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Volunteering: How to find the best fits
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Tours with duty
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Using time off work to save the world
High-profile TV correspondent, Lisa LaFlamme often reports on strife -- recently, she spent her vacation doing something about it.
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By Rosie DiManno
As a high-profile TV correspondent, Lisa LaFlamme spends a great deal of time on the road, chasing stories, often in miserable places. And so much for the glamorama life of television journalism.
Yet, recently, the 40-something reporter spent her vacation time-out volunteering with a humanitarian agency in Western Africa -- off-the-map (media coverage-wise) Benin, to be specific. That excursion, in late October, was incumbent on no breaking news elsewhere, with LaFlamme's presence required. The world didn't lurch into another crisis, so LaFlamme carried out the long-gestating volunteer effort on behalf of Plan Canada, itself a replacement itinerary for an earlier scheme to promote expansion of refugee camps in Darfur -- scratched after the Sudanese government denied her a journalist's visa.
"I guess if I said I was a film star, I would have been cleared to go -- George Clooney and Angelina Jolie have done more to awaken the cause than a reporter could ever hope to!''
For seven days, LaFlamme and Plan (formerly Foster Parents Plan of Canada) executive Rosemary McCarney traveled through remote villages of Central Benin, where few residents had ever before clapped eyes on an Westerner, or even an indigenous aid worker, for that matter.
"I thought I had seen so much during my trips to various Third World countries, but nothing prepared me for this kind of poverty. I had volunteered to help Plan make a documentary about Benin, to highlight specific cases that would motivate Canadians to pick up the phone and donate. On one level, it was a continuation of what I do for a living -- make TV. But for the first time, I would be expected to come right out and ask people for money -- not a position I was entirely comfortable with.''
That private reservation dissolved quickly, however. "Because Benin is small, relatively calm, with no civil war or natural disaster, the country had never hit the international spotlight, their level of perpetual poverty and premature death had never become front page news. That made the experience all the more important to me. It felt like we were uncovering a disaster that had, so far, remained secret.''
LaFlamme had just joined the ranks of the citizen-volunteer on assignment overseas, a philanthropic phenomenon that has taken off in recent years, fuelled to a great extent by middle-aged professionals with a craving to give something back. But there's also a symbiotic dynamic here in the substrata of go-go-go-careerists suddenly realizing there's more to life -- and more to be expected from one's existence -- than selfish pursuits. It's a re-discovery of the self-less, doing unto and for others, when time permits, even amidst the most punishing, occasionally threatening, of environments.
It's known as volunteer tourism -- or voluntourism, and maybe the neologism is unfortunate, making the pursuit sound a bit contrived, Bono humanitarianism gone gonzo global; more about the altruistic donor than the wretched donee. But it certainly appears a captivating objective, especially -- the evidence is only anecdotal -- among single woman, established in their professions, with no children of their own to raise, suddenly realizing they miss that experience, they miss the uplifting part of human continuity -- one generation benefiting the next, being just a cog in the wheel of life, but still helping the species to keep on rolling.
There's plenty of compassion to go around and exotic appeal to spreading the do-good across a needy planet -- in areas where poverty is chronically entrenched, where humanitarian agencies have on-going projects, and where disaster has suddenly struck, hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis. It's all noble work and the opportunities sadly extensive for caravan voluntourism. Direct action also feels more worthwhile than, say, merely supporting the local economy by buying native-made trinkets whilst on holidays.
Canadians are a kindly, civic-minded people. Some 12 million of us are involved in volunteerism one way or another, often as an extension of family life -- through children's activities, in education, recreation, health, sports and political activism that influences public policy. "Our communities would collapse without volunteers,'' says Ruth MacKenzie, president of Volunteer Canada.
This is organic volunteerism and also encompasses straightforward financial donation -- the average household contributing about $400 per year to good causes, often those that resonate through personal experience. More than 22 million Canadians -- 85 per cent of the population over the age of 15 -- made a financial contribution to a charitable or non-profit organization in the 12 months previous to the last time Statistics Canada took the pulse of the nation on such matters, in 2005, reported in Caring Canadians, Involved Canadians: Highlight of the Canadian Survey on Giving, Volunteering and Participating. Though those in the age 45 to 64 bracket, as well as retirees, gave the most, the donor rate of families in the lower income levels gave proportionately more. In terms of time donated, contributions totaled 2 billion hours -- an amount equivalent to one million full-time jobs. Time allotted rates, proportionately, was most prevalent among youth, those with higher levels of education and income, those who have school-aged children and the religiously active.
"In terms of professionals who are looking to make a contribution, there's not much analysis that has been done of that particular cohort,'' observes MacKenzie, commenting specifically on the single and often childless career woman who is rediscovering volunteerism, more commonly now with an exotic twist, working -- in spurts -- with aid agencies overseas, hands-on and gritty.
Even the late Princess Diana -- a career woman in her own right, and famously reconstituted as a single (albeit with children) -- was a practitioner of voluntourism by campaigning against landmines in Africa.
"It is something that we're seeing more of, as a trend,'' says MacKenzie of professionals offering their time to projects and relief efforts in godforsaken places. "Of course, baby-boomers are such a large cohort that whatever they do becomes a trend. But there's a huge continuum of people choosing to contribute to the global village community. Maybe they can't donate that time on a regular basis, as most volunteers do. So they do what I'll call episodic volunteering events, sacrificing their vacations, looking at missions that maybe speak to their values and leveraging the skills that they have.''
There's something here, perhaps, about revisiting one's idealism and recapturing, at least narrowly, those options of nurturing -- dare we even say (italics here) mothering (close italics) -- that were given shorter shrift earlier in life. Where the mommy-track may no longer be available -- may never even have been an attractive option -- launching children into the world, alleviating that suffering, fills a hole in the heart.
Volunteer Services Overseas Canada, an international development agency (largely funded by CIDA) has been banging that drum for a long time. The VSO network, which began in the United Kingdom in 1958, has put more than 30,000 volunteers in the field over nearly a half-century, in nearly 35 countries.
"We've made our options more flexible,'' says Adam Hess, of VSO Canada, which sends about 150 volunteers around the world yearly. "Traditionally, our placements have been longer term. But we've added short term options.''
The increasing popularity of tourism holidays is reflected not only in burgeoning websites and newsletters but also in the growing number of travel agencies and tour operators who offer voluntourism packages. South of the border, the Travel Industry Association of America highlighted the trend in 2005, noting that some 100,000 volunteers had headed to national parks -- domestic volunteerism -- to spend their holidays building bridges and trails, planting trees and generally prettifying the protected environment.
In Canada, one agency that has been arranging such packages is Aquila Tours Inc., operating out of St. John, N.B.
"We started two years ago, with a trip to El Salvador,'' says company founder Beth Hatt, who took five people on that trip, all of them professionals. "I'd done so much traveling myself, and had seen so much of the world. There was a feeling here that some people wanted a different way to see the world, and to give something back at the same time.
When you get down, really working with the people, get to know the children, you learn so much more, really discover what the country's all about. And, yes, you do feel good about yourself for doing more than just being a tourist.''
There are likely those who will mock the whole voluntourism largesse, as lese majeste for boomers. So what.
"I recognize there are cynics who consider 'voluntourism' trendy and, if so, it's a trend in the right direction and I hope it catches on,'' says Lisa LaFlamme. "We, as a society, could stand to step away from our comfort zone more often, to do something, anything, for someone other than ourselves -- if for no other reason than to increase our understanding and empathy of the guy sitting next to us on the subway. What is the alternative -- do nothing?''
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