Nicaragua

Helping Children Achieve with Outreach360

Volunteer with Outreach360

Image source: Outreach360.org

Sometimes it’s difficult to comprehend disadvantage. Living here, in the United States, I have so many luxuries. While I am not rich compared to my neighbors, I am a millionaire compared to so many people in the world. It’s easy to see yourself through the lens of your own culture—to forget that, on a global scale, the picture is so dramatically different. I thought about this a lot at the beginning of the Occupy movement. Here were millions of Americans, rallying together to fight the 1%, the people in America who enjoy the vast majority of the wealth. Who were we fighting for? We were fighting for the rest of our population—the 99% of Americans who pay taxes, fall behind on mortgages with outrageous interest rates, default on student loans, and can’t find gainful employment. There is no doubt—the way America works is deeply flawed and innocent, hard-working people suffer—but what I think we forget is that, on the global stage, Americans are the 1%. We are the privileged. This is what it means to have a global perspective.

Travel with The Mesoamerican Ecotourism Alliance

Belize Starfish

Image source: Travelwithmea.org

With all of the volunteer organizations in operation today, it’s a wonder they aren’t in conflict with each other more often. Organizations are drawn to popular areas—places where tourists naturally go and where volunteering opportunities are likely to be in high demand. It would logically follow then that organizations would be vying for the same villages in the same spectacular locations. So how do organizations prevent conflict? How do they ensure the wellbeing of the communities they serve while ensuring the wellbeing of their own volunteer programs? How do they avoid exploiting a particular site for its massive tourism appeal? How do they make sure the people and wildlife come first?

Fighting Climate Change, One Volunteer at a Time

A Field of Actic Ice Melt

Image source: Nature.org

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a biology student. I volunteer with a wildlife conservation organization in my area and spend a lot of time with biologists in the field. A few weeks ago I was chatting with a career biologist—a man who has spent the past thirty years working with endangered species. Somehow the topic of climate change came up, and I was flabbergasted to discover that he doesn’t believe in it, as if it weren’t the overwhelming scientific consensus. It illustrated something I’ve long understood: that a person’s political views (he is a staunch conservative) can dramatically affect his opinions, even when he should know better. None of us wants climate change to be real. We all want to cling to a memory of a time when we weren’t so profoundly afraid for our planet.