'Global Volunteers' Pay to Be Good Samaritans

There is a certain irony in the fact that the group's president was a draft resister and some of its volunteers are Vietnam War veterans. Though he went to military school, Philbrook concluded that he could not participate in the war. "I never harbored any ill will toward the North Vietnamese," he says. In 1970, Philbrook was arrested for resisting the draft. A federal judge acquitted Philbrook because his draft board had denied him due process. "I had applied for conscientious objector status and never received a reply," he says.

Philbrook became a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives in 1974. During his tenure, he says, he was the only politician he knew in the state who regularly visited a nearby native American reservation. "I made the simple deduction that American Indians have been struggling with economic issues in ways I couldn't imagine; the living conditions were just abominable," Philbrook says. "On the other hand, they were as proud and joyful and likable as you can imagine."

This experience, along with a trip to India where he was the "token politician" in a group of scientists and economic advisers, prepared him for a more rigorous sojourn. He and his wife decided to spend one week of their 1979 honeymoon working in a Guatemalan village (the other week they spent at Disney World).

Upon his return, "People were coming up to me and saying, 'I've always wanted to do something like that, but the Peace Corps is too long of a commitment.' "

Unlike the two-year hitch normally required by the government-run Peace Corps, Global Volunteers is a one- to three-week stint. Developing communities invite Philbrook's teams of volunteers to come and help improve their infrastructure. Volunteers pay for the trips, which are tax-deductible because Global is a nonprofit organization. Costs range from $300 for one-week trips to $2,000 for treks to Tver, Russia. One-third of the fee goes to administrative overhead, including Philbrook and his wife's salaries. Volunteers pay their own travel expenses as well.

Volunteers usually live in the rustic homes of host families and eat the same food. "I was eating three delicious Thai meals a day when I was in Indonesia - who could ask for better food than that?" says Sanford Alberts, who did not mind the sparse living conditions. Volunteers might teach English, paint homes, or simply ask local residents what they would like them to do. "People can't believe that we big, bad Americans would come all the way to their land and do what they tell us to do," Philbrook says.

Connie Williams of New Jersey had never seen a cotton field until she joined a Global Volunteers team on a goodwill trip to Jonestown, Miss., in 1993. "As an African-American, I wanted to go see the state that was most notorious in terms of its civil rights record with my own eyes," Ms. Williams says. "When I got there, I was shocked to see that little had changed from the 1960s. People were still picking cotton to make a living."

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