By Cathy Herholdt
Reprinted with permission from the Journal Newspapers
Real estate agents Leigh Buchan and Diane Ellis were having a beer one night and discussing the speaker they’d heard that day. He had asked them to consider the 100 things they wanted to do before they die. Ellis mentioned she wanted to go to Tibet or Africa; Buchan, who has a background in church mission work, concurred, and by the end of the evening the two ambitious women had a trip to a Tibetan village all planned.
Wanting to do more than just visit, they contacted a man Buchan knows who does development work in a remote area there and asked if there was a project that needed to be done. They decided to raise money to build a kitchen for a rustic school.
“We knew that was the way to go into the culture,” said Ellis of their project.
“It sounded like way more fun,” added Buchan.
They raised $5,000, which was doubled twice by matching donors, providing $20,000 for the school rebuilding fund in a village that hadn’t had running water in its 500-year existence. They hiked 23 kilometers to elevations of up to 13,000 feet to reach the village, then spent three weeks in rural homes there while the work was completed with the help of the townspeople.
“We thought, that’s it, we need to do this again,” said Ellis. “This was a very cool thing and we thought people needed to see this side of travel.”
After each took individual trips to Africa, the friends founded a nonprofit called “Go the Second Mile” to offer meaningful travel experiences to others who wanted to combine exploring another country with the desire to make a difference in the world.
Since that first trip to Tibet, they have taken groups to Peru to build a children’s center for street kids, to the poorest section of Acuna, Mexico to work on a school, and to Costa Rica to feed and teach English to inner city children. They always combine the volunteer portion of the trip with a vacation element at the end, such as spending a few days in the national park in Costa Rica. “We do have a sense of adventure underlying all of this,” said Ellis.
But it’s the service aspect that is life changing for most participants. Their mission is two-fold. “We empower people [in the countries they visit] to do the work themselves, and we make better global citizens out of the volunteers,” said Buchan. “It’s a great opportunity to be culturally aware and not objectify the underprivileged. It breaks down barriers and people come back and want to help here. The real transformational piece is that when people rub shoulders with those who don’t have as much, they realize they don’t need as much [themselves].”
Each trip is prefaced by a retreat where participants learn about cultural issues in the country they’ll be visiting, what to expect while they’re there, and how to be sensitive and helpful to others, said Buchan. They also write down personal goals for the trip. The groups debrief each day while traveling and keep journals to process their experiences. Before they return home, they write a post card to themselves about what they want to remember most. Ellis and Buchan then mail those cards to travelers about six months after they return home as a reminder of their experience.
“Poverty can be an overwhelming thing and people can shut down. You have to prepare mentally,” explained Buchan. “We talk a lot about reverse culture shock when we return.”
The tag line for Go the Second Mile is, “Changing lives one trip at a time.” Ellis said they hope to leave the places they visit better off than when they arrived and bring volunteer tourists back with a desire to help others.
With this in mind, the group has three upcoming trips planned: to Costa Rica, June 26 through July 5; to Burundi (Africa) in July to help build houses for the Batwa indigenous tribe; and an educational trip to Rwanda in October that will allow participants to meet genocide survivors and study the role of forgiveness in reconciliation.
Ellis and Buchan believe combining volunteer travel with adventure appeals to a large group of people who want their experiences to have meaning and purpose — those who “want to roll up their sleeves and do some work,” said Buchan. “We think there is an innate desire to give back — to live your life outside yourself.”
