.

But you won't have to figure this all out on your own. You'll work under the guidance of the zookeepers, on-site vets, and zoo directors, who will not only enlighten you on baby elephant enrichment, but will provide the necessary rakes, brushes, trash bags, boxes, ropes, disinfectants, palm leaves, keys, food, and boots.

GYG offers zookeeping posts at two zoos: Taiping Zoo. Three hours from Kuala Lumpur, the Taiping Zoo is the oldest public zoo in Malaysia. It has 34 lushly gardened acres and 1,300 animals representing 200 species of birds, reptiles, and mammals. Volunteers here live in a nearby hotel.

Zoo Negara. This city zoo is larger, with 110 acres and 5,137 animals, including more than 80 aquatic animals that live in its popular Tunku Abdul Rahman aquarium. Once virgin jungle, Zoo Negara is only a few minutes from the center of Kuala Lumpur. Volunteers here live in a home located inside the zoo.

According to GYG, other than the location, there's really little difference between the two zoos. At both, you'll get the chance to work with a wide variety of species, or, if you prefer, you can concentrate on just one. If you love, say, stump-tailed macaques, you can request to work with nothing but the pink-faced s.h.a.ggy primates.

Work days start at 8 and don't finish until 5, but you'll have weekends off to explore cosmopolitan Kuala Lumpur or the country's ancient-but disappearing-rain forests, beaches, and mountains.

The four-week zookeeper job runs 1,159 ($1,725) and includes lodging, as mentioned above, and three meals a day featuring Malaysia's exotic, chili-spiced rice and noodle dishes.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Gap Year for Grown Ups, Zurich House, 1 Meadow Road, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN1 2YG, England, 44 1892 701881, www.gapyearforgrownups.co.uk *

NAME CHANGE IMPEACHMENT.

In October 2008, Abdul Hakim Borhan, the mayor of Kuala Lumpur, was practically forced to resign for changing the name and street signs on a popular thoroughfare that's been a nighttime foodie destination for 50 years. Once a red-light district, Jalan Alor, the street with hundreds of outdoor stalls selling everything from marinated grilled stingray and chicken satay to frog porridge and crispy fried pig intestines, was suddenly changed to Jalan Kejora. Jalan means "street," Alor means "stream," and Kejora is the Malay word for the planet Venus.

Vendors, taxi drivers, backpackers, and even newspapers as far away as France expressed outrage that the well-known street in the Bukit Bintang district was being what the mayor called "rebranded."

Whatever it ends up being called, Jalan Alor/Jalan Kejora is still an entertaining, if rather imposing, place to step back into Asia before modernization. You'll find bustling outdoor restaurants and endless rows of stalls selling fruits, hanging ducks, sugarcane juice, and grilled fish of every persuasion.

CULTURAL RESTORATION TOURISM PROJECT.

restore a buddhist monastery.

MUSTANG VALLEY, NEPAL.

We can't do much about the length of our lives, but we can do plenty about its width and depth.

-Evan Esar, author and humorist 80 Two figures stood out in Mark Hintzke's mind when he started the Cultural Restoration Tourism Project (CRTP), a small nonprofit that uses volunteers to restore cultural heritage sites around the world: ten, the percentage of tourism dollars that actually go into the pockets of locals in developing countries, and five, the number of grants he knew he'd end up seeking if he tried to restore a Mongolian monastery the traditional way.

With experience in construction and nonprofits, creative problem-solving was nothing new to Hintzke. He decided to use the world's largest industry (tourism) to fund his restoration work, by asking volunteers to pay for the chance to work alongside local architects and artists who are bringing precious cultural sites back to life.

On CRTP's current project, a 300-year-old monastery in Nepal's apple-growing Mustang Valley, Hintzke's volunteers are working alongside Lama Sashi Doj, a world-renowned painter and Buddhist monk who is not only supervising the renovation of the Chairro Gompa (Chiarro Buddhist monastery), but is offering training in monastic art. Doj comes from a long line (five generations) of artists who specialize in monastic sculpture and wall paintings.

Harsh weather conditions have taken their toll and the treasures inside Chairro are at risk of being lost forever. Centuries-old wall paintings and sculptures dwell precariously in a building on the verge of collapse. Without immediate attention, these works of master artists and craftsmen will be erased from existence.

The 12-day projects include light construction and painting that even untrained volunteers can handle, treks into the Mustang Valley's desert moonscapes, and the chance to meet displaced Tibetans who came to Nepal after China forbade them to practice their religion. In fact, when Hintzke told a local monk about his hopes to restore Chairro Gompa, the monk broke down into tears, crying what an interpreter later told the American do-gooder were "tears of joy and grat.i.tude." He was overcome, knowing his eyes would once again gaze upon the restored temple.

CIRCUIT TRAINING.

Not only is Marpha, the village where you stay, near what some claim is the world's deepest gorge, on the Kali Gendeki River, but it's also one of the villages on the Annapurna Circuit. This cla.s.sic Nepal trek normally takes about three weeks to complete, including needed rest days. If you decide to accept the challenge, you'll pa.s.s through four climate zones, be introduced to ten ethnic groups, and traverse through countless rice farms, orchards, and forests before reaching the summit at 17,769 feet.

Hintzke's first CRTP project was launched in 1998, when he committed to finding the funds and volunteers to restore an ancient Buddhist temple in Baldan Baraivan, Mongolia, that had once been home to 1,500 lamas. Heavily damaged in the 1930s by Communists who sought to purge all signs of Buddhism and in the 1970s by a fire, the temple was sorely in need of the 300 volunteers who breathed life back into one of Mongolia's largest monasteries over the next seven years.

In 2003, CRTP was invited to Nepal to restore Chairro Gompa, because the 300-year-old monastery had fallen into disrepair when the routes used by Takhali salt traders were disrupted after the Chinese government closed the border to Tibet. Hintzke, whose master's thesis studied the application of Buddhist ethics to development practices, points out that projects are initiated not by him, but by local communities who want help restoring their history and culture, but lack resources. "The idea is to bridge cultural gaps, to allow for a deeper understanding of a culture from both sides," says Hintzke, who has been talking to communities in Egypt, Panama, Peru, and Mexico about future projects.

Under the snowcapped Himalaya, volunteers work and lunch with local contractors, using traditional tools and techniques. Afternoons are free to hike, pick apples, visit schools, or keep working.

The 12-day trip is $2,495 and includes three meals a day and accommodations in a modern, family-run guesthouse in the quaint, stone-lined village of Marpha.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

Cultural Restoration Tourism Project, P.O. Box 6803, Albany, CA 94706, 415-563-7221, www.crtp.net.

INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY FOR ECOLOGY AND CULTURE.

a.s.sist in the apricot, barley, and alfalfa harvest.

LADAKH, INDIA.

Advertising and the ma.s.s media pressure us all to live a consumer lifestyle that can never lead to happiness. I now know that another way of life is possible.

-Thomas McMillan, Ladakh volunteer.

81 Ladakh, the high plateau in India's western Himalaya known as Little Tibet, was opened to foreign tourism in 1974. Ever since, the locals have been questioning their way of life. Tourists who come to gawk at their glorious mountains sometimes spend more money in a day than Ladakhi families spend in a whole year. Ladakhi children, once happy to chase yaks, have begun to want video games and fancy cameras. The men, once content to work beside the women on the family farm, head for the city in hopes of work and more money. The women, left to tend the farm and carry the water, watch hopelessly as their traditional way of life and cultural integrity slips like sand between their fingers.

Since 1975, the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC), a British-and U.S.-based nonprofit that strives to protect biological and cultural diversity around the world, has been sending volunteers to Ladakh. Volunteers help locals with their yearly apricot, barley, and alfalfa harvests, but also let them know that modern development is not everything it's cracked up to be.

Though the World Bank touts development as the panacea, ISEC thinks the Ladakhis deserve a more accurate picture. The Indian government promotes this hauntingly beautiful region, but never mentions the downside of a modern lifestyle-job stress, unemployment, and family breakdown. Every summer, ISEC sends international volunteers to Ladakh for "experiential education." The four-week Learning from Ladakh program (it used to be called the Farm Project) includes living with and working alongside a Ladakhi farming family and five days of group workshops.

It's a win-win for all concerned. The Ladakhi women get much-needed help with their harvest and household ch.o.r.es. And Western volunteers get insight into a traditional culture where the connection to nature runs deep and community and cooperation trump all else. Before 1974, when Westerners arrived on the scene, hunger, crime, pollution, and ethnic conflict were all but unknown here.

In addition to the Learning from Ladakh program, ISEC has also initiated a handicraft cooperative, introduced solar power, greenhouses, and ram pumps, and put together conferences, radio shows, and even a comic book that highlight the true cost of globalization.

Monthlong Learning from Ladakh sessions are held each summer over the course of two months and cost $600.

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH.

International Society for Ecology and Culture USA, P.O. Box 9475, Berkeley, CA 94709, 510-548-4915, www.isec.org.uk.

ANOTHER ONE (ALMOST) BITES THE DUST.

Twenty years ago, amchi, a traditional indigenous medicine that uses healing plants and herbs, was in danger of going extinct. Allopathic medicine, like many Western concepts, was introduced to Ladakh and considered by those making decisions about health policy to be the only way to improve the health of "backward" communities. Indigenous knowledge, even though it was written down in comprehensive medical texts, was all but ignored. Since amchis (also the name of pract.i.tioners of this ancient art) don't charge patients for consultations, they were being forced to get jobs to cope with changing economic realities.

Luckily, Amchi Tsew.a.n.g Smanla started a project for the revival and development of this ancient healing practice that had been pa.s.sed down to him over six generations. With a grant from the Save the Children Annual Fund, Smanla traveled to remote areas to share knowledge, exchange herbs, and train others in amchi. He organized committees of both allopathic doctors and amchis who work together to identify, cultivate, and preserve Ladakh's estimated 10,000 medicinal plants. He also leads herbal medicine tours for Westerners.