Emma’s Song of Gratitude

• Source: Globe Aware

This song of joy and gratitude for Globe Aware volunteers was written and sung by Emma Peraulta, one of our community program recipients, in December of 2023 in the Philippines. 

Globe Aware featured on BBC Travel Show - Passengers with a Purpose

• Source: BBC

BBC Travel Show - Passengers with a Purpose

Jul 14, 2022
BBC

Emeline Nsingi Nkosi finds out what life’s like as an international volunteer onboard the world’s biggest civilian hospital ship. The Green Guide’s back - asking how to travel sustainably on a budget, and the team’s in India taking a look at a new record breaking railway bridge in the Himalayas.

Globe Aware Makes Volunteering Easy, Safe and Fun

• Source: The University Network

Globe Aware Makes Volunteering Easy, Safe and Fun

By Hyeyeun Jeon
The University Network

For students in high school and college, volunteering is beneficial in many ways.

Through volunteering, not only can you make meaningful impacts and learn to live as a part of a wider community, but also network with people from various career paths and improve your school applications.

Of course there are numerous local volunteering opportunities available. However, as air travel normalizes again, students can look into opportunities in international communities as well.

With Globe Aware, you can reap the same benefits of volunteering while traveling to various wonders of our beautiful world.

Founded in 2000, Globe Aware is a nonprofit that develops short-term service abroad programs for those interested in volunteer travel.

Volunteering with Globe Aware

Volunteer travel aims to combine the best intentions of the non-profit sector with the excitement of the tourism sector to create stimulating, service-oriented vacations.

With a special consultative status with the United Nations, Globe Aware develops a safe, fun and culturally interesting experience for volunteers interested in service across the world.

The organization’s service projects focus on working side-by-side with locals as equals on community projects that are important to them. Previous projects include installing concrete floors in the homes of single mothers in Guatemala and assembling and distributing wheelchairs for landmine victims in Cambodia.

Simultaneously, Globe Aware provides several cultural excursions throughout every program, such as swimming in deep, water-filled sinkholes formed in limestone known as cenotes in Mexico, and spectacular nature hikes into the Carara Rainforest Reserve of Costa Rica.

None of Globe Aware trips require special skills or the ability to speak a specific foreign language because Globe Aware employees lay the groundwork prior to your arrival and accompany you during the entire volunteer vacation.

How Students Can Volunteer with Globe Aware

Globe Aware has volunteer programs for high school and college students. These programs typically run for about a week, but programs can be extended up to three weeks upon request.

Destinations vary widely, ranging from a quaint village in Romania to a Rainforest village in Costa Rica. You can look through all programs operating in Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean here.

Note that India, Thailand and Nepal programs are set to reopen this summer after being temporarily closed during the pandemic.

Service Hours

On top of a life-changing experience, Globe Aware trips provide service hours. High school students can use the hours worked during a program (usually 40 hours per week) for their required number of service hours to graduate or to qualify for the distinguished President’s Volunteer Service Award.

And all volunteers can request to receive a Community Service Certificate upon completion of their programs.

Also, there are discounts available for students. For example, participants under 17 years of age or groups of 10 or more can receive a 10 percent discount.

To register for a volunteer travel trip, you can sign up here.

Internship opportunities

For students looking for internship opportunities, Globe Aware provides internships that can be as short as one week and as long as four weeks, which are held virtually from India.

Depending on your interests, you will be directed to one of various organizations, ranging from local schools to elephant welfare nonprofits.

For example, as an intern at a local community center for children from low-income families, you will be working on weekly tasks such as creating educational videos that will be used in virtual lessons.

Though volunteering can be done anywhere, a Globe Aware program is truly one of few opportunities in life that offer the ability to experience another culture while also serving in a deeply meaningful way.

Rising Stars: Meet Kimberly Haley-Coleman

• Source: VoyageDallas

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021
VoyageDallas

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kimberly Haley-Coleman.

Hi Kimberly, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?

My career has been circuitous, to say the least! From training on-air CNBC staff in financial tools, putting dead people into space with Space Services, working at museums and start-ups! But I found my true calling when I founded Globe Aware a couple of decades ago, organizing experiences that allowed people to have fun helping people. These short-term experiences in 26 countries are designed to give back, show participants a side of the culture they are visiting in a way they never would, but also to make a huge social impact in a short amount of time. Prior to Globe Aware, such experiences were primarily the domain of high school and college students or of churches or meant a 2.5 years Peace Corps commitment. Since then, the organization has grown in ways we could never have anticipated. For example, now corporations send their staff through us, using contribution matching, paid Volunteer Days Off, allowing tax deductions for portions the staff member pays for, etc. BUT THEN the pandemic. Borders closed, travel safety called into question, the world stopped, and I decided to temporarily pivot. And THAT is what led to my creating The Tickle Bar, America’s newest and most unique affordable luxury.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

As conditions around covid 19 have rolled up and down, so too have both my businesses. We have instituted new protocols and have had to keep up with changing requirements. We are doing things we never anticipated. The border situation and pandemic safety conditions change frequently, and we have been lucky to flourish in an uncertain market. Having rapid covid tests administered at our program locations prior to participants returning to the US or transferring program locations from one country to the next, it has NOT been a smooth road, but it has been enormously interesting and gratifying. It is such a privilege that I get to run businesses that provide joy to people at a time when people especially need it.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?

As the mother of two teenagers going to the same high school, I did back when I lived in Lakewood, I feel lucky that my daughters get to bear witness to a business person learning how to adapt quickly to changing conditions. This generation, despite the setbacks and struggles, will be stronger than previous generations because of this. When the President declared the Travel Emergency in March of 2020, we did not wait to react. We had closed our Asia programs in January, then immediately started finding creative ways to cut costs. I went unpaid for quite a while, we applied for and received PPP rounds of funding, we created virtual programing to bring services to folks the world over as an alternative to our core businesses, and then we figured out how to fill a niche that people suddenly urgently needed. After months of severely limited human interaction, we created an affordable business to get safe, human, healing, nurturing touch. As a parent, as strange as it sounds, I am glad this all happened while they were still under my wing.

What makes you happy?

Like most people, my greatest source of joy is service. That can be providing the specialty homemade vegan dinners my eldest likes or planning and building a school in Laos. How could anything else compare to that? I think it’s a given, universal thing for which we all yearn.

Pricing:

• Globe Aware programs run from $1000 t0 $1600 per week
• Tickle Bar sessions (think of light back tracing your mom did on your back when you were growing up) from $25 and up

Contact Info:

• Email: info@globeaware.com kimberly@ticklebar.com
• Website: www.globeaware.org and www.ticklebar.com
• Instagram: @globeaware and @tickle.bar
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/globeaware and https://www.facebook.com/Tickle.bar
• Twitter: @GlobeAware and @TheTickleBar
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/lylejenish and https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwgF2Oy0Nf94OayQJeHj8RA
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-tickle-bar-dallas

Globe Aware Founder Pivots During COVID Travel Shutdown

• Source: Good Morning Texas

How to Volunteer While Traveling With Your Kids

• Source: Travel + Leisure

How to Volunteer While Traveling With Your Kids

Looking for meaningful travel? Volunteering lets you give back and grow as a family.

By Ken Budd
July 15, 2021
Travel + Leisure

When Jodi Lipson's daughter was seven, the duo embarked on a mommy-daughter adventure — and no, they didn't travel to Disneyland. For one week, the pair did maintenance work at a hostel in Peru and helped local schoolchildren learn English. They soon worked on three more projects with volunteer organization Globe Aware in Guatemala, Cambodia, and Costa Rica. The experiences, said Lipson, who works in book publishing in D.C., have expanded the worldview of her now 13-year-old daughter.

"We've met so many people," she said. "We have a whole repertoire of experiences, feelings, and memories."

As travel-hungry Americans start dusting off their passports, meaningful travel will top many bucket lists—and short-term volunteering should be on your radar. Volunteering abroad was ranked number three on a list of most-desired post-pandemic travel opportunities in a recent survey by Go Overseas, a resource site on meaningful travel.

"People are longing for the type of healing and meaning that our volunteer programs offer," said Michele Gran, co-founder and senior vice president of Global Volunteers.

For kids, volunteering can reveal a world beyond their screens and fuel a lifelong interest in giving. It also helps families to escape their comfort zone, bond, and immerse themselves in local cultures. Volunteering might even impact your child's future. A teenage volunteer with Earthwatch, a scientific organization that runs expeditions worldwide, wrote her college essay on her volunteer experience and was admitted to Stanford. She's now been admitted to several PhD programs in ornithology, which was the focus of her Earthwatch expedition.

Interested in volunteering with your family? Consider these possibilities:

One-day options

You can help others while staying at a hotel or taking a cruise. Crystal Cruises' "You Care, We Care" program provides volunteer shore excursions that range from planting trees at Iceland's Heidmork Natural Reserve to cleaning the banks of the Buñol River in Spain. The Ritz-Carlton offers service opportunities, known as Impact Experiences, as part of its Community Footprints program. These volunteer options are primarily designed for businesses and conferences, but hotels and resorts will also arrange them for families. Several families at the Ritz-Carlton, Amelia Island, for example, recently helped clean area beaches.

Some Airbnb hosts work with local nonprofits to arrange "Social Impact" experiences. Your activity fee supports the nonprofit and you'll get an inside view of their work—and maybe even help out. In San Diego, one Airbnb host is a cofounder of Free Animal Doctor, a nonprofit crowdfunding platform that helps people care for their animals. For the Social Impact experience, guests exercise and socialize rescue dogs for adoption events.

You can also organize volunteer work on your own by asking local nonprofits, visitors bureaus, and tour companies about service opportunities. In Hawaii, giving back can even save you money: Travelers who volunteer during their visit can get a free night at participating hotels.

More-immersive volunteer gigs

For a deeper experience, consider a volunteer vacation, also known as voluntourism. Organizations such as Global Volunteers, Globe Aware, and Projects Abroad run one-week-or-longer family programs in the United States and abroad. Some allow children as young as six; others, like Earthwatch, have a minimum age of 15. Most organizations also provide cultural activities (such as language lessons) and tourism opportunities (the Lipsons visited Machu Picchu while volunteering in Peru).

Multiple organizations expect to relaunch projects in late 2021, though 2022 may be best for families interested in international volunteering, especially as countries start requiring COVID vaccinations, for example, it could create entry issues for children and teens who aren't vaccinated yet). Organizations such as Globe Aware, which has restarted programs in countries such as Costa Rica, Guatemala, Ghana, and Kenya, are taking steps beyond masks and social distancing to protect locals and volunteers: "All our projects, leisure activities, and meals are outside," says executive director Kimberly Haley-Coleman. Global Volunteers is offering programs in Montana, West Virginia, Poland, and Tanzania in July.

Thinking about a weeklong volunteer vacation? Take these steps:

Do your homework. Sites like Go Overseas, Go Abroad and Volunteer Forever post info and reviews as well as tips on family volunteering.

Ask questions. Inquire about subjects such as safety, food, and accommodations. Will you stay in a hotel? With a local family? Are there day trip opportunities to local communities if you're staying in a central location or major city?

Talk with a former volunteer. "Any reputable organization will give you a list of people to speak with," said Alia Pialtos, COO at Go Overseas. "Talking with someone about their experience is different from reading testimonials."

Understand the program fee. Organizations charge a fee that covers everything from lodging to transportation. Find out how your money is spent.

Scrutinize the screening process. Many organizations, for example, require a background check if you're working with kids. If they don't, that's a warning sign.

Ask about the work. Is it necessary? Does it match your talents? If you don't have construction skills you shouldn't be building houses. And make sure you're not taking work from locals.

Appreciate the intangibles. One of the biggest upsides of volunteering is that people talk who would never talk otherwise — which changes how we see each other.