{"id":1615,"date":"2010-07-27T07:00:48","date_gmt":"2010-07-27T06:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/TravelWithPaulie.com\/blog\/?p=419"},"modified":"2011-11-23T00:30:02","modified_gmt":"2011-11-23T00:30:02","slug":"what-does-meaningful-travel-really-involve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulgoodchild.me\/blog\/what-does-meaningful-travel-really-involve\/","title":{"rendered":"What does Meaningful Travel really involve?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ngg_shortcode_0_placeholderI&#8217;ve been &#8216;on the road&#8217; for nearly 7 months already and I&#8217;ve had a whole plethora of experiences since I started. I wouldn&#8217;t substitute my time spent so far for anything, since just now in my life it&#8217;s what I want to do.\u00a0 But what is this so-called &#8220;meaningful travel&#8221; malarkey all about?<\/p>\n<p>This article will hopefully clear up some of the obscurity for those people who are interested, and offer for you a bit of insight so you can decide if this approach is something you would like to consider for yourself.<\/p>\n<p><em>Word count: ~1100;\u00a0 approx. reading time: 5~10 minutes.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>What is meaningful travel?<\/h2>\n<p>Does meaningful travel differ from volunteering?\u00a0 Aren&#8217;t they just the same thing?\u00a0 And what is volunteering itself anyway?\u00a0 I&#8217;m just going to offer up some straight definitions to kick this off:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A <strong>Volunteer <\/strong>&#8211; is someone who offers up their (spare) time\/expertise into the services of a socially conscious project or organisation.\u00a0 They do not receive <em>monetary<\/em> incentives and also do not pay to offer their time.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Socially conscious<\/strong> &#8211; a socially conscious project or organisation is one that is primarily working for the benefit of the community, local or otherwise.\u00a0 That is, working with the goal to raise the standard of living for the target community in an ideally, environmentally sustainable manner.\u00a0 Basically, an organisation that does good things!\u00a0 I&#8217;m sure we can think of many global corporates that are not socially conscious.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Travel <\/strong>&#8211; (in the context of this article) is the act of moving yourself temporarily from one place to another by foot, land transport, air and sea for the purpose(s) of exploration, business, experience, relaxation, curiosity, investigation, and other such goals.\u00a0 There&#8217;s no need to have a passport to travel.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Meaningful travel<\/strong> &#8211; is the act of travelling with the <em>primary <\/em>purpose of volunteering.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Voluntourism <\/strong>&#8211; is an subset of the tourism industry.\u00a0 It is the business of supplying a travel service to individuals\/groups that contains a element whereby they do work with an organisation\/project\/business in the destination location.\u00a0 This, to me, isn&#8217;t volunteering since it is fee-based, and so it also doesn&#8217;t fall under the scope of my definition of meaningful travel.\u00a0 You could argue that it is &#8220;meaningful&#8221; and it is &#8220;travel&#8221;, but then and that&#8217;s why there&#8217;s a comments section below.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Many definitions to take in, but give them another quick read over once more and I&#8217;m sure it&#8217;ll fall into place for you.<\/p>\n<p>So am I really undertaking meaningful travel?\u00a0 I think so, and here is why&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>At the time of writing I have been on the road for 203 days.\u00a0 Of those 203 days, 62{97de8d2e860196f43620abbbd870152438d0e1a3bef5042cd7be1942d94df9d0} of the total time spent has been primarily for the purpose of volunteering.\u00a0 I have excluded days spent travelling to and from these places to be as accurate as I can.\u00a0 Assuming a day was spent for each travel hop, that leaves the total time spent so far in &#8220;non-meaningful travel&#8221; 30{97de8d2e860196f43620abbbd870152438d0e1a3bef5042cd7be1942d94df9d0} (of the 203 days).\u00a0 This 30{97de8d2e860196f43620abbbd870152438d0e1a3bef5042cd7be1942d94df9d0} includes time attending 2 weddings that took place in March and April so of course that&#8217;s not to say it wasn&#8217;t meaningful, it just doesn&#8217;t fall under the definition above for the purposes of this article.<\/p>\n<h2>What does this kind of travel involve on a practical level?<\/h2>\n<p>Here is a quick summary list based on my experience so far:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Research<\/strong> and <strong>Networking<\/strong>; lots of it.\u00a0 I find projects and go to them, or find projects where I have already planned to go.<\/li>\n<li>Independently arranging <strong>travel itineraries<\/strong>.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t go to travel agents and book an all-inclusive 2-week stay at the ABC Exotic Spa Resort.\u00a0 I take flights, <a href=\"http:\/\/paulgoodchild.net\/blog\/2010\/06\/overland-travel-good-for-you\/\">buses, trains<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bootsnall.com\/articles\/10-06\/why-god-gave-travelers-feet.html\" target=\"_blank\">walk<\/a> to wherever I need to go.\u00a0 Accommodation may be provided\/arranged by the organisation with which you will work, but if not, you&#8217;ll need to book yourself something, or just find it when you arrive &#8211; I will usually book something for a day or so and then just find the cheapest place I can find and move over.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Work<\/strong>.\u00a0 Whatever you have committed to doing, you simply get right down to it.\u00a0 There is no fanfare, just plain ol&#8217; get your hands dirty helping wherever you can.\u00a0 If you&#8217;re volunteering, you can expect to earn not a penny for your services, and if anything have to pay for some things yourself.\u00a0 If there are no whiteboard markers, just buy your own for example. I have never been provided with any remuneration for my work, except the odd welcome dinner here and there.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Report<\/strong>.\u00a0 I have needed to report and summarise some of the work that I&#8217;ve done in the past, especially that of an IT related nature where there is hand-over involved.\u00a0 It&#8217;s just good practice and it helps the person who follows on after you to pick up where you left off.\u00a0 As you can imagine in the world of volunteering the turnover rate is very high and mitigating those issues is important.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Can you do it too?<\/h2>\n<p>Of course!\u00a0 It&#8217;s not for everyone, but there are various approaches to it.\u00a0 For example, if you want to take the voluntourism approach, then you should.\u00a0 But enter these programs with the knowledge that your money spent isn&#8217;t going towards the organisation with which you will be working.\u00a0 Yes, part of it will, but it pays to be an informed consumer in this case.<\/p>\n<p>To do volunteering and travel on-the-cheap involves a fair amount of leg work on your part.\u00a0 My current motto, for want of a better term, is to be a no- or low- impact entity where I can be, in terms of time, money and other resources.\u00a0 This involves trying to be as independent as possible, as early as possible; covering costs incurred due to my joining their organisation; and leaving it in a better state than that which I found it.\u00a0 If I can do that, then I feel I&#8217;m fulfilling my &#8216;meaningful travel&#8217; mandate.<\/p>\n<p>Give it some thought.\u00a0 Perhaps there&#8217;s scope to introduce volunteering into your life.<\/p>\n<p>A future article will discuss other options within the areas of volunteering and travel.<\/p>\n<p><em>If you are travelling, either volunteering or otherwise, I&#8217;d love to hear you views and opinions on this.\u00a0 Does volunteering have to be unpaid to be volunteering?\u00a0 Does meaningful travel have to involve volunteering to be meaningful?\u00a0 Any tips for finding the elusive free volunteering?\u00a0 Any and all feedback is welcome in the comments section below.\u00a0 Please also feel free to share this article with friends and people you think would be interested to read this.\u00a0 You can do so using the Facebook link below. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been &#8216;on the road&#8217; for nearly 7 months already and I&#8217;ve had a whole plethora of experiences since I started. I wouldn&#8217;t substitute my time spent so far for anything, since just now in my life it&#8217;s what I want to do.  But what is this so-called &#8220;meaningful travel&#8221; malarkey all about?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[300],"tags":[342,368,396,415,91],"class_list":["post-1615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cat-volunteering","tag-independent-travel","tag-meaningful-travel","tag-socially-conscious","tag-voluntourism","tag-what-is"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>What does Meaningful Travel really involve? - Plog - Paulie&#039;s Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/paulgoodchild.me\/blog\/what-does-meaningful-travel-really-involve\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What does Meaningful Travel really involve? - Plog - Paulie&#039;s Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I&#039;ve been &#039;on the road&#039; for nearly 7 months already and I&#039;ve had a whole plethora of experiences since I started. 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