Consider spending this summer doing something exceptional and worthwhile. VISIONS Service Adventures offers community service programs for teens ages 14-18 who spend a month during their summers living and working in communities all over the world. Our high school community service summer programs are grounded by a program framework of a few very specific elements, while also comprised of different ingredients – friendship, global awareness, cultural discovery, adventure, travel... But the most important, underpinning ingredient or piece is service.

Our participants typically spend about 55% of their time working on projects designated by and planned with the host community. We work very closely with each community to determine its needs and desires. We then plan projects – both construction and non-construction – for our volunteers to accomplish by working hard together, as a team. As a volunteer, you will work side by side with professional carpenters, local masons and maestros from the community in which you live.

Some of our community partnerships are two decades old. Relationship-building is central to the quality of VISIONS service projects and the overall cross-cultural experience. Since 1989 just of few of the construction projects participants have completed include community centers, houses, fire halls, bridges, greenhouses, schools and school furniture, potable water systems village-wide, irrigation canals, latrines, fences and walls, roads, ceramic ovens, ceremonial arbors, and more.

In addition to construction projects, our volunteers can opt to engage in other non-construction projects in the same program location: creating and painting murals, community cleanup and landscaping , work with young children in day camps or tutoring, road paving, agricultural and artisan apprenticeships, environmental surveying, gardening and farming.

VISIONS Service Adventures works hard to ensure that the potential of each teen participant is tapped in a variety of ways that speak to individual abilities. In each community, a number of service projects run concurrently at any given time. We encourage volunteers to choose what they would like to work on each day.