By Deborah J Cook
March 09, 2010, 9:00AM
Courtesy of the Smit family. Members of the Smit family, of Martin, Mich., build a home for a family in the Dominican Republic.
Little did Deb Smit know that serving as a chaperone on a high-school mission trip would lead to the family Christmas of a lifetime. Wife and mother of eight, Smit says of her trips to the Dominican Republic, “You just can’t come back away from there and not change.”
After all but her oldest traveled to the D.R. at least once with groups from Tri-unity Christian School in Wyoming, Smit saw the transformations in attitude and direction that voluntourism brought about in her children.
After taking three trips herself, from her home on a Martin dairy farm to the D.R., she began to think it would be an amazing experience for the entire family to go. That’s just what they did this past Christmas break.
“We wanted to build a house for a family, but that was $13,000 more than the trip itself,” says Smit. So they had to raise some money. Instead of giving each other gifts for Christmas and birthdays, family members put the amount they would have spent into a savings account. They held three garage sales and two community dinners.
“We sent out hundreds of letters to people telling them what we were doing and asking if they’d donate,” Smit says. The response of both community and extended family members was overwhelming. The final result: eight children, three spouses, two girlfriends and five grandchildren spent a week in January building a house.
Daughters and daughters-in-law took turns watching the grandchildren in the base camp. Their leisure activity was a trip to the local market. “I wouldn’t say it was a vacation,” says Smit, “You’re doing brickwork, making cement, shoveling everything from rocks to clay. … You have to be careful of the water, it’s different food … but I don’t think any one of us would say it wasn’t worth it.”
Unto inc., an organization that planned TCS mission trips, organized the family’s tickets, paperwork and immunizations, and set up a schedule of work. The house was part of an ongoing effort of Christian church and school groups to provide the poverty-stricken people of Los Alcarrizos everything from a school and playground to a water filtration process that provides both clean water and community income.
Courtesy of Geoff HickoxGeoff Hickox took an alternative spring break to work with inner-city children in Philadelphia while a student at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Mich.
In an area where families live on $60 a month or less, voluntourism has changed countless lives.
It also changed the life of Geoff Hickox, current development and assessment chair for alternative breaks at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids. He took his first alternative break trip thinking it would look good on his resume. The university offers a variety of weekend and week-long trips throughout the year. Disaster relief, working in domestic violence shelters, preparing/repairing public parks/trails and refugee assistance are just some of the volunteer opportunities offered.
Hickox’s first trip to inner-city Philadelphia caused him to switch his major from pre-med to public and nonprofit administration. He felt the change would allow him to make more of a difference in the world. “AB is a profound experience,” says Hickox. “Your eyes are really open to a world of social and environmental issues you never knew existed.”
A trip set up by Medical Assistance Programs International working in a hospital in the Ivory Coast during his medical internship was Dr. David Van Winkle’s first experience volunteering abroad. When Hurricane Mitch devastated Honduras in 1998, Van Winkle began volunteering there through MAP.
Eventually, he returned with his wife and again with his children. He took his family to a resort for a fun weekend during his last trip, but Van Winkle says, “What they really enjoyed was getting to know people from a different culture.” The trip influenced his eldest, a student at Western Michigan Christian, to volunteer with missionaries in the African country of Togo.
Voluntourism takes openness to other cultures and willingness to experience less than optimal comfort when traveling, says Van Winkle. Planning a family trip is more difficult, but he encourages people to try it.
“Do some good, learn a little bit more about yourself/about another culture in a way no tour can do for you,” he says. “Help reframe your life here in the United States through the eyes of somebody in another country. It’s a great, refreshing way to think about things.”
Trips can be set up through any number of groups. The Red Cross, volunteeradventures.com and crossculturalsolutions.org are a few.
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