The Finest Form of Volunteer Vacation Requires a Minimum of Several Months

I receive a number of inquiries from teachers and other professionals about how they can devote their vacations to the voluntary use of their skills overseas. Opportunities of that sort do exist, but most of them require devoting a longer amount of time to the effort than a short summer vacation.

WorldTeach ( www.worldteach.org ) is the definitive source of teaching opportunities abroad. By far the greater number of its opportunities are for year-long stints of teaching in such countries as China, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Rwanda, Thailand, and Tanzania. A smaller number of openings are for semester-long periods in Panama and Namibia. And a very small number of summer programs are available in Poland, South Africa, and Ecuador.

A similar, and even more stringent, pattern is offered to highly-skilled individuals who offer their talents to the United Nations Volunteers program described at www.unv.org . They, to begin with, must be 25 years of age, highly-skilled in a much-needed profession, and willing to undertake a six-month-to-one-year renewable contract in one of the hundred or so countries in which the program operates. Persons able to qualify submit an e-mailed form to the program's headquarters in Bonn, Germany; and if accepted, receive transportation and a living allowance for the period of their service.

In a subsequent blog post, I'll discuss the few opportunities for a volunteer vacation by unskilled individuals.