Image source: Samaritanmag.com
The more I learn about voluntouring and the people who do it, the more I seem to stumble on stories of lives diverted in dramatically new directions, and always for the better. Take, for example, the story of Tammy Babcock, a security supervisor at Queen’s University in Kingston Ontario. Babcock was just like us, our friends, or our neighbors—a professional young woman leading a quiet, comfortable life. And like many of the stories I’ve read lately, a single event turned all that around.
In 2004, Tammy was planning a vacation. She loves to travel and was having a tough time deciding where to go when the tsunami hit Thailand. That catastrophe inspired her to visit Thailand, to offer whatever help she could to the victims, and she never looked back. She spent six months of the next year-and-a-half in the country, helping to rebuild homes, and the experience changed her. She couldn’t simply return to her quiet life. She needed to find a new place to make a difference.
Image source: Theglobeandmail.com
Tammy chose Haiti. What began as a voluntour became an organization: Help Tammy Help Haiti. The organization, founded in 2009, is based in Cité Soleil, a deeply impoverished and densely populated 5-square kilometer area, home to an estimated 500,000 people. The organization is constantly expanding as Babcock and her volunteers raise money for a variety of projects. So far they have built a large water tower, arranged for the delivery of potable water from other provinces, opened a small clinic and sent several local children to school.
Image source: Helptammyhelphaiti.com
The water tower project is the one I find the most intriguing because it’s a great example of the multiplicity of challenges facing any humanitarian aid project. Other local water towers charge seven gourds for a ten-gallon bucket, much more than many families can afford. Babcock’s tower charges two gourds (about five cents) and the money goes directly to pay seven staff members, to maintain the tower’s infrastructure and to refill the tower when supply wanes. The staff members provide security for the water tower and help distribute the water as customers arrive. So not only has Babcock built a much-needed life-saving water tower, she has set up a sustainable system so that the water tower will continue to exist, even if her organization dissolves and she never makes it back to Haiti.
This is the cornerstone of successful voluntour projects too—creating infrastructure that will survive, and that will continue to improve the lives of the people it serves even after volunteers have gone and voluntour organizations have moved on to more popular sites. Tammy’s organization was already in place to help rebuild after the 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti in 2010. Tammy’s story also inspires me because it shows how a single person interested in traveling to help people can build something so much larger than herself, and in just a few short years.