Vacations from the Heart
8th April 2005
Recent Go For It Films


Vacations are offer the chance to escape our day-to-day lives and experience new places, people, sights and sounds; but for more and more travellers the most satisfying holiday involves far-flung places, exotic cultures and volunteering for a good cause. This programme charts the experiences of volunteers who have decided to donate their time and money to become ‘volunteer tourists’ taking them to destinations as far apart as Belize, Peru and Costa Rica. Don’t miss your opportunity to find out more about becoming a volunteer tourist, right here on your Community Channel.

Every year thousands of tourists descend on the ancient city of Cuzco high in the Peruvian Andes. Once the centre of the Inca’s world, and the oldest remaining city in the Americas, Cuzco is today welcoming a new breed of tourist from Canada. These tourists are putting aside the beach towel and tourist guide to contribute their time, efforts and skills to help others in need, like the children of the St Francis of Assisi orphanage.

Over one hundred children aged between 1 and 16 years live at this small orphanage, staffed by two nuns and a handful of helpers based in the heart of the city. The children have all been abandoned by their families and communities; and many have hearing impairments, are mentally challenged or have been orphaned. The school receives volunteers from North America organised by the organisation Globe Aware, who spend one week caring for the children and taking them on various outings and excursions.

One such volunteer is Travis Burke, a computer software worker from Toronto who has come to the Andes to help the orphaned children of Cuzco. He says, "The reason I chose to come on this programme was Globe Aware’s message of ‘help people, have fun’, which is something I was really looking for on my vacation. Being able to come here and help the children, as well as the madres, was a great opportunity."

The Mother Superior, Madre Consuela, explains why such contributions from volunteers are so important to the children, saying: "The kids, they need and they look for love... for somebody who will come and hug them, kiss them and pay attention to them - because they lack this. They don’t have this kind of love and friendship. They are abandoned because not the parents, not society likes them wants them and so when somebody comes from the outside they just run over to them and look for love; to be hugged and it makes them very, very happy,"

Market Researcher, Johanne Berube, loves to travel and enjoys the opportunity to do good work, so the opportunity to combine both is particularly attractive. She found her ideal volunteering opening whilst surfing the internet – a research project in Belize with the Oceanic Society. Using her skills and passion for research, Johanne joins a team of volunteers and marine biologists as they survey the wild dolphin population living around Belize’s barrier reef – the largest in the Western Hemisphere. The project’s findings will contribute to efforts to get the area assigned ‘biosphere’ status by the UN, thus ensuring protection against the pollution and exploitation that has damaged many similar sites around the region.

This programme gives a fascinating insight into volunteer programmes that enable people to undertake exciting and rewarding projects, which don’t require any specific skills and enable them to experience the culture and reality of life in far flung places. The organisations mentioned in the film are listed below, but are American. Other organisations that cater for overseas voluntary work have been listed.