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Global Volunteers
Travel that feeds the soul
by Maggie Kraft

I am a travel freak concerned about the negative impact of travel. Traveling to exotic places to "get away from it all" while expecting western conveniences places a strain on the resources that make the place exotic. The fuel used to get us there has a huge environmental impact as well.

I am not advocating that we stop travelling. However, we can travel in environmentally and culturally sensitive ways that can feed our wanderlust and also do some good.
During the Christmas holiday I volunteered with a group called Global Volunteers to work at The Immokalee Friendship House, a homeless shelter in the middle of southern Florida's agriculture region. Immokalee is a small town of 18,000 inhabitants whose population doubles during the growing season when farm workers arrive. Many of those are young men from Central America who live in mostly substandard housing if they can find housing. Immokalee House provides three meals a day and temporary shelter in a dorm for 22 men and has family housing in rooms with beds for up to seven family members. Residents do chores and have to follow strict rules forbidding drug and alcohol use.

Our team of nine women, mostly in their 40s and 50s, were there to help serve a Christmas Eve dinner to the migrant community and to distribute gifts to the children. We would do odd jobs around the shelter after Christmas (including sorting of donations received from community members). A large corps of volunteers, many from Fort Myers and Naples, served more than 1,400 meals in a three-hour period and distributed gifts to more than 400 children. We lived out of our suitcases and slept on air mattresses and for the week. We helped cook meals created from a variety of donated foods and ate what we served. We learned about the local economy and the lives of the workers.
With the help of Spanish speaking interpreters, we talked to the young men and learned how they had come to Immokalee. Some shared about their lives in their homelands, their dreams for their families, and desire for a better life. Workers made $5.15 per hour six days a week in the fields, compared with possibly $3 a day back home, they told us. Some of the men in the shelter had fake papers. If and when they are sent back to their home country, others will come and take their places. The agriculture economies of Florida, Texas, and California, would stop dead if the flow of "illegals" were to stop.

I came home with a deep appreciation for what I have in my life. I have a deepened respect for the migrants who make my life easier with their hard work. The people I met in Immokalee want for their families what all of us want for ours-a safe place to live, food on the table, a chance to succeed, and to be treated with dignity.
Global Volunteers (GV) is a Minnesota based organization providing the opportunity for travel and exploration with a philosophy of service and is primarily concerned about promoting and enhancing human dignity. GV focuses its efforts in rural communities (four sites in the United States and 12 internationally) with the goal to work with the local people to build their capacity to become self-reliant and to experience hope for their future. For information call 800-487-1074 or visit the GV web page at globalvolunteers.org.

Maggie Kraft is director of the Adult Day Health Services program of the Humboldt Senior Resource Center. Her e-mail is mkraft@adhs-hsrc.org.