Global Volunteering

Kathryn interviews nine-time Emmy award-winning writer, director, and producer John Marshall, author of "Wide-Open World: How Volunteering Around the Globe Changed One Family's Lives Forever". In 2010 John Marshall needed a change. He was feeling disconnected from his wife and his two teenage kids were lost in cyberspace. In an effort to pull his family back together, Marshall proposed they take a six month trip around the world, not the sightseeing-hotel-restaurant kind of trip, but a volunteer adventure working with service organizations in all kinds of interesting projects. They spent time at an animal sanctuary in the rainforest of Costa Rica, labored on organic farms in New Zealand, taught English in rural Thailand, fell in love with orphans in India and worked alongside a Buddhist monk high in the Himalayas. Marshall shares his family's journey in Wide-Open World and, as he discovered, he and his family did not change the world: the world changed them.