Thanksgiving is the perfect time to spend with your friends and family, listen to Uncle John’s childhood stories, eagerly eat roast turkey with cranberry sauce and agree to yet another slice of pumpkin pie without feeling bad about yourself. What’s not to love? More interestingly perhaps, Thanksgiving is also the [...]

Orphaned children in Africa, equality for women in India, sex-trafficking in Thailand; these are just some of the issues people wish they could get involved in helping to address. Unfortunately, not everyone has the ability to take off of work and fly to another country to volunteer. This, however, does [...]

Be part of our international campaign today to “Break the Bitter Chains of Slavery”! Dear Expeditioner Readers, As travelers I think all of us have stared into the face of unfortunate souls living desperate lives in faraway lands. We’ve seen beggars reach a withered hand towards us longingly with dishes [...]

There is that special feeling associated with knowing you are a part of something that directly increases the overall good in the world, and this is certainly a crucial reason people volunteer in any capacity. Volunteering abroad, however, is an entirely different cup of soup. Screw the free T-shirt from [...]

Many die-hard travelers, at one time or another, have dreamed about volunteering in a small village in some remote region of the planet. The prospects for such a journey could seem extremely promising for young, motivated spirits. Heck, what could be better than living abroad for an extended period of [...]

by Katherine Fisher I showed up around 10 a.m. and the buzz was already going, loudly. When I arrived, the cement truck was already there, ready to unload as much concrete as we needed. The kids were amazed at the sight of this huge, monstrous truck, and they were running [...]

ChaCha has this handy graphic about travel’s newest trend, voluntourism, showing who’s doing it, where they’re going, and what they’re doing. Turns out the top three spots for the million or so Americans in 2009 who partook in international voluntravel, Peru was the most popular (16%), followed by Costa Rica [...]

The merits of travel to poorer areas of the world are constantly being debated. Some believe it helps communities, while others believe it helps to destroy them. However, as many travelers already know, there are ways that one can travel while conserving, and preserving, the area. The goal of Help [...]

By Tyrel Nelson It was mid-January, but no snow was on the ground — an odd sight for Minnesotans. The 17 of us were actually in the verdant highlands of Panajachel, Sololá, Guatemala. Teammates on a Global Village trip, we were offering our time and sweat on behalf of Twin [...]

What does one do when thrust into the unexpected situation of teaching a class of 57 children in the capital of the Philippines? Why, sing, of course. A trip to the Philippines is always an education, but this time I’d planned on taking things easy. Rather than sail out into [...]