Frugal, But With Plenty to Give

By MATT GROSS
New York Times
December 16, 2009

Even in a Dantean hellscape as nightmarish as Kennedy Airport, the Delta arrivals area is an inferno unto itself. With six zones — some international, some domestic — spread across two low-ceilinged, ill-lighted terminals whose depths often block cellphone signals, travelers require a virtual Ph.D. in urban spelunking to navigate. And that’s if you’re a New Yorker.

If you’ve come from Miami, Madrid or Moscow, and perhaps speak less than fluent English, the arrivals areas can be as opaque as a graffiti-scarred cinderblock wall. How do I get into the city?

Where’s my luggage? Where’s the bathroom? Where’s my daughter? The answers to these questions can flummox even the savviest travelers.

But answers are available. In Arrivals Area B, sandwiched between a Travelex currency-exchange booth and a newsstand, is an information desk staffed by volunteers from Travelers Aid International, a more-than-150-year-old organization devoted to helping the lost and the confused, the stranded and the desperate, with locations at 36 airports and bus stations in the United States, Canada and Australia. Wearing their trademark bright blue blazers, these volunteers hand out maps, track down flight information and generally point people in the right direction. And on occasion, they handle more serious issues — people struggling to rebook missed flights or understand immigration requirements, people who need short-term lodging but have no money, people fleeing precarious domestic situations.

And as of this month, “they” includes me, the Frugal Traveler. In an effort to repay the unearned kindnesses I’ve received from so many strangers over the years — and to show a little selflessness during the holiday season — I’ve begun volunteering with Travelers Aid, devoting approximately four hours a week to directing the aimless and calming down the overstressed. I’m just one of 95 volunteers stationed throughout Kennedy Airport, from the easy-to-find desk at American’s Terminal 8 to the post-security labyrinth of gates at Terminal 4, where the profusion of international airlines is guaranteed to confound.

My stint began in Delta’s bowels just after noon one recent Saturday. Led there by Jane Mrosko, a petite blond Iowan who is Travelers Aid’s JFK program director, I settled into a ringlike information station that looked left over from a 1980s sci-fi movie set. At our half of the station (the other was occupied by the people who book the SuperShuttle car service), the computers didn’t work, meaning we couldn’t track flights, and indeed one monitor had been replaced by a sheet of plywood.

Clearly, money is an issue for Travelers Aid, as it is for every travel-related business and organization these days. Should Delta fix up the information station? Or the Port Authority, which actually finances Travelers Aid at Kennedy? And if there was extra money, whether from the authority or from donations, is fixing a single computer the smartest use of it? Ideally, Ms. Mrosko would like to expand the group’s hours beyond its usual 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

All this murkiness seemed to highlight Travelers Aid’s odd status at the airport. Though its volunteers are trained and security-screened like everyone else, I heard rumblings about occasional friction between volunteers and certain airlines, turf battles that suggested there might be something somehow un-New Yorky about an organization devoted to helping travelers get their bearings.

Not that that was the friction I should really be worried about, according to June, one of the SuperShuttle bookers. “If you can handle people coming up and viciously attacking you, you’ll be fine,” she joked. Remembering some of the comments posted on my blog over the years, I figured I’d be O.K.

And, mostly, I was. For the next four hours, I sent people to the ATM (just around the corner to the left), the bathrooms (women to the left, men to the right) and the AirTrain (outside to the left, and up what looks like a highway on-ramp). If you had come to meet someone arriving from Tokyo, I’d have sent you to Arrivals Area A, and if you were looking for C6, where the flight from Trinidad was landing, I’d direct you to Area C, never mind the number. If you wanted the Athens flight, however, I’d point you to Terminal 4, the next one over. Sorry!

Primarily, I helped people figure out how to get away from the airport, an intricate calculus that depended on budget, age, time constraints, energy level, number of passengers and overall travel savvy. But once in a while, the requests were more complicated. A middle-aged Asian woman silently held up an English-language e-mail printout asking for directions; I spotted Chinese characters on it and asked her, in my dodgy Mandarin, “You’re Chinese, right?” A little stunned, she said yes. Then I called over my colleague Tsai-Shen Yang, a Taiwanese-born aviation aficionado who’s been volunteering with Travelers Aid for a year, to help her properly.

I never had to deal with anything major, but after all, it was only my first day. There’s still time. Volunteering with Travelers Aid (or donating to it) is not the only way frugal-minded travelers can give back this holiday season. There are several travel-related charities and nonprofits that can use some help, no matter how little you can afford to give.

Chief among them is Passports With Purpose, a two-year-old organization raising money to build, outfit and support a school in rural Cambodia. Sounds like a lot of other charities, right? Well, Passports With Purpose is doing things slightly differently: giving prizes to donors. Each prize — to be given at random to a donor — is offered through a particular travel blogger, who has requested the goodie from a sponsor or advertiser. Tim Leffel at the Cheapest Destinations Blog, for example, has sunglasses from Tifosi Optics on offer, while HeatherOnHerTravels.com has a Flip Ultra videocamera. CiaoBambino.com even has a five-night stay at the Los Sueños Resort in Costa Rica.

The best part is that getting a chance to win one of these prizes — and, you know, helping Cambodian kids eat fresh vegetables, drink clean water and get an education — costs very little. Passports With Purpose is raising all its money (goal: $26,000, to be given to American Assistance for Cambodia) through donations in increments of just $10. When was the last time you spent $10 for a night at the Four Seasons in Seattle (the prize sponsored by DeliciousBaby.com) and didn’t have to feel guilty about it?

If you’ve been following the Frugal Traveler for any length of time, you know I have an abiding interest in travel footwear. Which makes Friends of Toms a natural choice for a frugally focused charity. The nonprofit was founded in 2006 to let volunteers participate in overseas donations organized by Toms Shoes, the footwear company that gives away a pair of children’s shoes for every pair it sells. Friends of Toms has logged 22 shoe drops so far, to places like Argentina and South Africa, and while volunteers typically spent about $2,500 of their own money for its eight-day Argentina trip, the organization has a budding scholarship program that accepts donations to sponsor participants.

Finally, there’s Wilderness Inquiry, a 31-year-old nonprofit based in Minneapolis, whose mission is to make outdoor adventures like kayaking and camping “accessible to everyone.” That is, not just to the young and able-bodied but to people with various disabilities, from the wheelchair-bound to those with cognitive impairments, and to financially challenged urban youth and families. A financial-aid program eases the strain for participants, and since some of the small trips — say, three days of canoeing in state parks — cost as little as $80, a donation of even $50 goes a long way. If you don’t have $50 to give, that’s O.K. — Wilderness Inquiry accepts used outdoor gear, too, everything from tents and kayaks to fishing gear and hiking shoes. Now, let’s see, I’m sure I have an extra backpack or three around here somewhere …

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