The Australian, Australia, 15 October 2011 by Biosphere Expeditions

Everyone's a winner | The Australian

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The Australian The Weekend Australian Magazine

Everyone's a winner by: Catherine Marshall From: The Australian October 15, 2011 12:00AM

Voluntourism travellers Cara Munro, 31, Dave & Christine Cloughley, 61 & 52, and Ben Coleridge, 22. Source: Supplied THE midday sun is pouring down onto the winter-dry hills of Namibia, and we're busily collecting animal poo. Matt, a student from America, is loping through the bush, scouring the ground. He stops, crouches down, lifts his head excitedly and calls out that he's found "predator scat" - excrement deposited by a leopard, perhaps, or a caracal or brown hyena. We gather round as he crumbles the powdery black substance between thumb and forefinger. Inside it he locates a mandible so small one almost needs a magnifying glass to see it. We lean in to get a closer look at this tiny miracle of nature embedded incongruously in the dry lump in Matt's hand, and sigh with contentment. It's for moments like this that we've all taken annual leave and come to volunteer on a leopard conservation project at a Biosphere Expeditions base just north of the Namibian capital, Windhoek. With farmers steadily converting from stock farming to game ranching, researchers are keen to work out ways in which both leopards and their valuable prey - kudu, oryx, springbok and other antelope - might be preserved. We'll spend our holidays counting game, checking camera traps, tracking collared leopards and collecting data on animal populations. Not for us the passivity of beach resort holidays, languid cruises and sightseeing tours.

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We're not alone. An increasing number of Australians are seeking more meaningful travel experiences abroad and are helping to drive a global surge in so-called "voluntourism". A nation of travellers, we have seen the world's problems close up; many of us have had our consciences pricked and are keen to do our bit to improve the lot of others. "People are no longer satisfied going to observe, they want to get involved, to actively make a difference," says Richard Gilmore, executive director of the Earthwatch Institute Australia, which offers environmental-based volunteer holidays. "What you remember from expeditions you go on is the camaraderie you develop and the difference you make to the local community." Gilmore speaks from experience: six years ago he was working in the packaging industry when he volunteered on a community mangrove project in Kenya. The experience made him "open his eyes", and led him to retrain in environmental management. For others, voluntourism is merely a respite from their day-jobs: in Namibia, Sydneysider Nicky is enjoying a six-month break from her job in IT, travelling extensively and volunteering on big-cat projects. She's participated in jaguar and puma expeditions in South America and is now helping to catch and collar leopards in Namibia. By the time I get home to Sydney she will be in Zimbabwe, working on a lion rehabilitation program. "I've always loved wildlife and conservation, but I wouldn't have been any good if I'd chosen this field as a career," she says. Without the contribution of volunteers' energy and funds, this work would be virtually impossible to undertake. After a day out in the field, our convoy of Land Rovers makes its way back to base camp, driving straight towards a fat orange sun. There are accountants and office workers and engineers and IT consultants and even a dental hygienist among us, but our day jobs have been long forgotten as we bring back with us punctiliously collected poo specimens that will be sorted and catalogued and sent to Germany for further testing. It doesn't feel like much of a contribution, but in our own small way we've made our mark. Ben Coleridge, 22, Russia Ben Coleridge wasn't long out of school when he stumbled over a dead body in a gutter in St Petersburg. It was Christmas Eve, 2007, and the Melburnian had come to Russia to volunteer as an English teacher at the Novgorod State University. This brutal introduction was at odds with the melodic beauty that had drawn him to the country in the first place: the exquisite works of its literary masters. "In the weeks after I finished school I'd been reading a lot of Russian literature. I really fell in love with the poetry of [Osip] Mandelstam, and one line continued to echo through my mind: 'We shall meet again in Petersburg, as though we had interred the sun in it.'" Coleridge pictured in his mind's eye the palaces of St Petersburg, the wind on the steppe and the forests buried beneath snow. He was resolute in his decision: he would take a year off to live and work in Russia. "I didn't want to just go to university; I wanted to learn in other ways about people and life, and to have adventures, too." For four months Coleridge lived with a local family in their tiny, Soviet-era apartment and was given free rein in the conversational English classes he conducted at the university. It enabled him to learn more about Russian politics and social justice.

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It was during this time that the Russian elections were held, and Coleridge's interaction with students gave him an interesting perspective on how they viewed their country's political process. So captivated was he by the experience despite Russia's extreme cold, which "eats into you, takes your breath away" - that he returned two years later, living for three months in Yaroslavl, a city hard hit by the global financial crisis. Here Coleridge shared a flat with a young factory worker, Sergei, and studied Russian at the local university. In his spare time he volunteered at a soup kitchen where he encountered the true victims of the GFC - piteous citizens who were starving and freezing through the crisis. This bleakness was rammed home to Coleridge one night when Sergei lamented that life was one "long, grey road" offering no exit routes, only the option to keep on trudging. "I realised then what it was to feel disempowered - to lack a sense of freedom and possibility, both essential needs of the human soul," says Coleridge. It's a lesson that has stayed with him as he completes his honours in history at the University of Melbourne and volunteers with local refugee communities. "The road to social justice relies on people making small decisions every day to become involved in the lives of people around them," says Coleridge. "And as I've seen in Russia, and here in Melbourne, those small decisions have powerful consequences." Cara Munro, 31, India Cara Munro imagined an artistic future for herself until she encountered a dangerously underweight teenager in a children's home in Malaysia. The disabled boy was 14, weighed just 14kg and was suffering daily seizures due to a lack of medication. Munro was running an art program at the children's home where he lived. Twenty-four hours after bidding him farewell, she was at a party in Melbourne where her old school friends were "talking at length about new lipstick colours. I didn't handle it very gracefully", she says. But Munro channelled her frustrations wisely, training to become a paediatric nurse and deploying her skills during successive volunteer placements with the Sahara Therapeutic Community, the largest organisation in India caring for drug users and people with HIV/AIDS. She would sit with these pain-wracked people and join outreach teams as they walked around Old Delhi distributing clean needles and condoms. While in India she also took part in the country's first ever vigil in memory of people who had died from AIDS since the introduction of anti-retroviral therapy, lobbying for an end to the patent on the medication so that it could be accessed by rich and poor alike. But despite the intense camaraderie that stemmed from experiences such as this, Munro frequently felt ineffective. "I worried about the kindness and hospitality that was lavished upon me by people who had terribly little; I remember being offered a cup of chai [tea] by a man who was sleeping under a bridge. I felt I was at my most effective when I was simply listening, taking in the stories and the wisdom and the struggles." Today, Munro works in a drug and alcohol detox unit for young people in Melbourne. Volunteering has not only shaped her career; it has also informed her resolve to live more simply. Upon her return from India she opted out of the things she felt she didn't need: new clothes, a washing machine, a bed. She lived without a fridge for 18 months and asked her neighbours to refrigerate "luxury items" such as cheese and yoghurt. "I tried to remember the homeless man under the bridge and the many others whose hospitality had smoothed my path. And, likewise, I tried to be hospitable." Perhaps most tellingly, Munro's experiences convinced her that voluntourism should be approached with extreme caution, and that it is most effective when supplemented by thorough orientation and debriefing programs. "I have strong misgivings about the 'fly-in-fly-out' model of international volunteerism which doesn't translate to cultural understanding but rather reinforces stereotypes, the classic being: 'They're so poor but so happy.' Until I'm convinced that my volunteering doesn't undermine local grassroots work and skills, I'll remain in Australia." Dave & Christine Cloughley, 61 & 52, Bali The village of Munti Gunung sits in the rugged northeast of Bali, but it's as far from paradise as you can get. Cattle and poultry wander the streets past breeze-block houses with glassless windows and malnourished villagers at high risk of an early death. Christine Cloughley and her husband Dave, who first came here in 2008, were shocked.

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"Working for so many years in the finance industry, I was always very aware of how we in Australia take our high standard of living for granted," she says. "Many of us are dissatisfied with what we have and are always seeking ways to get more for ourselves. I guess I was a little disenchanted by seeing people's greed when there are so many people in the world who don't know where their next meal is coming from." The couple was keen to contribute to a country whose warm hospitality they had so often enjoyed as tourists, and after retiring in 2007 an opportunity presented itself through Australian Volunteers International. They spent a month learning the language in Yogyakarta and, after first working with a foundation caring for people with facial abnormalities, were assigned to a health, welfare and educational NGO run from Denpasar. The foundation, Yayasan Peduli Munti Gunung (YPMG), had been established not long before and director Barrie Smith desperately needed help setting up management and financial structures. The Cloughleys possessed just the skills for the job: Dave had spent 32 years as a paramedic and manager with the WA Ambulance Service; Christine had carved out a career in finance. The pair slotted effortlessly into their mentoring roles. The value of their work was reinforced by their encounters with the people of Munti Gunung, and they relished the days when they could leave their rented house in Sanur and make the trip up to the slopes of eastern Bali. Here they would meet the families struggling to survive in a bone-dry landscape, children suffering from malnutrition and tuberculosis and receiving their education in rudimentary classrooms or beneath tarpaulins strung between the trees. "I learnt how big the difference is between what the tourist sees and reality - the tourist never sees the poverty hidden behind the faรงade of tourism," Dave Cloughley says. By the end of their two-year placement, the foundation had established strong and transparent management structures, secured funding for educational, medical and housing projects and forged valuable partnerships with local hotels. And while the Cloughleys are now enjoying their retirement the traditional Aussie way - by touring the country in a caravan they continue to advise and support YPMG from afar. Says Dave: "Volunteering is a great way to start retirement - knowing we have made a contribution to capacity-building in a developing country and that we have been able to make a difference to people's lives." Switch back to Amy Woodyat to use this social plugin.

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