Tackling the Globe…

While I’m off frolicking with polar bears in the Arctic Circle, Travelocity writer/editor Alison Presley offered to fill my shoes and share her recent volunteer vacation to Peru. Visit her blog and my favorite source for travel information, The Window Seat, where along with the rest of the Travelocity team, she shares comprehensive travel tips and anecdotes.

The economy is in the toilet, your paycheck is shrinking, and yet you still want to travel the world. What’s a vagabond to do? What if I told you Travelocity was giving away free, life-changing volunteer vacations? You’d get all Balki Bartokamus on me, wouldn’t you? You’d say, “Get out of the city!” Well, it’s true.

Every quarter Travelocity’s Change Ambassadors program gives away two $5,000 grants for volunteer vacations—one to an employee and one to a deserving traveler. You can enter as an individual or a team so I tossed my hat into the ring for an employee grant last year and won with a group of friends.

We chose to take a trip to Cuzco, Peru with voluntourism provider, Globe Aware. Cuzco is perched at 11,000 feet and is the closest major city to Machu Picchu. We lived and worked at an albergue, a kind of dormitory for poor children from the small towns surrounding the city.

The albergue was started as a way to help the kids get a good education. They live there Monday-Friday and then go home to their parents on the weekends. Their parents can’t afford to pay for their room and board so the center survives on the generosity and “sweat equity” of volunteers like my group. (There were 7 of us in all, four of whom went on my grant.)

We were instantly adopted by the kids at the albergue and spent our days building benches next to their basketball court. In the evenings we played with the kids and our last night there, they hosted a massive talent show to say thanks. I wish you could have seen their rendition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller. They did The King of Pop proud.

I’ve always volunteered when I could, picking up a hammer with Habitat here and there, donating a little money, but I had never tried voluntourism before. It’s safe to say before the trip, everyone in my group was a little nervous. I guess we worried we’d be outside of our comfort zones. But those fears faded and before long, we were plotting our next volunteer vacations. It was just so cool to really plug into the destination—to not just see, but also do.

Really, I could try to tell you how much the trip meant to me, but this is one of those times when words fail. So I put together this video. I hope you enjoy it!

Change Ambassadors from Alison Presley on Vimeo.