Zahara Heckscher's Bio

Zahara Heckscher

• Safety Issues for Women
• Volunteering Overseas: What It Takes to Be a Highly Effective Volunteer
• Combine Volunteering with Language Study Abroad
• Choosing a Volunteer Placement Organization
• Coming Home After Volunteering Abroad

Zahara Heckscher's career as a writer and social justice organizer is grounded in her work overseas: volunteering to plant fruit trees in rural Zambia and helping to build a medical clinic in Nicaragua. The founder of the Community Alliance for Youth Action and former director of the Washington office of Global Exchange, Heckscher currently lectures on international volunteering at college campuses around the country.

She is a contributing editor of Volunteer Work Abroad at Transitions Abroad magazine. Her articles have been published in Community Jobs magazine, on the United for a Fair Economy website, and in the book Global Backlash: Citizen Initiatives for a Just World Economy (Rowman and Littlefield, 2002). Heckscher resides in Washington, D.C., where she completed her M.A. in International Development at American University.

Zahara is the Divest for Darfur Campaign Manager at the Save Darfur Coalition.

For more information on Zahara Heckscher's book, see her fine website at: www.volunteeroverseas.org. She may be contacted by telephone at 202-489-8908.

Volunteering one’s time to improve developing communities overseas is by no means a new idea. But the domain of volunteer travel has changed immensely in the past 20 years. While past volunteers had little alternatives to the government-run Peace Corps, now there are literally hundreds of independent organizations to choose from. Joseph Collins, Stefano De Zerega, and Zahara Heckscher, all founders of volunteer organizations, have experienced changes throughout the history of volunteer travel. Thus they have produced one of the most comprehensive books on the subject, How to Live Your Dream of Volunteering Overseas. The “how-to” aspect of the title is well conceived. The book offers sound advice on how to choose a volunteer organization, volunteer independently, finance your trip, be an effective volunteer, and stay involved after you return. A large part of the book is devoted to an extensive index of profiled organizations, arranged by region, length of volunteer experience, cost, types of work, and special interests. Six years of research and many more years of immersion travel are testament to the values of reciprocity and social sensitivity that are inherent in these authors/volunteers. —Sian Wu