Trip Preparation
In order to help you have the most meaningful experience on your upcoming Smaller World Trip, we have compiled resources to get you thinking about sustainability, serviced-based trips, poverty and the mission of Sustainable Harvest International. Please reflect on these individually or with your participant group in preparation for your trip.
Participant Testimonies
These are two sample testimonies from field program participants, with reflection questions, at the end to be used as discussion topics for pre-trip planning.
• Elvia Ayala
• Aparicio Garcia Benitez
Field Trainer Role Play
This is an activity intended for your group to try before the trip to give participants a better understanding of how our local field trainers' work is carried out.
Trip Reflection Guide
Some groups like to prepare a daily devotional to help focus the participants' thoughts from day to day, and provide food for thought. We typically distribute these trip reflections to your group, giving you an opportunity to read and reflect on one each evening. If your group wants to create your own version, you may select a few reflections from here as well as add some readings that you think will be meaningful to your experience. We welcome any trip participant, not just SHI trip leaders, to lead these reflections.
Recommended Videos
- Planting Hope: The Story of SHI - This is a documentary that follows the SHI's work in Honduras. We would be happy to send you a DVD if you'd like!
- Elvia Alvarado - You may already be familiar with the book Don't Be Afraid Gringo, about Elvia Alvarado's work as a community organizer in Honduras during the 1980's. This is a video about Elvia's struggle and specifically about land tenure issues in Honduras. The film is dated but the issues she brings up are certainly still relevant throughout the region.
Build a Smaller World
Join Us!
READY TO TRAVEL? Contact us to register for an upcoming tour or to plan one for your group! No special skills necessary!
- Ongoing: Smaller World Day Trips in Belize w/ Cotton Tree Lodge
- March 11-18, 2012: Vermont Academy Trip to Belize
- May 23-31, 2012: The Pingree School Trip to Panama
- June 6-14, 2012: Phoenix, AZ Student Volunteers & Friends to Panama
- June 24 - July 1, 2012: Road Scholar Tour to Belize
- June 26 - July 3, 2012: Hancock UCC to Panama
- July 7-15, 2012: Educators Workshop in Nicaragua
- July 16-24, 2012: RI Volunteers to Panama
- December 1-9, 2012: Smaller World Coffee Tour to Honduras
"I volunteered with SHI in Honduras many years ago. It was an amazingly inspiring trip, not just because we were able to work side by side with the families we were there to support, but I was able to see firsthand exactly how SHI operates and why its techniques and approach are so successful. SHI is a charity well worth supporting because its mission isn't charity at all -- it's empowerment." 
Sustainable Harvest International
