Yesterday, with Matt Damon by our side, we told you about some great charities. Here are some more ways to give back this holiday season (and anytime):

You love: A well-fed world
Give to: Heifer International
Why: Heifer livestock and training help poor villages from Appalachia to Zambia alleviate hunger and become self-reliant

You love: Having healthy neighbors
Give to: Doctors without Borders
Why: These doctors have seen 11,000 patients since August, opened dozens of cholera treatment centers throughout Zimbabwe, and are still going

You love: Keeping it in the family
Give to: Orangutan Foundation International
Why: Our closest relatives are quickly disappearing from places like Borneo and Indonesia because of deforestation and palm oil production

You love: Feeling good about America's future
Give to: Bent on Learning
Why: The organization helps New York Public School students "focus their energies"

You love: You're not sure yet
Give to: Charity Checks
Why: You set the dollar amount, they choose the charity that needs it--and there are about a million

You hate: Your carbon footprint
Give to: Climate Care
Why: To reduce it

Further reading:
* Condé Nast Traveler's 2008 World Savers Awards
* Make a Difference: Resources for caring travelers
* Travel Question? Ask Condé Nast Traveler

Matt Damon on Americans abroad at Condé Nast Traveler's 2008 World Savers Congress. 

In Condé Nast Traveler's September cover story, Matt Damon told us that a chance encounter with a young Zambian villager set him on his current path as founder of H20 Africa, a foundation that supports clean water programs all over the continent.  While we may not have access to Damon's wealth or his A-List friends, many of us--as travelers and as global citizens--have been similarly touched on our own road trips.  So this year, why not consider giving a gift that gives back?

You love: A world full of healthy children
Give to: Condé Nast Traveler's Five & Alive Fund
Why: Nearly 11 million children die every year before the age of 5 and almost all from preventable causes

You love: Ghanaian kenkey bread
Give to: Hot Bread Kitchen
Why: The bakery preserves culturally diverse breadmaking techniques and ingredients, gives jobs to immigrant women, and hopes to provide its bakers with ongoing ESL classes

You love: Rhinos and tigers and polar bears--oh my!
Give to: The World Wildlife Fund
Why: To protect the future of nature

You love: That after all these years, David's pecs are still in good form
Give to: Fondo per L'Ambiente Italiano
Why: According to our resident Italy expert, the group does a great job of conserving gorgeous churches, historic houses, and monuments

You love: Sprawling views, not views of sprawls
Give to: The Nature Conservancy
Why: The conservancy teams up with organizations all over the world to buy wilderness areas that would otherwise be subject to development

Check the Daily Traveler tomorrow for more ways to give back.

Further reading:
* OneXOne, another of Damon's passion projects
* Condé Nast Traveler's 2008 World Savers Awards
* Make a Difference: Resources for caring travelers

Voluntourism--taking a vacation that includes some charity work--is a travel idea whose time has come. In our May 2008 issue, Condé Nast Traveler held the World Savers Contest, asking readers to report on their good deeds with an essay and photo documenting a recent voluntourism trip. A few weeks ago, we posted Beverly Orthwein's winning entry. This week, another one of our favorite contest entries.

by Tom Balliet

It probably all started with my parents' involvement with cub scout and brownie troops, conservation groups, and a swim program for local disabled adults.

My chosen profession as an educator and time spent volunteering at several local agencies and service organizations could have been enough to satisfy my lifelong desire to help make the world a better place. But they weren't.

Since retiring a couple years ago, I have worked with a general contractor-friend on remodeling projects, honing my carpentry skills. This led to a trip to New Orleans to help my pastor in Katrina Relief efforts. I had the time, usable talents, a wish to improve the world, and, yes, an interest in walking down Bourbon Street again.

What an eye opener.

Voluntourism--taking a vacation that includes some charity work--is a travel idea whose time has come. In our May 2008 issue, Condé Nast Traveler held the World Savers Contest, asking readers to report on their good deeds with an essay and photo documenting a recent voluntourism trip. A few weeks ago, we posted Beverly Orthwein's winning entry. This week, another one of our favorite contest entries.

by Richard Brooks

The location was as exotic as one could imagine, deep in the interior of Sri Lanka in a shramadana camp at the village of Dambara.  Let me explain: Shramadana means "sharing of labor."  The Sarvodaya Movement had invited us to work with hundreds of villagers, repairing the irrigation canals that would deliver water to their paddy fields during the off season.  Similar events had taken place thousands of times in the grassroots movement's 45-year history.  Sarvodaya means "the awakening of all." 

Volunteers came from surrounding villages and districts throughout the island, joined by visitors from the U.S., Japan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, France and the UK.  The evening began with ceremony--inspiration, pledges of harmony and a commitment to work together for the common good.  That first night, we sat on the floor of the Buddhist temple with the entire population of the village.

My host family's home had just enough room for me, their three daughters, mother, and father, who toiled in the paddy field down the hill.  Each of the three days I stayed with them, we drank tea together and ate rice and curry, exchanging smiles and questions.  They had much to ask, as did I.

Voluntourism--taking a vacation that includes some charity work--is a travel idea whose time has come. In our May 2008 issue, Condé Nast Traveler held the World Savers Contest, asking readers to report on their good deeds with an essay and photo documenting a recent voluntourism trip. A couple of weeks ago, we posted Beverly Orthwein's winning entry. This week, another one of our favorite contest entries.

by Jeanne Andrews

This picture still haunts me. The fact that I had to turn around and get into our air-conditioned van and drive back to our safe, clean, and protected volunteer house in San Salvador, El Salvador, leaving these children from the orphanage reaching out for us, still causes my heart to constrict. Never before have I walked away from children that I knew were in unsafe, unclean, and unhealthy surroundings, and there wasn't a bloody thing I could do about it.   

I was one of 30 volunteers who joined a mission/sightseeing trip to El Salvador with the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart in June of 2007. We were a group made up of high school students and their parents, teachers, and adults like me, who all wanted to experience a trip where we could give back. Some spoke Spanish; many of us did not. Gloria Petrone, who runs the El Salvador mission, can only be described as one of those "higher souls" that roams our planet--someone who does more good for more people on an hourly basis than a hundred people accomplish in a year. Sr. Petrone arranged for us to bring clothing and medical supplies to the orphanage in Izalco, help build a senior center in the village of Granadillas, and teach in the village of Las Delicias. A senior center was needed, she explained, because when families leave El Salvador to go to the United States, they often abandon their elders. Villagers were building this senior center--without the aid of construction vehicles or modern tools--to provide hot meals, showers, and a place for seniors to go during the daytime. We had no idea where they slept at night.

"Playground time" with the elephants.
Photo: Cathy Esibill

Voluntourism--taking a vacation that includes some charity work--is a travel idea whose time has come. In our May 2008 issue, Condé Nast Traveler held the World Savers Contest, asking readers to report on their good deeds with an essay and photo documenting a recent voluntourism trip. Last week, we posted Beverly Orthwein's winning entry. This week, another one of our favorite contest entries.

by Cathy Esibill

Partly due to my fascination with all animals, my husband and I decided to spend part of our last trip abroad volunteering on an elephant park in northwestern Thailand. The Elephant Nature Park was founded by Sangduen "Lek" Chailert, a petite Thai women with a massive capacity for love. She has dedicated her life to the plight of the Asian elephants, which suffer ill-treatment and misunderstanding--with little protection from the Thai government.

The park is situated 60 kilometers north of Chiang Mai and is currently home to 31 elephants. Lek's goal is to provide a natural sanctuary for the animals while raising awareness about the traditional--and abusive--domesticating practices that still persist today. Volunteering at the park was a wonderful and fulfilling experience. During the day we participated in various tasks that included (but were not limited to) cleaning up after the elephants and other farm animals, preparing their food, planting crops like corn, building wheelbarrows, tables, and benches, and--my favorite--making treats called "banana balls." Our reward was elephant feeding and bathing time. Two times each day, we happily fed them their fill of bananas, pineapples, cucumbers, and watermelon. Afterward, we followed the elephants and their mahouts to the river. Once there, the elephants would lie down in the stream as we scrubbed them clean with buckets and brushes.

World Savers Contest winner Beverly Orthwein on location in Kenya.

Voluntourism--taking a vacation that includes some charity work--is a travel idea whose time has come. In our May 2008 issue, Condé Nast Traveler held the World Savers Contest, asking readers to report on their good deeds with an essay and photo documenting a recent voluntourism trip. Our winner, Beverly Orthwein of Greenwich, Connecticut, displayed that passion and commitment we were looking for. Read her winning entry below, and stay tuned to the Daily Traveler to read more of our favorite contest entries.

It all began in November 2005, standing at the edge of the Milgis Lugga, around a roaring campfire at dawn, having coffee and admiring the Southern Cross setting over the Ndoto Mountains. My first trip to Kenya, and as with many, I had fallen madly in love with this country from first footfall. Our group was trekking on camel safari with Samburu warriors, led by the famous Helen Douglas-Dufresne and her partner Pete Ilsley. They had worked with this magnificent tribe for years, during which Helen had become their champion supporter. She helped formed the Milgis Trust (named after the region's major river), which works with local Samburu chiefs and elders to support the wildlife, habitat, and way of life of this pastoral tribe of northern Kenya.

Pete told me about a charity out of England called MEAK (Medical and Educational Aid to Kenya), which treated Samburu with severe eye problems the previous spring. Blindness is ten times more prevalent in Kenya than in the Western world, and this charity holds clinics around Kenya to help address the issue. Lack of vitamin A, dry and dusty conditions, improper hygiene, lack of available medical treatment--all of these are things that contribute to a high rate of blindness.

How to turn this patch into those ones?
Photo: Alexandra Panzer and David Gumbiner

Last May, Condé Nast Traveler covered voluntourism, the practice of combining volunteer work with holidays, with hands-on anecdotes provided by our editors. All fine and good, but we want to hear your stories. First up, Alexandra Panzer and David Gumbiner. Recent college grads, Alexandra and David have set off with her friend David Gumbiner on a five-month tour of Europe and Asia with an emphasis on volunteering and participating in "green" projects. She'll be posting her exploits on the DT during the weeks ahead. Below, her first post.

by Alexandra Panzer and David Gumbiner

Our packs were heavy and the sun was bright as we stumbled off a train in the Lot River Valley of Southwest France. This was to be the first of the voluntourism efforts we had planned for the coming months, and we looked around curiously for our WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) host.

WWOOF is a network of national organizations that connect organic farms with willing workers from all backgrounds. As a WWOOFer you are fed, housed, and welcomed into the farm family in exchange for between four and eight hours of labor on weekdays.

On our host Eric's small farm, the work was simple and rewarding. During the days we worked in the fields, and in the afternoons we helped build a major extension on his house using recycled wood and his neighbor's leftover sheep's wool for insulation. We worked hard, but we never felt like employees. At lunch and dinner breaks we would sit down with satisfied groans, grinning at what we had accomplished.