When the Mynatt family goes on summer vacation in July, they won’t be snapping pictures of the Eiffel Tower, or river rafting through the Grand Canyon.

Instead, Sully Mynatt and her two daughters – Woodward eighth-grader Lindsay Mynatt, and Sakai sixth-grader Alex Mynatt – plan a volunteer vacation helping build a clinic in Kenya.

The family hopes to complete nine months of fund-raising with a June 15 art sale of two- and three-dimensional items the family has crafted.

“People have asked us, ‘Why volunteer instead of just sightseeing?’” Mynatt said. “It is seeing and experiencing the country first-hand. There is the exchange between the two cultures, working together on a community project, and, of course, new insights and friendships.”

A volunteer vacation is an economical way to travel, Mynatt points out. The landscaper and her graphic designer husband, Dirk Mynatt, don’t have the means to make a conventional trip abroad, but they are determined that their children have the opportunity.

“I want them to see something completely different and to feel like a minority for a change,” she said. “I want them to think of things in a whole different light.”

A fund-raising letter netted the total trip fee of $4,100. The family still has to find the $3,500 airfare and travel money.

They will go with Global Citizens Network, a small St. Paul, Minn., non-profit with a 10-year track record of placing volunteers abroad.

The Mynatts will live with the tribal chief while they help build a medical clinic for Taracha, a village of 3,000 near Lake Victoria in western Kenya.

Lindsay Mynatt, who says she likes to work with younger children, plans to help teach English, and will bring her violin to play.

Alex Mynatt, who also like working with kids, plans to bring games to share.

Besides making art for the sale, both girls have been doing research; Lindsay made Kenya the focus of a class assignment to study a country. She compiled a Kenyan cookbook and produced a professional-quality calendar featuring the country.

For Sully Mynatt, impetus for the junket has roots in the early death of both parents, a loss that made her more self-sufficient.

“I was 13 when that happened,” she said. “That has taught me to do things on my own and be capable. I guess it all ties in as to why you are the way you are.”

Later, she spent as semester at sea as a college student, circling the globe in 100 days and stopping at about 20 ports.

“Anyone who does that, they get the travel bug,” Mynatt said. “A lot of people wind up working international business.”

The experience led her to volunteer for a summer in the Philippines and visit Kenya as a solo traveler in 1987 and says she “fell in love with the country.”

Sully brings a wide array of skills to their volutneer stint. She built the second-story addition to the family’s garage, including electrical work. She raised some of the trip money by remodeling her brother’s shed into a living space.

Her background in teaching science and environmental studies could be called on, she says, to teach Kenyan kids, or for whatever might be needed in Taracha.

The trip will present challenges and difficulties, the Mynatts know.

Alex admits that she’s a little intimidated “because it’s a different place with different people.”

But thumbing through Lindsay’s calendar images of Kenya – acacia trees against the sunset, elephants moving across the landscape – brings the excitement of the trip to the foreground.

Alex Mynatt, who loves animals, says that she most looks forward to seeing Kenyan wildlife.

“They don’t have tigers but they do have lions, leopards and cheetahs,” Mynatt said. “I want to see the wild cats.”