Travel Guides

If you are interested in conservation and helping out local communities, then a great way to spend

 your holiday break this year is to join a volunteer project. There are hundreds of different projects around, from lending a hand in cleaning up local parks and nature reserves, to travelling to third world countries to give aid and support to those living on and below the poverty line.

Projects that you and your friends can get involved with include volunteering for conservation projects on the various RSPB reserves. This involves a number of different tasks, and with depend on the level of your groups skills, and the type of reserve in your area, but previous groups have helped to build pathways and resting spots along nature walks, painted murals to cheer up RSPB visitor centres and car parks, and cleared ground of bracken to encourage the growth of native plants. You can go to the RSPB website or contact your local reserve to set up a volunteer project, but you may need to provide some of your own materials such as protective gloves or paints, so make sure you factor this into your budget along with travel and food expenses when you are in the planning stages. 

Slum Tourism is a relatively new phenomenon, and has been widely criticised in the media for exploiting those living on and below the poverty line, and has been deemed ‘voyeurism’ rather that tourism. Some media types are calling this form of excursion ‘poorism‘, as it involves taking tours of some of the world’s most poverty stricken communities, and is said to have begun about 15 years ago in Brazil, when the company Favela Tour began to give guided tours around Rio De Janeiro’s largest and poorest shantytown or ‘favela’.