Travel information company Lonely Planet recently launched a volunteering handbook,"Volunteer: A Travellers Guide to Making a Difference Around the World".   Read article

Chicago, USA: Building latrines and pig pens isn't exactly how most people want to spent their hollidays. However more and more are concidering voluntourism for the purpose of humanity as an alternative to relaxing at the beach.  Read article

It's not just college students, and not just for one week in March: Whole families, retired couples, and single thirty-somethings are using their vacation time to volunteer. The Christian Science Monitor has compiled web resources and stories to help you make your vacation more meaningful.  Read article

Volunteering expert Susan Ellis discusses voluntourism or combining holidays with volunteer work. A trend that has come of age since its inception 30 years ago. The author points out that the biggest gripe about volunteer vacations is that they simply expand the trend of episodic volunteering, in which feel-good bursts of service give the volunteer pleasure but do not result in much useful help for the recipients or the complex cause.   Read article

New York, USA: An American family travelled to Niger and lived in the desert with Tuareg nomads for two weeks. From the US, they hauled some 200 pounds of vitamins and soccer balls for children and treads and thimbles for women. They brought back reams of embroidered fabric and colourful purses, proceeds from sale of these items will help Tuaregs build wells and schools.   Read article

They're the students who go abroad to boost their CVs, have a laugh - and help out in the developing world at the same time. But this week a charity claimed that young people volunteering during gap-year risk doing more harm than good. The Guardian's Patrick Bartham asks 10 volunteers what they think.  Read article

Most British high school graduates take a year off before university to volunteer abroad, the so-called gap year. After 20 popular years, the gap year's nature and necessity is being questioned by Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), a UK-based international volunteer-sending organization. VSO claims, among others, that gap years are becoming "outdated and colonial." Mike Pallis of The Guardian reacts on the changing faces of gap years.   Read article

There is a growing number of young Americans who are reaching beyond their communities to aid scientific field research, work in orphanages, and build houses in outposts worldwide.  Read article

Like many people, in the wake of the 2004 tsunami disaster Kimberley Sevcik had an urge to race to an affected region and help with the recovery efforts. She found that while the need was urgent then, there are still many ways to contribute to the rebuilding of communities affected by the disaster.   Read article

Why would people volunteer to give up two weeks of vacation and pay $550 and airfare to a foreign country to work for nothing? For three primary reasons: gratitude, enjoyment and service, say 57 American volunteers who went to El Salvador to offer eye-care services to thousands of local people.  Read article