Latin America is a beautiful region with a lot to offer and has long enticed budget conscious travelers with its lower prices. Stretching from the Caribbean Sea to the coast of Cape Horn, Central and South America offer extreme variety — from forests filled with wildlife, long stretches of Caribbean beaches, red-hot volcanoes, Mayan ruins and stunning waterfalls, the biodiversity of the Amazon Rainforest to the peaks of the Chilean Andes, to the direst desert, to the ice fields of the Southern Patagonia Icecap.
Latin America has vibrant and varied national …

Volunteering abroad is nothing new. For decades, people have gone abroad with the Peace Corps, with relief organizations or even on their own. But the momentum for volunteering abroad has never been stronger than today as more opportunities are available for just about anybody.
Collectively, we have made this huge shift from thinking about ourselves to helping people on other continents. At its core, this is a by-product of an affluent society where our basic needs are met and we are ready to use our excess resources to help others globally. …

Luxury voluntourism is a higher-end travel experience organized by a luxury travel operator or a hotelier that includes some time dedicated to voluntary service in a destination. For most luxury voluntourism, the trip itineraries have a greater tourism focus with a shorter time dedicated to voluntary service.
Luxury voluntourism is on the rise. Conde Nast Traveler magazine and the Ritz Carlton through its “Give Back Getaways” program are key luxury travel influencers that have pushed luxury voluntourism to the forefront giving it coverage and credibility. Conde Nast Traveler has dedicated an …

We were interested to find out how much people were willing to spend for volunteer travel (excluding airfare). We decided to do an informal poll on our website and asked our readers. Here are the results:
29% would  spend less than $250
14% would spend between $250-$500
0% would spend between $500-$1,000
43% would spend between $1,000-$2,000
14% would spend over $2,000

Did any of these results surprise you?
photo by jesssloss

White sandy beaches, crystal clear blue sea, brilliant underwater world…

Spend a week at this tropical paradise and participate in a worthy effort to conserve and monitor threatened species like hawksbill and green turtles.
Redang Island in Malaysia is located in the South China Sea, approximately 45 km North Northeast of Kuala Terengganu and 22.5 km east of Tanjung Merang, the take-off point for the island from the mainland. Redang tantalizes each visitor with it’s amazing array of marine life and placid turquoise waters. As one of Malaysia’s more popular island destinations, …

Your shelf of volunteer travel books is about to expand by one: Frommer’s 500 Places Where You Can Make a Difference. The author, Andrew Mersmann, is the Editor-in-Chief of Passport Magazine. A recognized travel publisher like Frommer’s coming out with its own guide on giving back vacations validates the growing interest in this sector among travelers.  While we have not reviewed the book yet, it seems this book probably offers the most extensive listing of voluntourism opportunities around the world of any books currently in the market.
It is described to …

Volunteer or service travel is thriving, and that is not surprising given the gratification it provides the traveler. The desire to give back however,  is not limited just for those with the greatest means. Farther Foundation is a not-for-profit scholarship organization that provides support for low income high school students to participate in educational travel programs that broaden their horizons and raise their aspirations for success. More and more, the programs their scholarship students choose contain opportunities to provide volunteer service to the communities where they travel. During 2009, the …