The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step. Patagonia is much further from my home than 1,000 miles. From the San Francisco Bay Area, it requires two days of travel to reach this iconic hiking destination and my personal journey there was complicated by much more than distance. For many years, I thought…
Conservation Volunteers International Program: The name really does not easily roll off the tongue. It is way too long. What were our founders thinking ten years ago when they chose a name for our nonprofit? It is not easy to come up with a new name. A name needs to be unique and memorable. They…
Would you read the report on ConservationVIP® impact if I told you that it uses the word SEX multiple times?
![A [Volunteer] Day in the Life](https://conservationvip.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/yosemite-960x339-1-300x106.jpg)
It was September, 2009. My wife and I learned about ConservationVIP® from a family member and we were encouraged to check out the trip to Yosemite National Park. Upon learning more details from the ConservationVIP® website and through REI Adventures, we signed up to join them. Having experienced the value of volunteering locally and being…
Some things just “say” Galapagos. The blue-footed booby. Marine iguana. Tortoise. Darwin. I’d heard the words before, but now I was about to live them. Here I was, shoe-horned into a small plane approaching Isla Isabela, the outermost inhabited island in the Galapagos, with about a dozen Conservation Volunteers International Program (ConservationVIP®) volunteers. I couldn’t…
Have you ever been camping or hiking and thought – darn, I really should have brought those extra socks, or maybe a hat, or maybe a blanket; perhaps, you needed a rope for your tent or someone to chase away a raccoon in the night. Or, you may have even found yourself as the last…