<p>If you’re asking whether the mere fact that you have done these things is something that will help you, no. You can’t just wave these experiences in front of college admissions officers and expect them to say “why, you must have been terribly enriched by those experiences! We definitely want you here!”</p>
<p>What you have to do is show that you actually learned something from them – that you grew as an individual, or learned a different perspective, or something. That’s what the volunteering in Central/South America used to stand for, because it used to be that that was something very few people did. Now that there are so many programs offering these experiences to high school kids, it no longer means the same thing. Also, before kids all over the country started beefing up their volunteering resumes, volunteering used to mean that you really cared enough about helping people to do it even though you reaped no reward for it. Nobody can assume any longer that volunteerism is totally disinterested.</p>
<p>If these experiences really meant something to you and you can articulate that, then great, say something about that in your essays.</p>