Travel in the 21st century

In light of my recent post about medial tourism, I thought I'd share another growing form of travel.

Volunteer vacationing. Have you heard of it? It's basically exactly what it sounds like: combining volunteerism with travel abroad.

After international catastrophes like the earthquake in Haiti, many are gaining interest in this new form of travel. But you don't need to travel to a disaster-ridden country in order to volunteer. People in cities, town and tiny villages just about everywhere need help, from helping build a hospital in a remote community to helping a local farm with its daily chores.

Last summer, I traveled to Ghana with Appalachian through a service-learning program. Service-learning, in my opinion, is essentially the university version of volunteer vacationing. My group and I spent three weeks helping to build a school in a remote village and taught AIDS education. So not only did we get to experiencing the culture and see the sights:

West Africa's highest waterfall

...But we also got to help out an impoverished school in a great community:

Mixing cement for cement block molds for school library construction

My volunteer travel in Ghana was the perfect marriage of helping others while getting to take time away in a new place with a very different way of life.

I would encourage travelers to look into volunteer vacationing not because of what it can do for you, but for what you can do for someone else--for a child, a family or a community.

Volunteer vacationing exemplifies what traveling in the 21st century means. It encourages enthusiasts to truly step outside of their comfort zone and bring more to the travel experience than all-you-can-eat buffets and over-priced tourist traps.