About Joyce Major
Joyce Major stopped everything she was doing—selling real estate, living on her houseboat, playing squash—and decided to take a solo year long trip around the world, volunteering in all but one continent, 11 countries in all. She volunteered with monkeys, kangaroos, elephants, lions and baboons. She also volunteered in conservation, sustainability, teaching English and as a reporter. Traveling to Italy, Greece, England, South Africa, Brazil, New Zealand, Australia, Thailand, China and Ireland. After that trip she wrote the award winning “Smiling at the World,” which is sold on Amazon.
Joyce continued to volunteer each year for the next 10, volunteering with kids teaching English in Guatemala, in Indonesia to save orangutans, in Ukraine with orphans, a medical mission in Uganda, as a clown in Ecuador with Patch Adams and at a radio station in Bolivia.
Joyce spent 6 months volunteering in Indonesia with the Sumatran Orangutan Society fighting against the illegal pet trade and working to save the endangered orangutans and their rainforest. This book was born in that jungle. Joyce hopes to do school visits in person and on Skype about the book and orangutan conservation.
Joyce teaches classes on volunteer travel at Rick Steves Travel Store in Edmonds, WA and at North Seattle College to encourage others to travel as a volunteer. She rows crew, practices yoga and volunteers locally reading to kindergarten classes. She’s exuberantly happy about becoming a grandmother.
