Globe Aware
Some of the objectives of Globe Aware volunteer vacations include:
-To promote contact between people of different cultural and social backgrounds, breaking down linguistic and cultural barriers and creating and understanding an appreciation of others.
-To provide worldly education through experience. To enable volunteers to learn the positive effects of concrete action and to recognize the interrelationship between theory and practice.
-To provide an inter-cultural learning experience and the opportunity to explore a new country and a new culture in a deeper and more respectful way than as tourists.
-To integrate participants into the local community so as to learn from their hosts about the issues which concern them.
-To help develop small scale infrastructure or environmental improvement, and or to preserve cultural heritage and traditions.
Every activity in which we engage is intended to accomplish one of two things: promote cultural awareness and/or promote sustainability. For us the concept of cultural awareness means to recognize and appreciate the real beauties and real challenges of a culture, but not to change it. The concept of sustainability is to help others stand on their own to feet; to teach skills rather than reliance.
Chosen projects meet several key criteria: safe, culturally interesting, genuinely beneficial to a needy community, and involve significant interaction with the host community. Globe Aware reviews volunteer feedback on a weekly basis to incorporate changes, and continually meets with the communities to monitor and review projects. Simultaneously Globe Aware organizes several optional cultural excursions throughout every program, designed to highlight local culture in a way the typical tourist can rarely experience. The organization has no political or religious affiliation.
Volunteers help to empower the host communities in creating renewable, sustainable programs. While Globe Aware's financial assistance benefits the community economically, it is actually the involvement and collaboration between the volunteers and community that is the greatest mutual benefit. Globe Aware is not a foundation that focuses on giving out charity, but rather an organization which focuses on creating self reliance.
