Lavallee, who is community outreach coordinator with Logic Supply Co. in South Burlington, and Vermont Woman’s Tech-Connect columnist, told us she had decided to look for a volunteer vacation. Something in a different country. And working with animals.

Lavallee searched online for “volunteer Africa,” then “volunteer Africa animals,” and then she had it: two weeks in Zimbabwe working on a lion conservation.

Lavallee had found African Impact (www.africanimpact.com), a volunteer travel organization with locations around the African continent, including the site she finally chose. Antelope Park is a lion preserve with a breeding program in Zimbabwe.

She and her friend and traveling companion, Bradley Auclair, paid $2,000 each for the opportunity to live and work at the park for two weeks, including food, lodging and activities. It cost another $2,000 each for round-trip plane tickets. Once there, they would care for the lions, take paying customers on walks with the lions, and help with feeding, cleaning, and other chores.

The pair of travelers flew into Zimbabwe, greeted at the airport by representatives from African Impact, who drove them and their luggage to the park. On their first night, they got to meet baby lion cubs. But the real excitement came the next day, when they were brought out to the lion field, a large enclosure, to meet the adults.

“The best way to meet lions is to let them come to you,” Lavallee explained. So she and Auclair were led out, to stand in the open and wait for the lions to approach. “Out came these two lions, just running towards us!” she says. Thankfully, they were friendly, but that experience set the tone. “The female rubbed her head against us. They are so excited to see you.”

The couple’s first day continued with a lion walk, working with a professional trainer. There was always a professional trainer on hand.

“There was lots of training in the first few days,” says Lavallee. In the following days, they made toys for the lions, took them on walks, prepared their meals, and cleaned their dens.

After their first week at Antelope Park, Lavallee and Auclair expressed interest in being more hands-on. The Park includes not only plant and animal conservation efforts, but a primary school, a drop-in center for street children and an orphanage that the volunteers help maintain.

The travelers’ role evolved into community work, such as working with locals to plant trees in the preserve and repair fences. And they spent their weekends working at the orphanage owned by African Impact.

Volunteers there help with services and with teaching and also just keeping the place painted and repaired. Their facilities’ sustainability is the goal. In fact, sustainability was a theme throughout their African Impact experience, Lavallee said. Most notably, the food served—all meals were included in their stay—was either grown on-site or sourced locally.

The African Impact breeding program’s goal is to release lions back into the wild. Their mission also includes education about the lions, essential for their conservation. African Impact teaches local communities about lions’ importance to Africa and its ecosystems. They aim to help dispel fear of the lions.

Lavallee came home, very happy with her volunteer vacation. She credits having been careful to choose the right program for her. She left, feeling like she had made a difference. “The goal for me was to do something bigger. This trip gave me the real sense that we were doing something to better the lions’ future.”

She isn’t alone. There is a new breed of vacationers seeking something more than the typical retreat to a luxury resort or cruise ship. And there’s a growing range of vacations to meet the demand. Vacationers can choose to volunteer, learn a new skill, or be exposed to new cultures and landscapes. A recent survey of over 400 adults by CheapTickets.com found that half those surveyed had already participated in a volunteer vacation. More than half would consider adding volunteer activities to their already planned vacations.

These more meaningful vacations can focus on sustainable agriculture, personal and community health, conservation, personal exploration, environmental repair, or public assistance. Or they can simply be an opportunity to step out of one’s ordinary life for a period of reflection and a new perspective.

A Taste of Culture

Vacations can be an opportunity to learn about a new culture through exposure to food, art, culture and traditions. Cultural Crossroads (www.culturalcrossroads.com), based in Barre, offers private small-group tours on all seven continents. Owned by Carrie McDougall, Cultural Crossroads’ tours have been named by both National Geographic and Traveler Magazine as one of their Top 50 trips—including trips to Sicily to experience the food and wine, trips to Ireland to take in art, and journeys to Arabic regions to learn about a different culture.

McDougall likes to incorporate surprises in her well-researched tours, organized for small groups; for instance, she is arranging this summer’s VPR Citizen of the World tours, to Morocco with Steve Zind, and to Barcelona and Provence with Charlie Nardozzi.

As a surprise on one trip, she told her guests not to have breakfast on their own in the morning, but instead to meet outside. They were led to an old olive grove, where a local farmer was waiting with fresh sheep’s milk.

He prepared a liquid steeped with fig branches, McDougall said, and added this to the milk, causing it to curdle. In front of her guests’ eyes, the farmer had made fresh ricotta. They ate this on fresh-baked bread for breakfast.

This year, she’s introduced a new gourmet wine and food trip, Dig into Vermont’s Edible Landscape. It’s scheduled for early June and again in August. Her website describes it for travelers this way, “Vermont is a leader in the Local Food Movement and Community Development tied to authentic food experiences….This trip is very behind-the-scenes and connected to the leaders in this incredible food movement.”

McDougall’s customers have sent her glowing testimonials over the years. Comments from customers often include “a trip of a lifetime!” Descriptors such as amazing, excellent, well-executed, fabulous and wonderful are common.

But a common theme throughout the testimonials is that the tours took the fear and worry out of traveling, while also exposing participants to authentic and unique experiences.

Changing Perspective Sheryl Rapee-Adams, a massage therapist in Montpelier and another Vermont Woman contributor, describes herself as a reluctant traveler. She’s more of a homebody. She recently traveled to Guatemala for a memoir-writing workshop because the teacher was her cousin, storyteller and memoirist Andrea Moskowitz. “She invited me,” says Rapee-Adams. The workshop traveled to the Mayan village of San Marcos La Laguna to write on Lake Atitlan, at the house of U.S. author Joyce Maynard (After Her, To Die For, Labor Day). During their stay, the workshop attendees slept at local inns, ate at local restaurants, and used local guides. Rapee-Adams had submitted a piece of memoir writing ahead of time. It would become the focus of her eight-day writing workshop.

The writers in attendance spent their days doing writing exercises, and working through their writing submissions with feedback from the professionals on-hand. The teachers would ask deep-reaching questions to “pull out your experiences,” she says. “It was a workshop to help us start telling our stories.”

But in the end, what stayed with Rapee-Adams wasn’t the feeling of a vacation or the writing. Her piece has since sat unfinished. She was most moved by seeing Guatemala.

She pointed out that the people were poor. There were environmental problems, government corruption and a high level of suffering. “If I were to go back, I would return on a relief mission,” she said.

Sarah Galbraith is a freelance writer living in Marshfield, Vermont.