Student Volunteer Opportunities

Sunday April 23, 2006

National Volunteer Week is April 23-29, which mean you're probably hearing lots about student volunteer opportunities on your campus -- it's tough to know what to pick when you're ready to donate some time, though, and that nasty rumor that some volunteer organizations exist to seperate you from your cash are true. Some surefire worldwide winners for students combining volunteer work with travel are:

With i-to-i volunteer vacations, you can conserve a lake in Guatemala or build homes for Honduran families; if you want sun splashed sand, spend time on a Costa Rican beach, working with sea turtles. Through volunteering with a student travel outfit like i-to-i,where volunteering goes hand-in-hand with travel, you'll see a piece of the planet and come home with a new perspective on what you can do with your student travel time.
Like to hike and camp in America's National Forests and Parks and open wilderness areas? Feel like giving something back to the wild areas that you enjoy? The American Hiking Society has the volunteer trip for you: rebuild trails and restore wilderness while hanging with other volunteers in some beautfiul spaces needing your help.
Try Habitat for Humanity for any housebuilding volunteer project on the globe. Particularly partial to the Big Easy? Brandon Marsalis, honorary Habitat relief effort co-chair with fellow New Orleans native Harry Connick, Jr., told Habitat for Humanity, “When the world's attention turns way from this disaster, there will be tens of thousands of New Orleaneans without a place to live." Maybe you can help while nourishing yourself on shrimp poboys and fresh oysters.
MTV and United Way also send student volunteers to the Gulf Coast with the Storm Corps program -- a week in Bilxo, Miss, or Foley, Ala, for post-hurricane rebuilding.