The Ripple Effect: Ken Budd – A Life That Matters, Part Two
Welcome to part two of our interview with Ken Budd, a prolific volunteer traveler and writer committed to changing lives, including his own.
Welcome to part two of our interview with Ken Budd, a prolific volunteer traveler and writer committed to changing lives, including his own.
Welcome back to our new interview series, The Ripple Effect. The Ripple Effect explores the emotional impact of volunteer travel and its lasting effect on people’s lives. Today we’re speaking with Ken Budd, a prolific volunteer traveler and writer committed to changing lives. His memoir, The Voluntourist, is “part love story, part travel tale; a book about losing your father and finding your destiny.” After his first volunteering trip to New Orleans, Ken volunteered in four countries in nine months for his memoir. Ken has written for The Washington Post, Smithsonian, Stuff, McSweeney’s, Might, Worldview, and many more publications. Here is part one of our interview. (Please visit us tomorrow for part two.)
Of all the many suffering people in the world, there are none more helpless than the children. Children often suffer the brunt of hardship. They can’t protect themselves. They can’t strike out on their own. They are dependent on the care of their parents and guardians—people who love them and look out for them—but these guardians are in peril too. So many people are dying preventable deaths around the world—in wars, from drought or famine, and from disease. They are dying young, when they still have young families to support. They are leaving homeless, helpless kids to fend for themselves in an impossibly difficult world. Some of these kids will die. Some of them will join gangs of other homeless, parentless children. Some will suffer abuse and torment at the hands of adults. And some, the lucky few, will find their way to a well-run orphanage with the best interests of the children at heart.
Just a few short years ago, volunteering with your family may have sounded like a strange, foreign concept. There have always been outgoing families, ready for adventure. But in the mainstream culture, volunteer vacations weren’t something people did very often. Volunteering has traditionally been under the purview of the young and unattached. The stereotype was of the hippie explorer, wide-eyed and idealistic, with his backpack and bare feet. It was the PeaceCorps—more of a commitment than a discreet project—a two-year foray into a career of service, not a two week vacation with family. But today, that has all changed, and in a big way. Mainstream media outlets are touting the benefits of family volunteering, and families are listening. It’s a great time to have kids. Organizations are catering to young families too—families with five and six-year-olds, kids whose lives can be forever altered by experiencing new cultures in new places.
Through volunteering, far away places become real to us. Every day it seems like we’re hearing about another international conflict—another community struck by hardship. Some of the hardship is civil, between governments and citizens. Sometimes it’s environmental, the result of a drought or natural disaster. Whatever the calamity, it’s easy to feel disconnected, like these stories are happening in another world. We go about our lives focused on what we do—our work and our families—immersed in our own everyday dramas. But for those of us who have volunteered, international conflict affects us viscerally, in real and immediate ways. We know that each of these places is as real as our hometowns and our back yards. We don’t just know it intellectually, we know it in our bones. UBELONG is a volunteer organization focused on promoting this kind of understanding. Their mission is to create “a world where people are united behind their shared humanity and committed to working together for positive change.”