Earlier this year, would-be teacher Candy Soo Suan Chiew spent a week of her holiday in Brazil tutoring slum children in English. Keen to get more out of her trip by doing volunteer work, she surfed the internet and found the Two Brothers Foundation, a non-profit group running educational programmes in Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro.
The 26-year-old signed up for a week, to lend a hand with scheduled activities including dance and English classes and to help to organise the foundation's library of donated books.
'This experience was more rewarding because I interacted with local children and it allowed me to see what life in Rocinha is like,' Soo says.
An increasing number of travellers are combining their holiday plans with volunteer work. In response, travel agencies, hotels and non-profit groups now offer a range of 'voluntourism' options.
However, the boom has also stirred considerable debate among travellers and within the NGO community.
VolTra is among the most recent entrants in the field. Set up by eight Hongkongers in June, it gives travellers on a tight schedule a chance to join short work camps that help communities abroad in areas such as environmental protection and agriculture. Applicants have access to more than 3,000 such camps through VolTra's partnership with the Network for Voluntary Development in Asia (NVDA), an alliance of 22 NGOs.
Ten people have been accepted; each will pay a HK$1,750 fee in addition to their airfares and insurance. About 70 per cent of the fee goes to NVDA to fund the work camps, while the remainder is used to support VolTra, including its efforts to organise similar camps in Hong Kong.