In contrast to other volunteer vacation programs, JWOC assigns each volunteer based on professional expertise. One volunteer, a former pharmaceutical executive with a brain for numbers and organization, was put in charge of streamlining the micro-loan program's books; a volunteer who worked at Visa developed a curriculum that the scholarship students teach loan recipients to help them create business plans; I, meanwhile, was assigned to write two articles for the newsletter to donors. With this system, no time is wasted training volunteers, and JWOC benefits from know-how that it would otherwise have to pay for.

The guilt that I often feel as a traveler in the developing world had little chance to gain traction in Cambodia. My reticence to give money to beggars (I was once scammed by a girl in India) might have lost out to the land mine victims looking for handouts near Siem Reap. But while it was painful to walk by, each time I mentally added another dollar to the check I'd write to JWOC. Harder to justify was the traipsing around Angkor Wat: Few sections were roped off, and my guide insisted that we could walk along the weathered stones. The director of Heritage Watch, an NGO trying to conserve cultural artifacts, agreed that unrestricted access is bad but argued that the larger challenge for Cambodia is the brevity of most trips: Tourists typically spend a day or two at Angkor Wat and then move on to Thailand or Vietnam. Journeys Within keeps guests in Cambodia longer, through volunteer work and tours like a kayak trip from a village on Tonle Sap Lake.

I left Cambodia without the weight of the world's problems on my shoulders. For once I stayed at a first-class hotel in the developing world and didn't feel some shame at my good fortune. As Journeys Within president Brandon Ross put it, "You may not be able to change the world, but you can change lives." Just as important was the faith my visit gave me in JWOC. The ideal voluntourism program aims to both make use of travelers' time and earn their future support. After watching the staff—Americans and Cambodians—work so diligently, I knew that whatever money I could give them would be well spent.

Peru
A Stove Maker's Lesson
In a highland farming community with her teenage son, Dorinda Elliott discovers that the questions she comes away with are just as important as what she gives

I could see my eighteen-year-old son, Oliver, in the distance on the hillside, wandering among the cows. In theory, he was helping to build a stove for a family of Peruvian farmers. But it turned out that he had been bonding with his Peruvian "family" over a home-brewed sugarcane alcohol called yonque. Apparently while on a break from his work, he launched a dancing contest in the yard with the family's small daughter.

We had come to the farming community of Cadmalca, in the Peruvian highlands, on a volunteer adventure organized by GAP Adventures, a for-profit tour operator. The program was set up by Ben Eastwood, an Australian who came through several years ago and suggested that the farmers, who had been cooking on open fires for centuries, might like stoves with chimneys. Respiratory infections are the biggest killer in Peru, accounting for twelve percent of all deaths, in part because of this cooking method. Nonetheless, I wondered about the value of having a group of unskilled tourists build stoves. Wouldn't it be better to just give the money—some $950 without airfare—directly to the farmers and let them build the stoves themselves, providing employment in the process?