The Square Life

Just like going green is growing more popular, so is giving back through volunteer trips. This means of travel is particularly popular among young people. Hotels are even providing opportunities to serve as part of the “voluntourism” movement. The trips for the younger crowd, however, are typically of the non-profit organization variety. Several of those non-profits are rooted in, or at least recruit volunteers from, Utah Valley. These trips give opportunities for a human experience through building unique relationships and gaining new perspective—even with a language barrier.

“A lot of kids in this area have a desire to serve and a desire to go abroad,” says Alex Osborne, a BYU student who directs the Kaiizen Foundation’s Baja trips with his wife, Morgan.

While some of the trips last months, others are only a few days. And many of them are suited to the college-student budget and schedule.

The Kaiizen Foundation takes extended-weekend trips to an orphanage in Baja, Mexico. The goals for each trip vary, but their top priority is always to build relationships with the kids, then to fill physical needs through construction-type projects. In December, for their 27th trip, they hosted a Christmas extravaganza and continued work on a computer lab for the orphanage the group helps. The trips average $200 per person: two days of road-trip bonding and two days in full action, camping on the beach. Kaiizen has five Baja trips planned for 2009. “You can see on their faces that they really are excited when we come,” Osborne says. “They are excited to have people associate with them, play with them, spend time with them—people who really do care.”

Heidi Buehner joined Mission Madagascar when a friend in her class invited her to join the project. She didn’t think the trip to the island on the southeast corner of Africa would work out, but has since gone on all three of the organization’s annual trips. The $4,000 six-week summer excursions have different “missions” each year. They’ve constructed an orphanage and a school, worked with the kids, helped to match people up with eyeglasses, taught business principles to new entrepreneurs, and shown thousands of school children how to brush their teeth. Buehner says she’s learned several life lessons through the trips. “I’ve learned that if you’re actually willing to act, and go down and help, you can change a lot of lives,” she says. “You can’t solve an entire nation’s problems single-handedly, but you can make a big difference to some people.” Rather than theorizing about what can be done, she says, being there, one can see specific needs—and fulfill them.

Buehner says the challenge comes when trying to connect with the people. In order to bypass cultural walls and preferential treatment, she has made a special effort to learn Malagasi, the native tongue. “That’s kind of why I did it, because I hate having that gap there, feeling like it’s because I have more money and I grew up in America,” she says.

While the experiences can be exotic and unique, Osborne says Kaiizen discourages participants from going down for the Facebook pictures. “That’s a big part of it, [their] motivation,” he says. “It’s perfectly fine to take pictures, but jump right in and find yourself a buddy by the end of the trip.”