Diane Ellis and Leigh Buchan co-founded Go the Second Mile based on the belief that lives can be improved and poverty can be overcome by working together. Our volunteer trips provide a holistic approach to helping people help themselves. By fostering local partnerships, our teams have an opportunity to engage in another culture while at the same time serving the host community in a mindful, appropriate, and need based way.
Go the Second Mile is an organization that advocates for children, women and families in the world who are victims of poverty and injustice. By partnering with in-country NGO’s, communities and individuals tackling these complex issues we are jointly able to determine where we can be most effective. We believe that injustice and poverty can be overcome by working together.
We provide you with a way to bring yourself, your resources, your time and your talents to interact with those from the developing nations in unique and meaningful ways.
What sets us apart from other volunteer travel organizations?
- We do not believe in gratuitous giving designed to just make us feel good
- All of our field projects have been determined by the end user and generally require participation by those who stand to benefit the most from our work
- We recognize that often the greatest transformation from meaningful travel are in those exposed to a foreign culture for the first time.
- We intentionally cultivate transformative opportunities through pre and post team training designed to take advantage of the experience. Our volunteer programs provide a vehicle to know first hand the satisfaction of global travel as a unique way of giving back and serving others.
- We believe that we are giving people an opportunity to live out their inherent desire to see justice prevail and to set things right in the world. Our projects, training and destinations all have this as a fundamental component.
Who have we helped?
- Rwanda Africa: Rwanda is a country determined to recover from the ravages of genocide. We partner with Steven Turikunkiko who works with a village of widows and orphans to build a self sustaining life for themselves. Steven has also taken in 22 orphans and 3 widows to his own household, many of whom have HIV/Aids. The help he receives from us an others helps to offer much needed food and medical supplies. We have gone to Rwanda Africa and contribute to the needs of a village Burundi Africa. We will bring a team summer of 2010 to spend time with and offer a hand to the Batwa people, one of the most marginalized groups in all of Africa.
- Philippines, Southeast Asia: We have worked with and contribute to Arms of Love, an organization that has Children’s Centers in 5 locations worldwide that are involved in preventive and/or advocacy work for abandoned children.
- Acuna, Mexico: We worked alongside the students and faculty of Alpha Omega School to help improve the conditions of the class rooms. This school represents the only junior and senior high school educational opportunity many of these kids have.
- Zhongdian, Traditional Tibet, China: We contributed to the renovating of a dilapidated school in Nizu, Tibet, a place where educational opportunities were severely limited. We will take another team back to this remote village in Fall of 2009, to work with them towards their self sustaining goals. It will be an amazing experience as we see and spend time with the Tibetan culture first hand.
- Iquitos, Peru: We support two street children now living with foster parents in Iquitos Peru as well took several teams down providing medical outreaches to remote villages, and helped construct a children’s center for children living on the streets of Iquitos.
- San Jose, Costa Rica: We are working with an organization that has three community centers in the most impoverished sections of San Jose providing a variety of programs to nourish, enrich and educate the poorest victims of society.
Please see the upcoming schedule of meaningful travel opportunities on our website, www.go2ndmile.org or call: 206-730-1319 or email at info@go2ndmile.org.
