Difference Between Alternative Breaks and "Voluntourism"
“Voluntourism" is the integrated combination of voluntary service to a destination with the traditional elements of travel and tourism - arts, culture, geography, history, and recreation - while in the destination. (cite - voluntourism.org) Volunteer vacations are not alternative breaks because participants arrive as individuals with no prior preparation with educational components or group building.
Alternative breaks typically involve college students from the same institution, while most groups going on volunteer vacations will meet for the first time when they arrive in the location of the trip.
Alternative break groups meet and prepare for their experience up to six months in advance of their departure. During this preparation period there is an emphasis on learning about the social issues addressed during the trip, learning about the community, becoming oriented with the mission and values of the organization, training for any skills they may need while on the trip, and team building. Some groups even do relevant service in their college communities prior to departure.
Read more about this topic: Alternative Break
Famous quotes containing the words difference between, difference, alternative and/or breaks:
“The difference between faith and superstition is that the first uses reason to go as far as it can, and then makes the jump; the second shuns reason entirely—which is why superstition is not the ally, but the enemy, of true religion.”
—Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986)
“That was always the difference between Muhammad Ali and the rest of us. He came, he saw, and if he didn’t entirely conquer—he came as close as anybody we are likely to see in the lifetime of this doomed generation.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization.... Presented with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit.”
—Ivan Chtcheglov (b. 1934)
“Again and again, faith in a possible satisfaction of the human race breaks through at the very moments of most zealous discord because humankind will never be able to live and work without this consoling delusion of its ascent into morality, without this dream of final and ultimate accord.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)