Twinrix is a combined hepatitis A and hepatitis B vaccine to be used in adults, adolescents, and children between the ages of 1 and 18 years. Since many of our volunteer get these shots, this combined vaccination might make things easier and cheaper.

Rachel, a junior in high school from Arlington, Virginia, volunteered in Ghana in the summer of 2008:

Volunteering in Kpando, Ghana this summer is one of the best experiences I’ve ever had. My two friends and I had signed up to volunteer at an orphanage, but a few days into our stay the school down the road asked if we could help teach. We all love working with children, but were nonetheless nervous to be teaching, as we had never had any formal training.

Teaching at the school, however, ended up making our trip even more meaningful. While most of the children at the orphanage were at school, we were able to be useful in a school as well. I had the youngest class, the preschoolers, and they were absolutely adorable! I was introduced to the class as “Sister Rachel,” although I quickly became “Sista Rachie” to the kids. I taught them songs like “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” and we played “London Bridge is Falling Down.” The kids even taught me some Ewe, the local language spoken in Kpando.

After school, we would have lunch and then head over to the orphanage. There, we played many games with the youngest children, their favorite being the one where each of my friends picked one of them up and we chased each other in circles. We also helped tutor the older children, played many games of soccer, and read them stories.

When I returned home from my trip, I decided to start a school supplies drive for the school children. While teaching, the classrooms were basically barren except for desks and a blackboard. The preschoolers didn’t have any crayons (and what would preschool be without crayons?), and older children also lacked necessary supplies such as spiral notebooks, pencils, pens, erasers, etc.

Company provides students volunteer opportunity over winter break

By Jordain Carney

The Arkansas Traveler

December 8, 2008

Cosmic Volunteers, a non-profit American-based company started by Scott Burke in 2000 in Philadelphia, offers students the opportunity to spend two weeks of their winter break participating in an international volunteering program.

The trip for this year begins Dec. 28 and ends Jan. 10, 2009. The company also sends people to volunteer and intern at schools, newspapers, hospitals and other facilities in various countries.

It started in Nepal, where Burke was teaching at the time, but in the past eight years students have spent two weeks in countries such as Ecuador, Kenya, India and Vietnam, and according to a news release by Cosmic Volunteers, the trip allows volunteers to participate in humanitarian and environmental projects.

This year, students will be traveling to the Volta Region in the eastern sections of Ghana, and “the projects involve spending time with children at orphanages playing games, arts and crafts and sports, as well as planting trees, cleaning-up school grounds and light construction work of schools and medical clinics,” according to the news release.

The cost of the program is $1,895, which includes food, accommodations, airport transport, local transportation, orientation, the volunteer project, cultural excursions, visa support and other things. It does not include airfare, visa fee, vaccinations, extra sightseeing or amenities such as the Internet or telephone calls. But volunteers can have the program paid for if they can recruit 10 volunteers to the program, and they can also have their international airfare covered if they can recruit 15 other members to join the program.

Volunteers for the program come from the United States, Canada and Europe, and, according to the news release, special skills or experience are not needed to travel with the company.

“Just an open mind and desire to reach out to those in need in non-Western countries,” according to the news release.

UA students can visit the Web site for the Center for Leadership and Community Engagement for information on various volunteering opportunities. While places like the Butterfield Trail Village, The Child’s Christmas Train and The Single Parent Scholarship Fund of Washington County needed volunteers for the first week of December, there are still plenty of volunteering opportunities available to students who are interested in volunteering over the upcoming break.

The Fayetteville Senior Activity Center is making care packages for the holiday season, and volunteers also are needed to deliver the items. The Arkansas Support Network is collecting items for Christmas baskets through Dec. 14. Life Source International needs 10 to 20 volunteers on Dec. 20, Dec. 22 and Dec. 23. For more information on these volunteer opportunities and to find ongoing activities, visit the CLCE.

Whether UA students will actually volunteer while not in school seems to be a mixed opinion.

“I plan to ring Salvation Army bells whenever I get the chance,” UA student Mary Smith said.

Not all students are as eager; both UA students Sarah Dollard and Brittany Rodgers said they did not plan to volunteer over the winter break.

However, plenty of opportunities are available throughout the area.

ESPN provides an interesting look at Ghana through the lens of a soccer academy. The piece airs today at 3 p.m. ET on ESPN.

Thank you again to Stephanie and Justin from the Economics Society at Columbia University, for inviting me to speak to students recently about volunteering abroad. It was a pleasure meeting everyone!!

Justin volunteered with us in Ghana in the summer of 2007. He and a group of fellow volunteers started a sustainable transportation business to benefit the children at the orphanage where they volunteered. Justin and his group purchased a minivan (“tro-tro”) in April 2008.

The orphanage director and staff in Ghana operate the tro-tro daily as a commercial public bus, the receipts of which are providing better living standards, health care and education for 50+ orphans. If you wish to volunteer with this wonderful project, please let us know.

(The following article originally appeared October 17, 2008 in the Philadelphia Business Journal)

Cosmic Volunteers flattens the road abroad

Good deeds overseas made easier

by Adam Stone

Lots of people scale Nepalese heights in search of spiritual enlightenment.

Scott Burke came back with a professional revelation.

If he could find satisfaction volunteering in far-flung locales, maybe others would too, and maybe he could help them to do it. Thus was born Cosmic Volunteers, a Philadelphia outfit that pairs volunteers with do-good opportunities overseas.

“We had a woman go to Ghana this summer and set up medical screenings for orphanage kids,” Burke said. “We have teachers who go into schools for months at a time. We have a kid from Oregon helping people in Africa right now to arrange new basketball leagues and coaching clinics.”

Burke earned a bachelor’s degree in literature from Franklin & Marshall College before going off to work for nearly a decade in the information-technology field. By the end of that time he was done with sitting in cubicles.

“I wanted a challenge, I wanted to see what else might be out there,” he recalled. “I wanted to do something different, and at the same time I wanted to help some people.”

This led to a three-month stint in 2000 teaching in Nepal. The project was organized by a group Burke found online and while his trip went smoothly, he saw other volunteers ride a bumpy road in their efforts to help those in need.

“I saw a lot of organizations doing a really bad job. They weren’t picking people up at the airport, there were no orientations, no support. Volunteers were getting sick and the coordinators were nowhere to be found,” Burke said.

Cosmic Volunteers patrons say Burke knows how to do it right. “They are really helpful in getting things set up on the other end, helping you to get your shots, your visa,” said Lehigh University student Rick Arlow, who did a seven-week stretch in Ghana. “They sent a really good pre-trip guide about how to act, certain things about the culture.”

Word has spread and this year Burke will send about 250 volunteers abroad. A month in India costs $989, while Ghana costs $825 for a month. The business gets 30 percent. The rest of the money covers room, board and logistical support. Customers pay their own airfare.

The demand is great — Burke said 50,000 to 60,000 Americans volunteer overseas each year — so is the need.

“I have visited so many places over the years, orphanages, hospitals, schools,” he said, “and they are literally begging me for volunteers.”

Cosmic Volunteers has met those pleas in China, Ecuador, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Nepal, the Philippines, South Africa, Thailand and Vietnam. Burke has visited most of those countries as he has set up programs.
Success in this business means working as close to ground level as possible. It doesn’t work, Burke said, unless he knows his local partners firsthand.

“I will always make a visit before I send any volunteers to them, to check out their references, check out their operation to make sure they are on the up and up,” he said.

Cultural differences can stymie those efforts.

“In a lot of places people would rather tell you a lie than have you not feel bad, and I have to weed through what they are saying and what they actually mean, working through language barriers and accents.”

Surprisingly, perhaps, gender is a key factor in predicting success in a given location.

“Typically, the women have been much better at this than the guys. All over the world I find more dishonesty in men, whereas the women seem much less ready to let me down,” Burke said.

It’s more than just a matter of being let down. When the system fails, there can be serious consequences. “I can be dealing with a situation where folks will miss an airport pickup and now I have a 16-year-old girl from Wisconsin stranded in an airport in the middle of the night in Ghana,” Burke said. “That’s pretty much as bad as it gets.”

Global logistics notwithstanding, Cosmic Volunteers is thriving and its owner is looking toward further growth. In particular, he would like to formalize his operation.

As things stand, clients can name their destination and their dates and Burke will make it happen. He’s like to start coordinating more formal trips with set dates and programs, ensuring that people are kept busy and are able to focus on the projects at hand.

“It’s less work for us, it’s more money, and I think the volunteer gets more out of something that is a little more focused and structured,” Burke said. 

Up Close

Name: Scott Burke

Age: 39

Company: Cosmic Volunteers, 3502 Scotts Lane, Philadelphia, Pa. 19129

Best business decision: To pursue geographical expansion

Key challenge overcome: Finding credible business partners overseas

Advice to other young entrepreneurs: Talk to a lawyer and a financial person, get professional advice

Pilot and columnist Patrick Smith has a thought-provoking piece on his recent trip to Senegal in west Africa.

He encounters issues that many our volunteers often do. What happens when you’re faced with extreme poverty? Do you despair? Try to help? Become cynical about humanity? Ignore it and go home and forget about ever traveling again?

For most people, there are no easy and clear-cut answers to these questions, but it is interesting to see Patrick exploring his unique point of view. Unlike some of his readers’ reactions, I strongly believe that the only wrong answer is to not travel at all.

He writes:

If I have grown more cynical in recent years, it is travel, I think, that has pushed me in this direction. Exploring other parts of the world is beneficial in all the ways it is typically given credit for, and I remain appalled by the average American’s geographical know-nothingness and lack of interest in visiting foreign countries.

I am of the mind that every American student, in exchange for financial aid, ought to be conscripted into a semester (or more) of overseas service. Certain international travel, like the purchase of a hybrid car, should be tax-deductible. Perhaps then we wouldn’t have such a vulgar sense of entitlement and a xenophobic worldview…

But traveling can also burn you out, suck away your faith in humanity. You will see, right there in front of you, how the world is falling to pieces; the planet has been ravaged, life is cheap, and there is little that you, as the Western observer, with or without your good conscience, are going to do about it.

Thank you again to all of the students at University of California, Santa Barbara who stopped by our table today at their campus’ International Study and Career Expo, put on by UCSB’s Education Abroad Program office. The weather was fantastic, making it that much more difficult to return to Philadelphia later this week! A special thanks to Tracee for fitting us in despite our late registration for the expo.

Scott

Passport Guy!

Fair

Fair

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Sarah Platt from Florida volunteered with us this summer at an orphanage in Ghana. She took the time to send us her feedback recently:

Did we do enough to prepare you for your experience?
Yes, you definitely had everything covered! I had everything I needed, and if anything I was a bit too prepared. It was wonderful.

How was your host family / accommodations?
I really liked the room I had at my host family’s house. We were free to come and go as we pleased which was great. I felt like I slightly inconvienced my host family a little bit, just because they would lock the door of the house and I wouldn’t want to bother them to get in. But when they went to sleep, they would lock the door, and they went to sleep quite early. But besides that, we always had dinner and it was always really great. One other though, we usually had to ask for lunch. I suppose that’s because we weren’t always at home for lunch time. But when we were home for lunch time, they didn’t make us anything without asking, and often times I felt awkward asking.

How was your volunteer work?
I really enjoyed it! It was so great. The kids were so wonderful. Going to the school was also amazing, frustrating, but rewarding. It was everything it should of been!

How was your local Coordinator?
He was there when we needed him. He was extremely busy…but if we really needed him, he was there for us.

Did you have any illnesses or injuries?
I got a sore throat, but I’m sure that wasn’t Ghana related. I probably caught it from a relative right before I left. There were some days that I just felt really weak. I think it was a combination of the heat and the types of food we were eating. My stomach wasn’t very used to that, so that also caused some suffering.

What was the best part of the experience?
Developing bonds with the kids and having a feeling of purpose was the best part. I got so connected to the kids. They were the sweetest and I actually cried when I had to leave. Also, meeting other individuals (volunteers) that shared the same outlook on life was amazing. Learning about the culture, too, really impacted me. It’s so amazing how they live and it was actually hard to adjust back to American culture.

What was the worst part of the experience?
I was homesick at the very beginning. The culture shock was really something true. It’s very intense and overwhelming. At the beginning of my trip, before I got to Kpando, I just felt like I was all alone in this country far away from anything I was even famillar with. That was quite scary. But once I settled in, and got into a scheldule, I absolutely loved it there!

Any other comments?
This trip changed my life. I realized that there’s a big world out there and I want to get to see more of it. I really appreciate things a lot more now. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Below is some feedback we just received from a parent of one of our 16 year old volunteers who just returned from a two-week program volunteering at an orphanage in Quito, Ecuador:

I was about to write you to thank you. [My daughter] Dalia was absolutely bubbling when she got back. Her only regret was that she couldn’t have spent more time there (which is too bad because I would gladly have extended her stay).

She loved the country and the people, saw a lot of sites, managed to make friends and connections there (I think in the end she found a German girl volunteer from another organization who lived nearby and the two of them hung out a lot) and above all she really loved working with the kids at the orphanage and said they were very sweet and loving.

I think it was a great experience for her in terms of helping her develop independence and self-confidence and turning her on to other cultures and travel. Any trepidation that she or I had about doing it at such a young age was completely gone by the time she got into the trip, and even though the other volunteers were older they were friendly to her and helped her feel at home.

So it was a great experience all around and she may want to do it again next summer, maybe to the same place or maybe another country.

I wanted to thank you for all your help, especially for being flexible and helping me get the language classes set up and get money to her on short notice.

Anyway thanks again for everything.

Regards,
Lawrence