Thinking of traveling a little differently this year? Are you looking for a truly unique and meaningful experience? Get inspired to make a difference in your travels!
Street Kids, Burundi
This kicking rap video was a collaboration between three Italian travelers and the street children of Bujumbura, in Burundi. This is their story. So where’s Burundi? Glad you asked! Burundi is located in East Africa, bordered by Rwanda, Tanzania and Congo. It has fantastic beaches, beautiful lakes and ancient forests.

Volunteer Abroad – Zambia
Volunteering in Zambia provides a great opportunity to make life-long …

Family Travel Forum Consulting (FTFc) released their report of teen travel trends based on the submissions of 5,700 teens, ages 13-18, who entered their Teen Travel Writing Scholarship.  The findings provide insight on what we can expect from this generation of younger travelers. Today’s teens are undoubtedly more global-minded and are willing to travel far from home. They are service-oriented and are keen on exploring distant cultures.
– 48% of teen applicants have traveled outside the United States by their 18th birthday
– Africa-Middle East saw the largest increase in teen travel …

American Airlines is offering unbelievable rates, as low as $149 each way, to Belize for travel between January 1- March 31, 2010. In order to take advantage of the low fares, tickets must be purchased on AA.com by December 22, 2009.
For those of you who dream of voluntourism in this tropical paradise, this is a great opportunity!

Belize offers a land rich in natural beauty and steep in the history and culture of its Maya past. Renowned for having the second largest barrier reef in the world, Belize’s pristine waters, exotic …

Yesterday, I was on the VolunTourist, a weekly webcast of Voluntourism.org, to share about our website and traveler’s philanthropy. Among the many things we discussed were our vision for Travelanthropist and how we see voluntourism within the context of traveler’s philanthropy. I thought I would share some of those thoughts here since we have not done so for a while.
Most websites we’ve come across on travel philanthropy and voluntourism are targeted at industry players, very few are meant for travelers. We recognized the need for a website about travel philanthropy …

Volunteer tourism or “voluntourism”, which has been increasingly popular among leisure travelers, is extending its reach into the workplace. Some folks are taking sabbaticals from their jobs to be philanthropic volunteers. Some companies not only permit employees to take sabbaticals, they are putting programs in place to encourage employees to be involved in charity travel.  Both companies and employees see charity travel as a win win situation.
Multinational companies, such as India’s Infosys Technologies and global accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, view charity travel as an opportunity to give employees work experience in …

In this age of rapid, proliferated, and uncensored information, you can pretty much find anything by googling. Before you go and celebrate this amazing information access, consider this — it may be a double-edged sword — you get the quantity but how is the quality? You get tons of information instantly — often more than you can handle, but then the real work begins when you have to sort through them for reliability and revelance. As a traveler, Google will provide you no shortage of volunteer travel organizations and programs …

We’re a huge admirer of charity:water and have been raving about them for their simple yet life-changing mission to bring clean drinking water to people in developing nations and for their marketing and fundraising prowess. We love founder, Scott Harrison’s story even more because the seeds that spawned this whole movement were planted from a volunteer tourism trip.  We’re seeing, in real-time, the far reaching effects of voluntourism. In two years, charity:water has raised over $7 million and funded 1,247 water projects in 14 countries around the world.  You can …