Spring Break Volunteer
1 week

Transfer in Quito

Trip to Quilotoa
This one-day cultural tour will take you to one of the most beautiful lagoons in South America – the amazing Laguna Quilotoa and the surrounding villages, paying special attention to the culture and the rural life of the indigenous andean population.

1. SOCIAL PROJECT: Market Outreach Program to provide early childhood education to working children
This intervention program takes a very proactive approach, traveling to the markets around greater Quito to approach children and their parents to talk to them about the importance of education and early childhood development. Additionally, the staff and volunteers set up tents at the markets where they offer opportunities for thematic early childhood education, including recreation, health/hygiene, values, identity, and education. By meeting these children on their turf, the program has achieved incredibly success in recruiting and maintaining attendees to the pre-school programs, along with ultimate reduction in the children’s work hours and matriculation in public schools. Volunteers get to work directly with the over 160 children enrolled in this program and witness first-hand the consequences of a globalized, market economy that has made the struggle for poor, subsistence communities even more of a challenge.

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2.  CONSERVATION PROJECT: Amazonian wildlife rescue and rehabilitation
(located 5 hours away from Quito, this project requires additional transportation and an extra cost will be charged)

A family started the wildlife refuge and it’s a privately funded sanctuary for rescued and confiscated wild animals. It is sometimes open to the public and school groups for tours, providing education about these species and their fate as illegal pets or trafficked animals, but their main goal is the protection of animal and plant life in the Amazon through the rescue and rehabilitation of flora and fauna.

Although a relatively new center, they are expanding rapidly and always working to improve the lives of the animals, with the ultimate goal of releasing them back out into the wild. Some of the animals there are: wooly monkeys, spider monkeys, squirrel monkeys, tortoises and turtles, crocodiles, parrots and macaws, pigs, and a variety of animals native to the Amazon jungle region of the country.

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3.  COMMUNITY PROJECT: Ecotourism, agroecology and community development
(located 1hour and a half away from Quito, this project requires additional transportation and an extra cost will be charged)

This project is a mixed rural community composed by 50 families, located an hour away from Quito. It is a group of people that work every day in order to develop economic alternatives that allow them to improve their quality of life without losing their principles, values and, above all, their sense of community. In 1995 they began a process of community organization and conservation through a forestry project. The project was supported by NGOs and international cooperation, which also implemented sustainable productive activities such as organic gardening, small dairy processing factories, fruit for making jams and ecotourism.

A couple of years ago, with the support of other organizations, this location was declared to be in a protected area. In order to achieve conservation of this area in the long term, there has been no incentive for monocultures, the use of agrochemicals, logging, or mass tourism. Also, scientific research programs that help rescue the biological and cultural wealth of the area are projects that are promoted. Their main objective is to improve the quality of life of its people through the sustainable use of the natural resources of the area.

 

City Tour in Quito
The historic center of Quito has one of the largest, least-altered and best-preserved historic centers in the Americas. Quito, along with Kraków, were the first World Cultural Heritage Sites declared by UNESCO on 18 September 1978. It is located in the center south of the capital on an area of 320 hectares and is considered one of the most important historic areas in Latin America. There are about 130 monumental buildings which hosts a variety of pictorial art and sculpture, mostly of religious inspired in a multi-faceted range of schools and styles and 5,000 properties registered in the municipal inventory of heritage properties.

Transfer out to take the international flight