VOLUNTEERING:THE OBAMA generation isn't content to lie on the beach on holiday. They want their vacations to be guilt-free as well.
"We stand at a unique moment in the history of our nation," the US president said in a recent speech calling on Americans to spend part of their summers volunteering. Inspired by books such as Sheryl Kayne's Volunteer Vacations Across America, some people want to work on their vacations. "They don't want to be spending gobs of money on luxury and being observers," says Kayne. "They want to set an example for themselves and others."
It’s a trend picked up by the Ritz-Carlton Powerscourt, in Co Wicklow, which is inviting guests to spend some of their stay gardening and painting at the Children’s Sunshine Home.
In the US, volunteers can rescue loggerhead turtles and learn to surf in North Carolina, help reinstate the Mexican grey wolf to its natural habitat while visiting the Grand Canyon (www.gcwolfrecovery.org) and bike from coast to coast to raise money for low-income housing in the Bike Build program (www.bikeandbuild.org).
“To have the president of our country ask us to give back at a grass-roots level is such a perfect match with the actual programs that are going on,” says Kirsten Whatley, who lives in Hawaii and is an expert on opportunities in Obama’s birth state, where volunteering includes surveying reef and other underwater life. “It’s as much about the people as it is the environment,” Whatley says. “You start off as a group of strangers, but by the end of the day there is such a feeling of family and camaraderie.”
Los Angeles Times