BARRIE, Ontario — I arrived in this cool Canadian lakeside resort town near Toronto with educators from 40+ countries, each of us paying about $700 for six nights, seven days of room, board, and conference fees. This was the 17th annual International Education and Resource Network (iEARN) gathering for K-12 teachers and students engaged in online collaborative work.
We are proof that it is possible to have a jet-set life on a do-good budget, done through volunteer work with international organizations. There are many such international non-profits (you can find many of them at National Geographic’s Global Action Atlas); but my own low-budget-jetset life revolves around two organizations: Partners of the Americas (DC-Brasìlia chapter), which connects volunteers to serve and change lives in this Hemisphere, and iEARN, which represents about 30,000 teachers and two million students in 125 countries working on projects in 30 languages…..Full story in National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel blog.