Tips on how to get your teen off the couch this summer

Teens have tons of energy. They’re born idealists. They’re altruistic. And they have lots of free time. Summer is a golden opportunity for them to devote several weeks to serious volunteer work, and make the world a better place.

Enter the new “experiential” breed of summer camp: Community service and volunteer work, combined with local or international travel, culture and language immersion.

Top teen camps are costly – typically $150 to $200 a day, the same as some luxury hotels in a high priced resort. Trust me, these are not teen tours in cushy hotspots. Teenage boys and girls can rough it in youth hostels, campgrounds, home stays or basic quarters for Third World volunteers. Send your child off to one of these intense experiences, and you’ll never hear the words again, “Mommy, are we poor?”

In the “Live Free Or Die” state, “Windsor Mountain International Summer Camp began in the 1960s as an experiment for the United Nations. Now the New Hampshire sleepaway camp hosts children from all over the world; American children who have completed 2nd grade are eligible to join the program, which offers such progressive concepts as immersion camping with deaf children and an Oxfam Dinner to drive home the message of World Hunger.

Older Windsor campers travel stateside, living with Native Americans in the Midwest at Reservations, studying the ecology of Hawaii, or traveling as singers, actors and musicians around New England. Trips become more strenuous for teenagers. Middle Schoolers backpack around Puerto Rico or the Caribbean and practice French or Spanish during family homestays, then work on “service projects” at a rainforest ecology center or other demanding tasks around the Caribbean islands. Older teens travel to China to work at orphanages in some of the poorer villages and teach English to children of migrant workers in the dusty, undeveloped inland regions. Others build “door gardens” in South African communities for families with AIDS, or do other charity work at posts in the countrysides of Zimbabwe, Peru, Mexico and Russia. Careful screening ensures that applicants can handle the culture shock.

Broadreach AdventureCamp (www.gobroadreach.com/programs /gl/uwd_gl.asp) offers SCUBA and yachting treks all over the globe. But they also send kids to the far corners of Peru, South Africa and Panama where they can save endangered Spider Monkeys from extinction or work alongside Peace Corps volunteers in Peruvian mountain