Company provides students volunteer opportunity over winter break
By Jordain Carney
The Arkansas Traveler
December 8, 2008
Cosmic Volunteers, a non-profit American-based company started by Scott Burke in 2000 in Philadelphia, offers students the opportunity to spend two weeks of their winter break participating in an international volunteering program.
The trip for this year begins Dec. 28 and ends Jan. 10, 2009. The company also sends people to volunteer and intern at schools, newspapers, hospitals and other facilities in various countries.
It started in Nepal, where Burke was teaching at the time, but in the past eight years students have spent two weeks in countries such as Ecuador, Kenya, India and Vietnam, and according to a news release by Cosmic Volunteers, the trip allows volunteers to participate in humanitarian and environmental projects.
This year, students will be traveling to the Volta Region in the eastern sections of Ghana, and “the projects involve spending time with children at orphanages playing games, arts and crafts and sports, as well as planting trees, cleaning-up school grounds and light construction work of schools and medical clinics,” according to the news release.
The cost of the program is $1,895, which includes food, accommodations, airport transport, local transportation, orientation, the volunteer project, cultural excursions, visa support and other things. It does not include airfare, visa fee, vaccinations, extra sightseeing or amenities such as the Internet or telephone calls. But volunteers can have the program paid for if they can recruit 10 volunteers to the program, and they can also have their international airfare covered if they can recruit 15 other members to join the program.
Volunteers for the program come from the United States, Canada and Europe, and, according to the news release, special skills or experience are not needed to travel with the company.
“Just an open mind and desire to reach out to those in need in non-Western countries,” according to the news release.
UA students can visit the Web site for the Center for Leadership and Community Engagement for information on various volunteering opportunities. While places like the Butterfield Trail Village, The Child’s Christmas Train and The Single Parent Scholarship Fund of Washington County needed volunteers for the first week of December, there are still plenty of volunteering opportunities available to students who are interested in volunteering over the upcoming break.
The Fayetteville Senior Activity Center is making care packages for the holiday season, and volunteers also are needed to deliver the items. The Arkansas Support Network is collecting items for Christmas baskets through Dec. 14. Life Source International needs 10 to 20 volunteers on Dec. 20, Dec. 22 and Dec. 23. For more information on these volunteer opportunities and to find ongoing activities, visit the CLCE.
Whether UA students will actually volunteer while not in school seems to be a mixed opinion.
“I plan to ring Salvation Army bells whenever I get the chance,” UA student Mary Smith said.
Not all students are as eager; both UA students Sarah Dollard and Brittany Rodgers said they did not plan to volunteer over the winter break.
However, plenty of opportunities are available throughout the area.