AiP Mission
Connecting people and preservation through enriching experiential programs that safeguard heritage and foster community sustainability.
get involved or donate | our story | reports | team
The Story Behind AiP Hands-on Volunteer Vacations
Adventures in Preservation was founded in 2001 by two women with a great love of historic buildings and a strong desire to travel and understand the world. While perusing the travel section of the Boulder Bookstore, the Volunteer Vacation section suddenly brought everything into focus. Judith Broeker and Jamie Donahoe combined their goal of saving historic buildings with the concept of experiential travel, and created AiP’s hands-on preservation vacations.
Work started on several sites in the U.S., and as word spread, requests for help began to pour in from around the world, underscoring the great potential of using volunteers to restore historic buildings. In supporting community-based preservation initiatives, we discovered that our love of old buildings could translate into environmental and economic sustainability for communities.
Gyumri, Armenia
May 2018
“Five American women impacted the community simply by sanding and varnishing balcony posts. People saw them walking to work, knew they spent their own money to come, and asked: ‘Why are they here?’ They began to rethink how they could approach their own problems.”
— Gyumri resident
Adventures in Preservation has become a leader in offering volunteer vacations directed toward saving distinctive architecture that defines a region’s history and culture. The fact that historic preservation is innately “green” provides yet another compelling reason for restoring historic buildings for integrated community use, from affordable housing to community centers.
Adventures in Preservation’s staff and volunteers work with passion to save the world’s architectural heritage with the goal of benefiting communities worldwide. We are dedicated to bringing people and preservation together in meaningful partnerships.
AiP Vision
AiP envisions a world where people use, understand, and appreciate historic buildings that are vital to economic and environmental sustainability and preserve cultural identity.
AiP Reports
Read our newest 2019 Annual Report
2018 Annual Report (pdf)
2017 Annual Report (pdf)
AiP’s Team
Adventures in Preservation (AiP) has recently embarked on an ambitious plan to grow the organization and enhance our effectiveness. With 49+ projects in 10 countries under our belt, we know there is a lot more we can be doing to safeguard cultural heritage, foster community sustainability and provide outstanding travel experiences. Our staff, Board of Directors, interns, and all our Jammers are key.
AiP’s Co-Founder
Judith Broeker
BOARD MEMBER - Program Director
Boulder, colorado
Judith is the founder of Adventures in Preservation, which was preceded by her own company, Preservation UnLtd. She is a materials conservation specialist with both research and hands-on experience gained at historic structures in the United States and abroad. Judith holds a Master’s degree in History with an emphasis in historic preservation. She responds to all AiP requests for preservation assistance and works with community members to develop each project. For her, nothing is better than exploring a historic site with camera in hand.
AiP’s Board of Directors
In alphabetical order:
TARA CUBIE
BOARD MEMBER - CREATIVE DIRECTOR
MATTITUCK, NEW YORK
Tara Cubie has been active in historic preservation for over fifteen years. She has gotten her hands dirty helping to restore buildings from Smoky Mountain National Park and Maine, managed the historic preservation program for a non-profit, federal programs for the National Park Service in D.C. and currently serves as a Senior Architectural Historian for EBI Consulting.
Tara has a B.A. in Russian Studies from the College of Wooster, and Master’s degrees in Historic Preservation and Urban Planning from Columbia University. As AIP’s Creative Director, Tara will focus on growing AIP’s visibility in the non-profit world with a focus on marketing and fundraising.
SHARON KONG-PERRING
BOARD MEMBER - OUTREACH DIRECTOR
NATICK, MASSACHUSETTS
Sharon Kong-Perring is a museum curator and academic by day and a globetrotting travel journalist by night. In her museum life, she specializes in artifact and collections care with a particular affinity for objects of Asian and Oceanic origin. As an academic, Sharon is getting her PhD in cultural studies, researching the intersection between traditional history and culture with popular culture with a focus on East Asia. She is passionate about global cultures and history, and in her travel journalism, she loves to highlight cultural experiences available to travelers.
Originally from Southern California, Sharon now splits her time between her home in New England, her program in Birmingham, United Kingdom, and active fieldwork in Seoul, South Korea. All three places are centers for dialogue on conservation and preservation and the presence of history and historic sites.
Andreas Sandre
Board Member - Director of Corporate Communications
Washington, DC
Andreas Sandre is a press and public affairs officer at the Embassy of Italy in Washington, D.C., where he runs the digital diplomacy shop. He was previously at the United Nations, doing communications for the Italian delegation to the U.N. Security Council. Andreas is the author of Digital Diplomacy: Conversations on Innovation in Foreign Policy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015) and Twitter for Diplomats (DiploFoundation, 2013). He's also the editor of Digital Diplomacy, a publication on Medium, and a contributor to HuffPost, the Global Policy Journal of the London School of Economics, and Hacker Noon. You can find Andreas on Twitter/Instagram @andreas212nyc.
PAUL WRIGHT
BOARD MEMBER - IT DIRECTOR
KENMORE, WASHINGTON
Paul Wright was the Director-Geographic Information Systems, Office of Geospatial Information at the State of Missouri and has more than 35 years in Information Technology (IT). He retired in 2016.
Growing-up in central Missouri, Paul graduated with a BA in Computer Science from the University of Missouri-Columbia. Paul holds a Masters degree in Information Systems Management.
He became interested in history during high school and has taken a number of courses in anthropology and archaeology over the past several years. Paul also volunteers to help with an archaeological field school at a local college. His main interest is ancient history.
AiP’s Staff
Elisabeth Sobieczky
Education Director
Vienna, Austria
Elisabeth Sobieczky is an art historian with a doctoral degree (Dr. Phil.) in Art History from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, and a Master’s degree (M.A.) in Art History from the University of Würzburg, Germany. For over ten years, she has taught at Universities in Austria (University of Graz, Vienna University, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Danube University Krems) with courses covering issues in restoration, conservation, and cultural heritage preservation.
Elisabeth’s research is focused on restoration from a historical and aesthetic perspective, considering how restoration makes physical changes, and thus changes the way we look at works of art, objects and buildings.
With her academic and teaching background, Elisabeth will combine her duties as Education Director with university outreach, developing partnerships between university programs and AiP projects. Her goal is to concentrate on the educational aspect of AiP projects to maximize learning outcomes.
AiP’s Advisors and Consultants
Jane Britt Greenwood, AIA
Starkville, Mississippi
Jane Britt Greenwood is a licensed architect, who worked in Boston for a number of years. In 1992, she took the position of University Architect for the newly founded American University of Armenia (AUA) in Yerevan.
She spent eighteen months in Armenia working on the design and development of an American-style university, teaching architecture students at the Yerevan Institute of Architecture and Construction.
Since entering academia in 1994, Dr. Greenwood served as Associate Dean in the Mississippi State University College of Architecture, Art, and Design, returning to the teaching faculty in 2009. Dr. Greenwood is also co-founder and President of Historic Armenian Houses, a cultural NGO located in Yerevan, Armenia.
