A view of Jordan Pond in the Acadia National Park of Maine, USA

By Maria Rainier

In the spirit of giving this holiday season, don’t just consider minimizing your carbon footprint during an eco-tour.  Consider what more you can do to give back.  Many tours and travel experiences that encourage you to volunteer—voluntourism, as it were—are much more affordable than their lounging-on-the-beach varieties.  With a carefully planned eco-tour of your own or hopping on the bandwagon with like-minded do-gooders, you can face the new year with your wallet intact, a cleaner conscience, and a cleaner planet.

Cactus at Big Bend National Park in Texas

Stay Local to Mind Your Carbon Footprint

Not only do air fares skyrocket during the holiday season, we leave a hefty carbon footprint every time we step on a plane.  Instead, consider riding a train or even cycling to your eco-destination, depending on your location.  If you call North America home, consider the Big Bend National Park in Texas.  It’s got 800 acres of America’s biggest national park and it’s open year-round, although it may close on Christmas Day.  Rather than driving around and pitter-pattering carbon footprints across the park, get out and enjoy the outdoors and camp in one of the three campgrounds, $14.00 a night after a $10 seven-day pass per individual.

If you’re on the east coast, consider the Highland Lake Inn in Flat Rock, North Carolina, where you can bring the whole family (even the dog) and go hiking and fishing, and relax after a day spent outdoors at its gourmet restaurant with its own two acre organic garden.  During the summer and fall, guests can learn how to grow, harvest, and cook assorted veggies, herbs, and flowers you might find in such a garden.  A room costs $89.00 a night.  If you’re planning a holiday vacation here, consider the Christmas Day Buffet Celebration Weekend Package or the Christmas Eve 4-Course Dinner Weekend Package.

Meanwhile, up north awaits the Acadia National Park, from where you can see the Atlantic coastline and the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse.  You can camp for between $14 and $20 a night depending on the site.

Raspberry bushes at a small WWOOF participant farm in Wattamolla Valley, near Berry, NSW, Australia

Give Back to Save Greens

If you’re feeling more industrious and a little bit like pinching pennies this holiday season or in the coming year, consider bartering your way through an eco-tour.  Sierra Club’s Outings program has countless trips ranging from $400 in the U.S. to over $5,000 trips to safaris in Botswana and boat tours in Antarctica.  Be prepared to volunteer your time and your muscle, however, as is the nature of true voluntourism.  Similar programs include Ecovolunteer, which allows you to participate in efforts to protect nature and its inhabitants through local conservation organizations.  Coral Cay Conservation is in the same vein and is also worth a look.

Perhaps the most rewarding and budget-friendly experience is World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF), which welcomes travelers across America to participate in their daily goings-on.  The cost ranges between a $20 and $50 registration fee and transportation fees to the farm—that’s it.

WWOOF has counterparts in other countries; you can go to Tuscan wine country and pick grapes for weeks and not only enjoy some of the most beautiful countryside you’ll ever see in your life, but make good friends, eat good foods, and even pick up a little Italian, too.  In this way, you can make this season and 2012 a year of win-wins—for the planet and your wallet.

Bio: Maria Rainier is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at First in Education performing research surrounding online universities and their various program offerings. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

The Bird Island Nature Reserve in Lambert's Bay Western Cape, South Africa

By Louise Baker

Eco-Tourism is thriving and ever growing trend that has the benefits of a vacation combined with the experience of working with or studying the wonders of the world at the same time. Depending on a student’s course of study, certain locations may lend themselves better than others, and some destinations may not be suitable at all. Fortunately, there are some valuable resources like the International Eco-Tourism Society that make researching and choosing the right destination fairly easy. In addition to private tour providers, many colleges and universities sponsor or fund eco-tours as part of their curriculum; these programs are a great way to see some the most fascinating sights on the planet while also helping to preserve and protect them.

Africa

Africa is host to range of eco-destinations covering aspects including humanitarian aid like assisting local villagers with wells, irrigation, disease control, and more, to technological ventures and wildlife management strategies. There are current eco-tours that include counting populations of wildlife, re-introduction of species, and preserving endangered species that allow college students to obtain priceless knowledge firsthand while making a difference in the world at the same time.

Steam at Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone National Park and Yosemite National Park

Yellowstone and Yosemite both have a wide variety of biological and geological features that make them totally unique in terms of geological history and diversity. Many endangered and re-introduced species in these two parks are the direct result of conservation projects that are now open to students and even the public to participate in. Yosemite is a lure for studying the movement of glaciers, rock formation, and even climate and weather phenomena, while the super-volcano that is suspected to be lurking underneath Yellowstone has kept biologists, geologists, and chemists busy for decades with extreme conditions and extreme life forms living in them.

Galapagos Islands

Possibly the most famous eco destination in the world is the renowned Galapagos Islands; the majority of this fame in the eco-tourism arena comes from the sea turtle conservation programs that, over the years, have become increasingly popular. Aside from collecting and counting sea turtle eggs and releasing the young turtles, the Galapagos Islands are also home many other wildlife conservation efforts, and with many of the species native to this area only being found here, it is no wonder why.

Sunrise in Machu Picchu

South America

The South American continent is one of the most popular eco destinations in the world, second only to the famed Galapagos Islands. South America has been hosting tours and trips along the Inca Trail and through the ruins of Machu Picchu for many years, and this area of the world still holds fascinating secrets that waiting to be uncovered. Lush jungles and thick rainforest are home to most of the animal and plant species on the planet, and with threats like climate change and poaching progressing, many South American governments have stepped up efforts to promote eco-tourism and preserve eco destinations.

With so many eco-destinations available, it is now possible to actually travel to remote destinations and touch, see, and feel the actual subject matter with one’s own senses, use the knowledge you have to build more and preserve the planet and its inhabitants for future generations.

Louise Baker is a freelance writer and blogger who usually does car insurance comparisons over at CarinsuranceComparison.Org. She recently wrote about finding cheap car insurance quotes.

What if next time you went on vacation you replenished your soul as well as your mind? Don’t call me a hippie – I’m serious. Volunteering is a marvelous way to show gratitude for nature and for life, and giving to others is one of the best ways to find fulfillment.

Plus, everything is better when it’s free (or at least cheap), am I right? Yes.

So let’s look at some cheap volunteer vacations.

Bob Marshall Wilderness Area, Montana, USA

Montana

Explore the wilderness and help build and repair trails or restore campsites at the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation, which works with the U.S. Forest Service, in Montana. No experience is necessary for most of the projects (great news for me)! You can choose from three levels of difficulty and hike between 1 and 15 miles per day depending on the project. Volunteers of all ages are welcome. Check out the registration packets with further details here.

For another type of volunteer vacations in Montana, read this post.

Colorado

Colorado

Cheap volunteer vacations here include spending the summer building and improving the Colorado Trail for just $60 per week or $30 per weekend. The trail foundation organizes 15 volunteer trail efforts every summer in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service and you get a discount if you help out with more than one effort. Register in advance here. They’ll tell you what to bring. P.S. Another way you can help is to adopt a trail.

Hudson River

Sail the Hudson River

If you like kids and sailing, you can go on volunteer vacations on the Sloop’s “floating classroom” from mid-April through October every year and lead small group activities. For a volunteer fee of $100 you’re in. The fee helps offset the cost of food, instruction, you get a volunteer t-shirt, and help fund the group’s Youth Internships. Caveat: You’ll be committing yourself to rustic conditions for at least a week on the boat and must be 16 or older. Check it out.

Inwood Hill Park

New York City

You read that correctly. For a minimum contribution of $450-500 you can spend three days in April, May, June, September, October, or November 2010 learning about small mammal or coyote populations in the urban parks of Manhattan and the Bronx. Talk about, uh, weird volunteer vacations. You can choose Van Cortlandt Park (small mammals and coyotes), Pelham Bay Park, (small mammals and coyotes), or Inwood Hill Park (small mammals). And your $500 will only get you lunch, so you better have some money saved up.

Organic vegetable cultivation

All over

Take volunteer vacations at organic farms across the U.S. through the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) program. Pay a $20 annual fee and you get to peruse over 1,000 farms seeking volunteers on every corner of the country, including Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (go here for the Northeast). You work a half day for an organic farm, and the farm gives you room and board for the night in the family farmhouse or at a nearby cabin (how long you get to stay at each farm varies). Gorge yourself on organic goodness. Sweet.

For some more info on WWOOF projects, read this post.

Rainbow sunset off Miami Beach, FL

Here are two upcoming eco events for the greenies in Florida, U.S.:

Hands Across the Sand

Save the date: Saturday, February 13, rain or shine, head to your local beach (and if it’s not listed, go ahead and organize an event in your community) to hold hands with other Florida beach lovers to protest oil drilling from 1-2pm EST (get there a little early and plan for parking).

The event is called Hands Across the Sand and the idea is to push for the protection of Florida’s beaches and wildlife from oil drilling.

“This is an opportunity to show your opposition to oil drilling as close as 3 to 10 miles off our coast. This movement will be made of people of all walks of life. This movement is not about politics; it is about protection of our shoreline, our tourism, our valuable properties and our way of life. Let us share our knowledge, energies and passion for protecting our waterways and beaches from the devastating effects of oil drilling.”

Join their Facebook page for Love Tourists Not Drilling Coalition in Pinellas County, Florida, here.

Check it out on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. You can also sign up for the newsletter here.

It has already received public support from legislators and both governmental and non-governmental organizations like the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, the City of Sarasota, Pinellas County, and the Tampa Bay Beaches Chamber of Commerce.

It’s just one hour. You know you want to! Tell your friends!

Take a Hike!

The Florida Forever Coalition is organizing public hikes across the state of Florida to celebrate 20 years of public land acquisition on Saturday, February 20 at 10am EST. You can join or put a hike together in your area by filling out this form and emailing it to info@supportfloridaforever.org.

Already organized are hikes in Central Florida, Tampa Bay, the Panhandle, and Lake Okeechobee. There are none organized in the Everglades thus far, but you can go ahead and set one up!

The coalition is made up of over 125 nonprofits, public agencies and private groups and has protected over 2.4 million acres of Florida land since 2000, according to its website.

Among its successes, Florida Forever counts the preservation of

• 53,600 acres of springs and springsheds
• 5,190 acres of fragile coastline
• 300,000 acres of sustainable forest lands
• 158,700 acres of working agricultural lands

Learn about volunteering, sending emails to your legislators, writing op-eds for Florida newspapers, and more for the cause here.

The coalition is also organizing plenty of lobby days and other events across Florida.

Enjoy!

Do you enjoy organic farming and other activities that further sustainability?

There are organic farms all over the globe that you can volunteer at in exchange for free lodging and free meals, plus learning about organic farming and related lifestyles. Some farms have just a couple of hosts while others have entire families or small communities you would stay and hang out with.

World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) was founded in 1971 in the UK. The organizations involved with this project connect people who wish to volunteer, aka “WWOOFers” (awesome), with those who wish to receive help and impart their knowledge and skills to others. You can usually even do it if you don’t speak the local language! These hosts are cool folk, apparently.

Volunteers: What you need to know

On the WWOOF website you can find lists of organic farms, smallholdings, and gardeners. Some of them only request/accept help during certain months or seasons, while others are open all year long. Additionally, tasks vary per farm and, of course, geographical location.

You can visit the list of farms/hosts, choose the ones you’d like to visit, and contact them directly to make arrangements. WWOOFers usually live as part of the family, so the environment tends to be cozy and friendly (I assume, as I’ve never volunteered for WWOOF).

If you volunteer, you will not have to pay (and you won’t get paid) except for a “small fee” to WWOOF, which hosts must pay also. The fee helps maintain and grow the project.

The hosts

All hosts grow their food organically, are in conversion, or use environmentally friendly techniques on their farms and so on. Volunteers get hands-on experience growing organic crops and, where possible, by performing other tasks, such as feeding cattle.

There are WWOOF farms you can volunteer at in all five continents. The countries include the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, the Caribbean, Argentina, Ecuador, Brazil, the European Union, Turkey, Israel, Cameroon, Uganda, South Africa, Australia, India, Japan, and others (keep checking the website).

Conclusion, so to speak

This sounds like a totally sweet deal for the adventurous, outdoorsy types who also want to make our world a better place (corny but true, huh? That’s okay.). Also, those of you free enough to get around, of course (the especially lucky among us!).

If you have experience with WWOOF, please share your thoughts and impressions! It sounds great, but there are always two sides to every story (at least).

One of the 7 cabins at San Miguel Del Bala's eco lodge

The indigenous Tacanas of the Amazon are betting on ecotourism to protect their territory, increase their income, and improve their quality of life.

This population of 235 inhabitants has built an eco lodge in the village of San Miguel del Bala on the banks of the Beni River in northwestern Bolivia with the help of NGOs.

The eco lodge’s 7 cabins are scattered throughout the rainforest and were constructed with local dry palm leaves and wood. It recycles waste and uses a wastewater treatment system.

San Miguel del Bala

To get an idea of the remoteness of San Miguel del Bala, let’s just say you must take a 40-minute boat ride to get there, all the way from the town of Rurrenbaque.

The village consists of 44 families mainly made up of fishers and farmers. It is not surprising, then, that they lack electricity and health care, although they do have potable water and a school for the local children, according to the community leader, Biter Supa.

Guests can take excursions with native guides to learn of ancient hunting methods and medicinal plants and visit natural pools, waterfalls, and a salitral cave. They can even visit some Tacana families’ homes, which are built of palm leaves and bamboo.

Madidi National Park, San Miguel del Bala

The Madidi National Park – 4.5 million acres of land of rich biodiversity – hosts 1,000 species of fauna and 6,000 of flora. You might want to get a malaria shot, by the way.

Peru’s government has designated sections of the park, areas called Tierras Comunitarias de Origen (TCOs), reservations for the indigenous populations. This is fantastic; we’ve already had an obscene excess of what one of my college professors called the “white men with guns” phenomenon, where, well, white men with guns come and kill/enslave/brutalize indigenous communities to rape the land (and the people).

This way the native population will be able to benefit from the nascent ecotourism industry. In fact, the community members manage their collectively owned territory and promote the participation and representation of members of all ages and sexes.

Hell yeah.

Also, if you’re staying for at least 10 days, you can join their Volunteer Program and stay at the eco lodge for a special rate by working just 4 hours daily. Super sweet.

So far, TRU Organic Spirits has planted 50,052 trees as of March 2009 along as a result of its “one tree per bottle” method. The products are completely certified USDA organic and consist of infused vodkas and gins. Mmm…

Each planted tree, TRU says, removes 500 lbs. of CO2 from the atmosphere per year and later 1800 lbs. per year when the trees mature. Apparently, that’s the equivalent of two months of average driving (1800 lbs. of CO2). Not bad at all.

“To make sure those trees have maximal impact, we work with organizations such as Sustainable Harvest International, in tropical zones, because those are the most environmentally sensitive areas suffering rampant deforestation,” they say.

Volunteer for Sustainable Harvest International's Cacao Campaign

So, how do we know TRU is legitimate? The company has been issued a certificate by Sustainable Harvest International (SHI).  Sounds good. With this certificate in tow, it’s easier to believe TRU when they claim that they are 760 times carbon negative (!), they maintain clean farmland and groundwater, and use recycled and recyclable lightweight bottles, among other laudable practices. Independent organizations evaluate these claims. Read more here.

Speaking of which, SHI organizes Smaller World Tours–you can take a vacation to volunteer in Central America to fight poverty and deforestation.  SHI has tours coming up in Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama and several of their tours coming up in the next few months are already filled up! Awesome.

Another thing you can do through SHI is intern in Central America through their Field Programs. There’s still room to apply for summer 2009. Check it here. The information is also available in Spanish.

GVI volunteers carrying out the weekly plankton sampling at L’ilot for Marine Conservation Society Seychelles (MCSS). Photo by Jon Bilbrough

Have you heard of Global Vision International? GVI’s been around since 1998 and works to develop sustainable development through research, conservation, and education. It provides services to charities, NGOs, and governmental agencies around the globe through promotion, donations, and volunteering.

GVI is neither a political nor a religious organization. It sends 2,000 volunteers out per year to aid-reliant projects in over 30 countries.

If you’re not looking to go tan on yet another beach and take more of the same pictures, check out the conservation and humanitarian projects at GVI. You can browse through GVI’s volunteer options, destinations, and more to find something that suits you.

I know that even when I am exhausted and think “I need a vacation!!” more than two days doing nothing will jar me. If I can go somewhere beautiful, enjoy a radical change of scenery, meet new people, and do something that will help others, I feel more rewarded than if I had just spent a week getting sunburned on some beach.

Don’t get me wrong-I love the beach. But after a few hours kayaking and swimming and reading, don’t you get bored? It’d be cool to go somewhere on vacation and know that whenever you got bored or tired of it, you could go on to volunteer somewhere in the area.

GVI even offers responsible holidays of one week or more. For example, the Mexican Marine Expedition in the Caribbean Sea, where they teach you diving to contribute toward coral reef research in the area. (Remember that green sunscreen!) Or you can teach English to Buddhist monks in Laos! There are some awesome options in there, stuff I wouldn’t have thought of.

With GVI, you get training and career development opportunities through the trips and volunteering, so you could even view your time with them as an investment, depending on your future goals.

I think within the next several years, I will go volunteer somewhere for several weeks. Build homes for the homeless, teach English to people in secluded areas, help research for nature conservation. It’s scary–what will happen to your job when you get back, right? True. But when there’s a will, there’s a way.