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Wonder Women: Girls Finding Secondary Education in Morocco
The echoed singing through the minaret softly enters your ears, and you rub your eyes to adjust to the faint light. You lay in bed in the dark, the call to prayer continues as an alarm clock for the village. With out the capability of a snooze button, you comply, getting up, reaching for your headscarf, your feet finding warmth from your cold floor onto your prayer rug, facing Mecca as you begin Fajr, your morning prayers. As the sun begins to pierce through the windows, the cool mountain air in your room is warmed by the early morning light. You dip your flatbread in Argan oil at breakfast, quickly…
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Termite Poop & Cheap Whiskey: Volunteering in Zambia
The ritual of walking into town and perusing through the two markets became somewhat of a game. Each day ended the same, we would be picked up from the work site and driven back to camp. A group of us would descend into town, with dirt under our nails, dust in our pony tails and mud on our shoes. We stopped next door to the barber shop to pick up fresh, fried doughnuts from the same lovely women with her two girls always wanting to help collect the change. Then, it was off to see if there was anything new that was delivered to the market. We’d take our collection…
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A Peru Trip: Philanthropy in Photography
The clanging on the metal door rang hard through the air, the knocking sound reverberated across the playground and presumably through the streets of a small bread-making town outside of Cusco. Little feet in worn shoes charged across the grass towards the door, taking turns letting in friends and then quickly returning to whatever game they were invested in, marbles, soccer, watering the garden, or playing in the sand. It seemed to be a repetitive task each afternoon, children in matching school uniforms spilling in after classes, the large rusty metal door as quickly as it closed would swing swiftly open, welcoming in dozens of kids each day. The program…
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Cambodia Wildlife Sanctuary & My Week in the Forest
I lay still in the darkness, my eyes sleepy, my ears still awake listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the forest around me. Chirping, creaking and the rustling of leaves around the stilts of the hut. Occasionally the echoed sound of a lizard, “ggggecko” reverberated in my ear, the noise so close it could have been resting on my shoulder. The humming of the generator stopped and all had gone black so I knew it was after 10pm. In the corner of my little hut, enveloped by a pink mosquito net that encircled my bed, the night so quiet and black that it was almost too peaceful to sleep. Unable…
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Elephant Nature Park: Pachyderm Paradise
She gracefully swings her trunk over along the thick, gray, wrinkled ear of another elephant. Â They stand next to each other in the field, tapping gently with their trunks, communicating through noises they send through their long noses. Â The elephant is talking to her friend in a way she can understand since she is unable to see. Â They lightly trumpet to one another, the calls are low pitched squeaks. Â Our group stands and quietly watches them as they chat over their lunch, like a couple of ladies at a cafe for brunch. Â It is such a treat to see elephant behaviors in a space that is more like their natural…
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Best of both worlds: Vacationing and Volunteering
Love the satisfaction and helpfulness you feel when you have completed a volunteer project? Craving some vacation time away from the office? Â Voluntourism, or volunteer travel, combines your need for a break away from the mundane to an exciting place while simultaneously filling that humanitarian instinct. Champion a Cause Do you have something that’s important to you? Â Show you care and find a group, a travel company or non profit that offers a program for you to be able to help build a house, help a sick or endangered animal or rebuild a community after a natural disaster. Â If nothing comes to mind right away, no problem! Â This may be…
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World Elephant Day 2013
What kind of elephant lover am I that I was unaware of World Elephant Day until the eleventh hour!  Once I found out I immediately took the opportunity to pull up my hundreds of photos from my experience at the Elephant Nature Park in Chiang Mai, Thailand and write about my experience.  When I first was planning my trip to Thailand, I excitedly did some research into what exotic things I could do and see while there and the first thing I looked into was going on an elephant trek.  Riding elephants, I mean what American wouldn’t love that right?  The more I looked into riding the elephants the worse I…