Giving Away Elephants
If you are interested in registering an offshore company, you will most likely turn your gaze to exotic mini-states located somewhere in the ocean. But the main directions for volunteer tourism are Africa and Asia. In these regions, there is always work for volunteers, and the trip itself is an adventure. For example, the hit of the season is washing penguins. This story regularly appears in television news. And all because of oil tankers that crash either off the coast of Argentina or near South Africa. Each time, a couple hundred penguins get covered in oil, and the oily liquid is harmful to these noble birds, as well as to any others. Animal defenders catch the dirty penguins, wash them, nurse them back to health, and release them back into the wild. The sight, it must be said, is mesmerizing, even when watched on TV. What a person feels when washing a penguin is a mystery, but for some reason it seems they must enjoy it. In short, these tours are popular.
You can go to South Africa to wash penguins. The organization responsible for birds on the coast cooperates with foreign volunteers. For a six-week stay at the camp, you will have to pay just over $100 and spend money on a ticket and visa. However, you will have to prepare for the trip yourself - book tickets, arrange with the host. Moreover, you cannot shirk work - if you sign a contract directly, you must work to the maximum, put up with any penguin whims. But after a month and a half of such close contact, you will surely understand their tender soul.
For those who are not charmed by penguins, or find them too small, there are options with larger animals. With elephants, for example. Such a volunteer tour, booked not through some African reserve but through a tour operator, will cost many times more. For instance, a British company that organizes such trips offers a 13-day tour to Kenya for £1,750 ($3,300). But then all travel preparation issues are handled by the company, and the tour is, so to speak, all-inclusive. And if the volunteer gets tired and starts slacking off, they will be treated with understanding. In Kenya, tourists tag animals, that is, they paint their ears under the supervision of local ecologists. Such measures help monitor the population size - due to ivory poachers, these animals are on the brink of extinction, so every individual counts. In addition, volunteers help the local population. For example, English speakers can teach English to local children, while those with limited English will have to do physical labor - build houses or plant trees.
Helping people is a separate category and, of course, a separate pleasure. No matter how much you wash a penguin, it won't say thank you, and an elephant is unlikely to understand that tagging is for its own good. People, however, will appreciate the tourist's contribution. As an option, you can go to Vietnam to care for sick children, or to Nepal to build huts for the local population. And you will have to build not with machinery, but exclusively with local tools. For a full two-week immersion, tourists pay about three thousand dollars.
Western tour operators have even mastered hot tours in the wake of natural disasters. They send groups of volunteer tourists to tsunami-stricken Sri Lanka and Indonesia. You can find yourself right in the thick of things. Of course, it is hardly possible to save the world in a couple of weeks - all guides warn overly romantic travelers about this. However, they still feel that their efforts make the world a better place. "I managed to buy several musical instruments for a school that was damaged by the tsunami," shares Irishwoman Lorna. "In terms of money, it's a trifle for me, but the faces of the locals showed that I was able to give them something incredibly valuable." Currently, tour operators are exploring another troubled destination - Albania. True, there is no clear program for staying there yet.
Regardless of the chosen destination, volunteers need physical fitness and endurance. Judge for yourself: you will have to work on average five to six hours a day, and after the workday, explore the cultural program (in Africa, for example, they give Swahili lessons), communicate with locals, and admire the scenery. You will also have to forget about comfort: the maximum you can count on is a tent. In short, this cannot be called a vacation in the usual sense of the word. However, you can get plenty of exotic experiences and gain a sense of satisfaction from what you have done.
Free of Charge, That Is, for Nothing
There is no exact definition of the concept of "volunteer work". It is generally accepted that this is unpaid activity aimed at protecting the environment and benefiting people who are not close relatives of the volunteer. At the same time, in some projects, volunteers are paid small rewards, but this is also called volunteering. But when a young person works for free, for example, as an assistant to a lawyer to gain experience, that is a different area. In the UK, a study was even conducted to try to understand who volunteers are and why they work for free.
Contrary to expectations, researchers found that volunteers are not some ideal, angelic people without their own claims. Their motivation is usually mixed—there are both altruistic impulses and self-interested motives. That is, they partly solve their personal problems in this way: for example, the problem of loneliness or lack of vivid impressions, as well as the need for self-affirmation. Students want to see new places, practice foreign languages, make friends and useful acquaintances. For people experiencing a midlife crisis, volunteer work is a new purpose in life and a different role in society. The study also notes such motivation as self-aggrandizement, but that is not as bad as the fact that sometimes people try to use others for selfish purposes or simply gain access to foundation funds. The last category, clearly, should be exposed in time.
Researchers identified several typical social groups. The first is the "young old people": the average retirement age is decreasing, people are still full of energy and want to be needed. The next are young people without work, or people with disabilities. They strive to improve their track record, prove their worth. Students also become volunteers. Also former prisoners, people after long illness, the unemployed—in short, those who for one reason or another have fallen "out of the loop" and need rehabilitation. Many representatives from the private sector who want to better study some areas of public activity or do something useful for society. In a word, among volunteers there are the most diverse people with the most diverse motivations. However, what difference does it make what drives them if the result is something good. British researchers believe that this movement should be supported—in this way "extra people" and "lost generations" will not form in society. "Joint work is for my benefit, it ennobles," — even the cat Matroskin said that.
Nanny for the Amur tiger
Such surveys, of course, have not been conducted here, and the volunteer movement is not developed today. Although, it would seem, the countries of the former Union with their natural riches and nature reserves are a vast untapped field. Large territories, plenty of work. Yet here volunteer labor is in little demand.
Dmitry Dolgov, manager of a reputable company, was once very determined to benefit humanity: "I called environmental organizations and asked to be sent somewhere. There were few real proposals: for example, it seemed possible to go to Altai and help take care of a tiger named Lyuty. As a result, I abandoned the idea: everything was somehow complicated, it didn't work out with the timing, and in the end I, as they say, burnt out." It turned out such helpers are needed in few places.
"We spent considerable effort and time persuading directors of some nature reserves to accept volunteers, but most often they refuse," says Katya Pal, director of development for WWF Russia (World Wildlife Fund). "The explanations are: firstly, unlike a professional, a volunteer needs to be trained. Secondly, he may get bored, and there are no mechanisms to force him to finish the work—he is a volunteer." That is, the reserve director needs to think about how to arrange accommodation and food for the volunteer, then teach him, roughly speaking, to dig a trench, and then after a few hours of digging, the volunteer will get tired and quit. In general, the result may not be worth the effort. Clearly, few want to get involved. "In Western countries, labor is expensive. And there, free hands that don't require payment are often needed," explains Katya Pal. "Here it's the opposite: there are people to work, and they are qualified specialists. But there is a lack of money for equipment, payment for professional services..."
Of course, simple work is often needed—picking up trash or something like that. In such cases, events are held among the local population: it is more convenient, and at the same time has an educational character—when people have cleaned a nearby beach, they themselves will not litter and will not allow others to do so. But the events can be quite exotic: for example, a group of children in Yakutia spent a week cleaning the Berelekh mammoth cemetery. The young volunteers collected mammoth bones that had been washed ashore by the river current, tidied up the area. And on the Barents Sea, WWF conducts events among the local population on conditional collection of spilled oil. That is, if an accident really happens, people will know what to do. Clearly, this is much more effective than urgently gathering volunteers from different parts of the country.
And yet, the Russian volunteer movement has real prospects. For example, for several years in a row, foreign volunteers have been working in the Zabaikalsky National Park in the Republic of Buryatia: employees of DaimlerChrysler and Lufthansa have already repaired the park cordon on the Bolshoi Chivyrkui River, built a bridge at the Shumak springs. It is clear why foreigners set the tone: abroad, doing socially useful work is something like a hobby. Here, the class of people who are satiated with traditional entertainment and therefore seek alternative forms of recreation by helping others is only emerging. "Lately, potential volunteers have started calling us often and asking what can be done," says Katya Pal. "And we honestly tell them: it's better to help with money." Although, of course, many prefer to do something themselves, see the result of their labor, rather than just fork over money. Because often volunteer work is more important for the volunteers themselves than for those they help.