Outdoor Resources and Tourism Management Portfolio: Canada World Youth: Kelowna

I set out on another volunteer program called Canada World Youth. I hoped to utilize and expand the skills I learned in Katimavik while in a new and foreign cultural setting. In this case, I lived in Kelowna, BC, and Beijing, China for 3 months at a time. For 6 months, I lived with a counterpart and host family, volunteering at various organizations devoted to community development. To document it all, I kept a personal blog.

During my stay in Kelowna, I worked at the Kelowna Food Bank. I gained a newfound respect for food, canned and fresh,and it's value to those less fortunate. This knowledge was combined with that aquired from various workshops and presenations during out time in Kelowna; social issues, homelessness, community gardens, family farming. Our group even spent a day volunteering and harvesting a community garden where the vegetables and fruits ended up at the same Food Bank that gave them away. I began to realize how integrated food systems were and how they interacted with people of various classes.

My host sister, brother and counterpart

My host family

The importance of food

The Food Bank

A new delivery

The warehouse

Some friends helped this time

While there, I was able to become an almost-tourist again, seeking out different venues to use for volunteering opportunities or places to hold "educational activity days." Many of these "EAD's" were essentially tourist attractions, such as bike trail systems or wineries. However, we applied the learned knowledge to a local level and what it meant to citizens of Kelowna. as well as those from out of town. Seeing things from a local AND tourist level; it was a skill I'd use again in the future.

We saw many more tourist attractions during our stay in Beijing. These sites included the Great Wall of China, Summer Palace, Forbidden City, the Olympic Birds Nest Stadium and Water Cube. The 2008 Beijing Olympics, opening four months after our departure, left amass of opportunity to learn about the the sporting event from a plethora of views: Beijing residents appealing strongly to tourists, companies and their marketing strategies to foreigners and anyone with a controversial view that entailed the 2008 Olympics. Our time there gave us valuable insight of such momentous tourist attractions, especially considering that the 2010 Olympics really began to take light at the time of our return to Canada.

In front of the under-construction Bird's Nest Stadium