Madison Vorva garnered national attention when she traveled to New York City this year to promote her campaign to remove palm oil from Girl Scout cookies.

Her more recent trip to Cambodia with Global Explorers had a lower profile, but just as much of an effect on the Greenhills School student from Plymouth.

“We weren’t just traveling, it wasn’t a vacation,” Vorva said. “We were talking to people and learning their stories and doing service and getting to know high school students on a friendship level.”

Vorva’s 3-week trip at the end of June was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, which paid for everything except immunizations and spending money for the 29 students from across the country who participated.

Girl Scouts Rhiannon Tomtishen, left, and Madison Vorva, both of Ann Arbor, have been campaigning to raise awareness of the human and environmental impact of the organization's famous cookies.

Brian Miller, an expedition leader for Global Explorers, said the program is part of the State Department’s diplomacy efforts in the region.

“In some ways I think of it as a very mini Peace Corps experience,” he said. “For the State Department, it was a chance for students from the U.S. to show goodwill to their peers in Cambodia. For the students, it’s a chance to develop their skills as leaders through an immersive travel experience.”

According to Vorva, the experience was indeed immersive. Staying in the homes of local families was a major component of the trip.

“Over there you wake up to the sound of a cow mooing or a rooster crowing, or a monk chanting — people experience life so differently,” she said.

And that difference wasn’t limited to sights and sounds.

“They don’t have as much, but they don’t have as much shame, they aren’t as closed as we are. Your business is out in front of everybody and they’re all so friendly over there,” Vorva explained. “It’s just a tighter community.”

Miller said that putting the participants into “safe but challenging situations” helped them to develop leadership skills while they experienced these cultural differences. They had to work together as a group to solve problems as the trip progressed.

“From tiny things like how to get our luggage from point A to point B, to bigger things like what to do when your roommate is sick in the middle of the night because they ate bad food and you’re in a home-stay with people who speak a totally different language, they have to creatively problem-solve,” he said.

Upon their return, participants are expected to set up a long-term volunteering project back in their home communities. Vorva plans to focus her project on helping the people in Cambodia who taught her life lessons.

“You see what those people don’t have, and what they do with nothing, and they don’t want, because they’re so happy with what they do have,” Vorva said. “And you come back and you don’t want now either. Going somewhere where that’s not the focus, it’s a great place to learn humility.”

Vorva also had a chance to see the environment she had worked so hard to defend through her earlier activism. She was disappointed that she didn’t get to see an orangutan (they aren’t native to Cambodia), but she did get to experience their habitat first-hand.

“Seeing the rainforest and being in that kind of climate was so exciting, it was so much more than I could have hoped for,” Vorva said. “There are huge bugs. They’re way bigger than the ones in Michigan, stuff you don’t think about.”

Ben Freed is a summer intern at AnnArbor.com. You can reach him by email at benfreed@annarbor.com or by phone at (734)-623-4674. Follow him on Twitter @BFreedInA2.