Alpine Fund Volunteer With Orphans

80s Cargo Van Owners May Not Apply

VOLUNTEER IN KYRGYZSTAN

Taking a trip for your own pleasure is at best selfish. Enjoying good food and mountain scenery while nearby villagers eat grass pies indicates a potentially sociopathic personality. It is inexcusable to vacation in a 3rd world country without picking up a shovel. You might as well throw pennies at the natives and laugh in an 18th century British accent, that’s how bad it looks. Some people honestly don’t know that volunteer-vacations exist - they are forgiven. But now you know, so no more excuses. If after reading this article you travel without volunteering, then you are not just evil, you are Google Don’t Be Evil, evil.

Avoid Packaged Volunteer Vacations

I won’t give you a list of packaged volunteer vacation tours. My goal is to show you how to be a spontaneous, life long volunteer, not a poser who drops three large on a volunteer tour solely for resume padding. Just fly to Bishkek and figure out the details later.

ALPINE FUND

Bishkek has many orphans. Tiny Timur lives a harsh existance behind the grey, pre-fab concrete walls of a formerly-Soviet home for boys. He eats porridge in the morning, and in the evening. Despite living an eye’s distance from the most beautiful mountains on earth, Tiny Timur has never climbed them. Bishkek orphans can only stare from far away, faces pressed up against the candy store window, unable to get inside.

As an Alpine Fund volunteer, you’ll go on hikes with abandoned Kyrgyz children. Other activities include cooking shashlik at 15,000 feet, roasting marshmellows and telling scary stories around a roaring campfire. Experience as a youth counselor or teacher is not necessary. Simply enter their office and say you want to help. Owning an 80s cargo van with a sign on the side that says “FREE CANDY” is grounds for immediate disqualification.

Ahunbaeva 119A #502
Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan
Phone: (996-312) 47-16-35
Email: kyg@alpinefund.org
Website: www.alpinefund.org

HABITAT FOR HUMANITY OF KYRGYZSTAN

After landing in Bishkek, buy a shovel, saw, hammer and box nails, then proceed to the Habitat for Humanity Office. You will be taken to a site where homes are being constructed for poor, working class Kyrgyz. Experience is not required. Who doesn’t know how to bang a hammer or push a wheelbarrow? The home you help build will not be turned into an opium den. Families are pre-screened to ensure they are serious, honest and not crony relatives of a senator. All have jobs and are hard working, but nonetheless simply do not earn enough money to buy their own home.

Room 70
52 Prospect Mira
720044 Bishkek
Kyrgyzstan
Phone: +996 312541599
Fax: +996 312541599
E-mail: Noffice@habitat.elcat.kg
URL: www.habitat.elcat.kg