In his essay "Philosophy of Service," the co-founder and president of Global Volunteers, Burnham J. Philbrook, tells a story that illustrates Global Volunteers' core beliefs that a community knows what it needs and that volunteers can be an instrumental part of a community's path toward self-determination.

In the 1970s, Philbrook went to India on a short-term volunteer project. He and his group were told that the village needed a latrine (their first), but they were given bamboo sticks, not shovels, to do the job. When he asked the project director why someone hadn't contacted them beforehand to bring shovels, the director explained that if they had brought shovels, the latrine would have been both the first and the last latrine to be built in that area. They'd have finished the project with shovels and then, when another community wanted to learn to make a latrine, they wouldn't have had the necessary resource to continue building. Out of this experience Philbrook concluded that "people must be permitted to do what they have to do with what they have."

GV volunteers, therefore, only do what a community asks them to do. Global Volunteers believes that the host communities, and only the host communities, know what they need, and they are the only ones who can come up with sustainable solutions. Volunteers, though perhaps a catalyst for change, are in a host community to serve, not to problem solve.

Global Volunteers, a nonsectarian, apolitical organization, is one of the first of its kind. Since 1984, GV has been stewarding volunteers to mostly rural communities in order to help in the goal of self-determination, and they coined the term "volunteer vacation" in order to illustrate that while they're about travel, they're also about something separate from tourism, and separate from immersion programs. They emphasize equal parts service and learning, and they consider the act of forming intercultural relationships as a way to "wage peace"

They send 8-20 volunteers at a time for two to three weeks, four to eighteen times a year. GV volunteers have spanned the globe - Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, and the Pacific.

In the past these tasks have ranged from teaching conversational English to caring for at-risk children and teens, painting and building repair, providing health care services (newborn exams, diabetes screenings, tooth extractions, eyesight exams, public-health education), working with infants and toddlers, working with young children, teens and adults, or elders, teaching sound business practices, training home gardeners, identifying crop diseases, and constructing water purification systems.

There is a fee for each of their service programs (they vary according to the location), and there are discounts if you register online or with a group. Fees, 85% of which goes to program costs and 15% of which goes to administrative costs, are tax-deductible in the U.S., and they cover meals, accommodations, materials for the project, and medical emergency evacuation insurance. The fee does not cover airfare or visa fees. These costs may also be tax-deductible, but check with your tax advisor to be sure.

If you would like to learn more about Global Volunteers or to see their country-specific projects, go to their Web site at www.globalvolunteers.org.