You’ve just finished uni; maybe you’re taking a break from your stressful job, you’ve got some money saved, and you want to adventure and make a difference. There are children in developing countries, and you’ve got time and a lot of love and there’s a whole world out there.
But before you end up as that person on Facebook making the peace sign amid a crowd of brown orphans, stop and think. I might be about to break your do-gooding heart.
Sometimes a skilled person wants to go travelling in a way that adds something to the world, and it can be done! As someone with experience in development and volunteering overseas, I’ve seen the impact of volunteering in communities not quite one’s own, and it might not be for you. But it might be! Consider this your travelling and volunteering guide.
Know where you’re going, what you’re doing, and why.
Sharing goes both ways. You can’t just take, and you can’t just give; it has to be mutual, wanted, and needed. It can’t be decided on one’s own.
Rule of thumb: Accept that your skills, where you want to go, and what you want to give, might not be a combination that anyone needs right now. You’re a unique little snowflake, but you’re not that unique. Sorry, buddy.
Use your skills
I don’t mean teach English for two weeks because you speak it (unless you have a degree and skills in planning and a year to spare). Use what you have, your accounting degree or your years of bricklaying experience, and your ability to communicate, and work with the community. Build capacity so that when you leave, the community has benefited from your being there, has been able to improve in its coordination or its project planning. To build a house is to leave behind something that needs to be maintained, something that can fall apart if the skills and resources aren’t nurtured in the community; for you to have taken someone’s job when they could have been building that house and learning to build one for their neighbour after you’re gone.
You need to fit the project. The project needs to exist and you need to make a real contribution to it – often projects are created specifically for volunteers. A position can be filled by a volunteer; but a position shouldn’t exist to make sure a volunteer slots into it.
Rule of thumb: can anyone do this job? Then why are you specifically doing it?
Work with local partners
It can be difficult to gain access to local partner organisations on the ground if you’re trying to set this up from your home country. But without local impact, without continuity after you leave and somebody doing that umbrella work, your work is benefiting nobody. So even if it’s through an international organisation, check who’s got that ongoing stuff sorted (informal stuff is fine! Not everyone has time for perfect documentation).
Rule of thumb: Have a name and a paper trail for local organisations (and your international ones). Make sure the community can sustain you and wants to, and you’re not taking somebody’s income or bed for the time you’re in-country.
What are the practical outcomes of your work?
Documentation isn’t just for public servants! Make sure the organisation has an evaluation and monitoring plan and long term strategies, ensure your role with them has objectives and goals, and know where they meet the organisation’s strategic plans. That’s people’s whole lives you’re about to mess with, so have the courtesy to make sure there’s a way to keep you, and the organisation, accountable, and that you’re really achieving something at the end of it.
Rule of thumb: if no strategic plans exist, don’t do it.
Dedicate your time
If you can only go for two weeks, you can’t go. Make a donation to a trusted local organisation instead. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that your four weeks does anybody but you and your tour operators any good. Definitely don’t go work with the kiddies for one day. That’s using a community like a museum, or a zoo.
If you’re in a community for less than six months, you need to evaluate what benefit you’re bringing. Short-term volunteer programs see strangers constantly introduced to and rotated out of the community, breaking continuity and creating problems with job availability, the local economy and stability. Well-meaning short-term volunteers can create infrastructure issues around facilities and development. Westerners have been doing this to the global South (ugh, as a global Southerner, both nationally and ethnically, I hate this term) for centuries, so try not to contribute any further. There are exceptions of course: maybe you’re being brought in as an external trainer for two weeks. Maybe you’re an expert in something. But those are exceptions.
Rule of thumb: If you’re not there long enough to have work colleagues over for dinner, and if six months of language classes before you leave seems excessive, don’t go.
Prepare to make mistakes
No matter what you do, you’re gonna be wrong. You’re going to be embarrassed, and if you’re really lucky, you won’t harm anyone or anything when that happens. Know the most appropriate method of apologising, and be prepared to use it.
A failure to apologise can cause ongoing problems for you, your project, the organisation and the community, so suck up your ego. Try to do as much as you can to prevent it by preparing. Remember that different languages and cultures can impact the way we think and react. I was born in the same country as my bestie and we have some very different base concepts! Just because you’ve done it your way your whole life doesn’t mean you’re right.
Rule of thumb: practise being humble, drop the arrogance, and work on your empathy.
Prepare
All expats in the aid community prepare to various degrees. There’s no solid way to really know what you’ll need until you get there, so guess. Learn the language. Research the history and culture/s. Prepare for your lifestyle and live to it. Don’t expect to live the same life that you do at home – Expats who keep to themselves, living their expat lives, are resented, and create negative attitudes within the community.
Prepare for the job. What are you bringing, and what are you going to leave behind? Ensure these tie into the practical outcomes you’re expecting to achieve. If you bring supplies, make sure they’re appropriate and can be supported (no point bringing books if they’re inappropriate for the community; or bringing communications equipment if you’re in an area where everyone has new phones).
A lack of language and cultural preparation demonstrates a lack of respect for the community. Not only does it mean mentally you’re never going to do your best, it makes you seem disingenuous and unprofessional to the community, and it’ll make everything you do much harder. It’s always easier to work within a community when you’re able and willing to sit in it, not hold yourself above it.
If you’re a Westerner (including if you’re a person of colour), you’re working against established perceptions. The West has a long history of parachuting into many of the communities where you’re probably considering volunteering; colonialism is a burden that is hard to overcome.
So contribute to the community. And listen – always listen, and learn the words that aren’t being said out loud.
What does the community look like when you leave?
You spend this time in a community, be it a workplace, a city of three million, or a village of five hundred. What happens when you leave? Does everyone hate the moralistic Western imperialist foisted upon them for four months, who never came out for lunch and insisted on speaking English in the office? This sounds over the top but it’s the little things, like the colleague who didn’t take foreigners seriously because they always came in with preconceived notions; the friend who got mad when Westerners would dress inappropriately at meetings (inappropriate in a local context, not a Western business context).
A part of this is using your time wisely. You want to have a cultural experience; you want to learn about yourself and this new place, you want to travel and have adventures. But make sure you’re doing this in a way that works within the community. The work is not the cultural bit (though it can be). If what you’re getting out of the work is adorable children and orphanages, then shut it down.
Rule of thumb: Whose life has been changed by this experience? Whose life has been inconvenienced? Think about this in advance, and reassess as you go.
What does your community look like when you return home?
So you’ve been away for a while, and then after this affirming, life-changing, world-helping experience, you go home. What do you take home with you? Not just physically, but emotionally and intellectually. Make sure it’s culturally respectful, and share it around. Particularly in the West we have issues with parochialism, xenophobia, cultural appropriation and an arrogance that Western science and thinking is the best, and not everyone is gonna be able to learn like you just have. Capacity build within your own community – it’s where you have to live.
Rule of thumb: don’t stop bettering the world just because you’ve gone home.
Okay great, go out and make the most suitable impact you can on the world, and if you come home sporting dreads and a bindi I’m gonna be angry.
***
Due to word constraints, I offer Further Reading (some of these websites below are also good sites to poke around on for more about this):
An in-depth overall at Matador: Why you shouldn’t participate in voluntourism (this article looks at ethics, economy, and market benefits).
At Good Intents: On voluntourism for orphanages, check out Does funding orphanages create orphans; and an article with some interesting thoughts including links to a variety of blog posts that really drill down in how to actually travel and volunteer effectively, Voluntourism IS the best option.
I found The Volunteer Travel industry: Business Exploits Poverty up at Business Fights Poverty an interesting model on how to volunteer locally (even in the short term) which can give you a different but fundamentally similar idea.
Honi Soit (The University of Sydney’s excellent student weekly paper) has a concise, stat-filled article: Selfish charity?
The Voluntourism Institute has an article on the nationalisation of including voluntourism in the tourism strategies of Thailand and Malaysia, Voluntourism in Southeast Asia – What does it mean for the rest of the world?
Tags: carefully now, politics, stephanie lai, travel, voluntourism
I think about this basically constantly, in large part because my current job, while lovely and interesting to me, does not do much to improve the world in the ways that I think are fundamental (i.e., everyone should have access to clean water and healthy food, no exceptions. Ditto medical care/vaccinations, shelter, education, etc.)
That said, it’s entirely possible and even likely that the best thing I can do is to make money and donate it to organizations that are working to end malaria, or educate female children, or etc etc etc all these things that are important. My skills (writing, editing, corporate communications/bullshitting) are not particularly useful in the developing world, unless I guess someone wants to start a small publisher or something (and then only if they’re working in English.)
But it took a lot of Getting Over Myself to get to the point where I could admit the above, and sometimes it still seems like I’m taking the easy, comfortable way out. So, I don’t know. No easy answers.
Maybe you could look at something local that has to do with educating/encouraging girls and young women, particularly those growing up in poorer communities? There’s many organizations focused on that. I spent 8 weeks working (paid, not volunteer, though not paid a lot) with a professor from my university after graduation helping develop computer science/technology based curriculum and then teaching it to middle school girls. It was both fulfilling and something that used my skills. Even if volunteering isn’t for you, it’s possible that a local organization could make use of your writing/editing skills.
I’ve actually extended this offer (“I rite good, make words nice, no cash”) to a couple of organizations, but no one’s taken me up on it. I’m somewhat selective about who I’ll offer this to, in that I wouldn’t write for free for, say, Planned Parenthood or another org that has the budget to hire a writer (and puts out a huge volume of material.) But small orgs don’t always have the dollars to hire a professional for this stuff, and (shameless self promotion/professional puffery) it really helps your image to have well written, professionally edited materials.
I think all my hemming and hawing about this stuff is tied in with my fear that after the apocalypse, someone will realize that I actually have no useful skills and throw me outside the gates/over the wall for the zombies/vampires/irradiated monsters/wolves.
I will be outside the walls with you, maybe we should team up.
and then we can build another wall! And that’s where my plan falls apart. Due to the no skills thing.
I may have read too many post apocalyptic novels. I will accept that as a valid and true criticism, should anyone wish to offer it.
Also, that last comment came out possibly meaner than I intended. You’re welcome to join me Outside the Wall, where we’ll be slightly less fucked together than we would be alone.
I don’t know if you’re still looking for writing volunteering ideas (or where you live or if you like teaching/kids at all), but my city has a program that’s basically tutoring/mentoring kids (I think elementary through high school) on writing skills–depending on your experience, you can just go over papers, teach after-school classes, or help high schoolers prepare their college essays. This probably exists in part because of my city’s abysmal public school system and poverty levels, but your city might have something similar.
I really respect the self-knowledge that it takes to see that, because we all want to believe that it’s our talents or our hearts or our hands that make a difference on a global scale… and they can, but only if we’re honest with ourselves about how. And for some of us, the answer is “by doing the best work I can and donating some of the proceeds.”
Turns out I’m really good at making things happen … from behind a desk. : )
(the work I actually do, I would overall describe as a net positive for the world. But it’s not clean drinking water, you know? And that still sort of bugs me, in a way.)
I FEEL you on this. I’m just starting my career in technical book publishing, and while the work isn’t bad, I feel silly that there are so many problems out there and I’m not actively working to fix ANY of them. I donate money because I can afford to now, but I really hope that sometime in the future I’m able to get away from for-profit stuff and make a difference to someone somewhere.
publishing person here, too, and while books make the world a better place, there does come a point where you’re like… does the world really need ANOTHER book on this topic? I would not want to live without books but… jeez, there are already a lot of them, you know?
But you can turn it into money, and you can give that money to people who turn it into clean drinking water, perhaps much more efficiently than you or I could provide the drinking water. It’s an ego-less way of giving, which is admirable. I admire you for figuring that out.
That’s not to say that people who are suited to working in the field are ego-driven. NOT AT ALL. But people (like me) whose talents and strengths might not be suited to in-person, hands-on global volunteerism can still make a difference, if we’re willing to see where our strengths and weaknesses lie.
edited to add, because I still don’t think I said it clearly: for example, I have a bad back. I’m not knowledgeable about construction. I don’t travel well. Going to [place name] to build a well would be an ego-driven waste of my particular skill set and time, and not do much good for anyone else.
But if getting that well built is important to me, I can donate money or local administrative time to an organization that can get it built. Or I can find a local organization where my skills would be of hands-on use. It’s not glamorous, but it gets things done.
Oh, not disagreeing at all. I am not what would generally be referred to as high-maintenance, but I require 8 hours of sleep every night, no exceptions, and have a persistent painful injury that acts up from time to time, and I don’t tolerate cold weather well at all, and I am generally just getting old and falling apart. So yeah, sending me to dig wells is probably a waste of everyone’s time, unless “laughing at silly Americans” contributes positively to GDP or improves health outcomes or something. I get that intellectually, but it doesn’t change the feeling that my body should be capable of more, that I should be capable of living on less, etc.
I guess I have a lot of capital-f Feelings about this topic, is sort of the point of all my blathering on here.
I do communications for a tiny international non-profit, and writing/editing/corporate bullshitting can be INCREDIBLY helpful. Especially since many developing areas don’t have strong cultures of philanthropy, being able to communicate well with American donors – just saying American here because that’s my experience – is very important. There are some great sites, like taproot.org or pimpmycause.com (ugh, that name, but they’ve helped us in the past!) for connecting professionals who would like to donate time to nonprofits that need their skills.
This article hit home for me – both realistic and compassionate. I wish I knew what to do with my family and friends who participate unthinkingly, though, particularly when they ask me for donations or send me newsletters about what they’re doing in the few weeks they voluntour.
Can I tell them how uncomfortable (or sometimes disgusted) some of it makes me? Can I refuse to let them sell junk I’ve had sitting in their garage for years in a fundraising garage sale? Can I ask to be disincluded from the email list? How can I navigate “knowing better” and “tact” even as I don’t really “know better” at all?
I think you can ask to be removed from email lists and things so you don’t have to engage with it anymore (assuming it’s unlikely anything you say will change your mind). My whole family is really close and generally very supportive anymore but when one of my cousins went on a weird youth group thing that involved lots of proselytizing in developing countries and asked for donations my parents just sent a polite “no thanks, we’ll pass” email and all was fine, since there was no way we could have stopped him from doing it, but didn’t want to hear about it either.
As for the fundraising garage sale, as long as the money is going to a good cause and you don’t need the junk it should be fine? If you or your friends/relatives aren’t well equipped to volunteer effectively in person it’s better to pay people who can and who have experience avoiding voluntourism (like the author of this post).
Don’t exclude yourself from their contact list. Don’t tell them anything. Just ask questions. Pretend you’re researching their project in prep for a donation: What will your travel expenses be? How much would it cost to pay a local unemployed person to do that work? Get them thinking in the right direction.
I guess part of the problem is that some of them think they’ve considered this, and that their “life experience” (and that of the people they’re leading) is the point, and when it comes to asking directed questions about that….things can degenerate quickly.
My go-to reaction is to Keep My Mouth Shut. But, then, if everyone shuts up about it?
*cognitive dissonance whirring*
I hear you. My extended family is particularly arrogant/defensive/reactionary/ignorant and my only option is, like you, Keep My Mouth Shut. However, the harm I see them doing has bothered me enough at times that I quietly write a check to any quality charity doing something that serves as an antidote. For example, when my fundamentalist cousin criticized the Girl Scouts on Facebook for a field trip to Planned Parenthood, I mailed small checks to both orgs. It makes me feel better, even if it doesn’t provide balance in the universe.
Kind of an apology to the universe for the ignorance of my family.
This is perfect and also roughly approximates my feelings for TFA
THESE PICTURES THOUGH
These pictures have taken my feelings about having written this from ‘satisfactory’ to OMG PERFECTION ON ONE PAGE.
I recall the parade of short-term missionaries that would come through the community where my parents worked every summer. Thousands of dollars in airfare, and staying at a special boarding house built and run almost exclusively for them, so that they could do tourist things, spend a few days pouring concrete, and go home patting themselves on the back for Doing Good Work For Those Poor People.
Sometimes they’d take over a local church service, and have someone give an earnest, stumbling sermon through a translator, usually along the lines of “Gosh, did you guys ever hear about ~Jesus~?” Or try to teach everyone in the congregation a song aimed at about kindergarten level, judging by the lyrics. They’d stop by the school I went to, and we’d disrupt classes to have a special chapel service where we sang songs while a group of people videoed us. Singing our adorable little songs.
I was not a fan.
My personal rule of thumb? If what you’re planning on doing in the community could be accomplished just as easily by paying a local the cost of your airfare and lodging while you’re there, don’t bother. Go on an actual vacation and don’t kid yourself about it being some sort of altruistic act. (Doubly so in communities where there are people who could very well use jobs doing low-skill labor for construction, who will not particularly appreciate a bunch of people from another continent flying in to do it for free.)
I love your personal rule of thumb; mine is along the lines of “ask yourself why it is important that you do this act of service halfway around the world instead of in your own community.” If it is because you are doing something that is genuinely necessary in some other place and not going to get done there otherwise, great! If it is because giving books to prisoners makes you feel icky but giving books to “Africa” makes you feel AWESOME, reconsider.
THANK YOU! This is exactly the easy-to-remember litmus test that can help us ask the right questions IMHO.
I used to be deeply involved in an organization that set up trips like this, and I left in part because it made me increasingly uncomfortable. So much money was spent on airfare and lodging that could have been used in more meaningful ways by the organizations the kids went to see and “help.” And the presence of the groups was disruptive to the schools, orphanages, etc. Not good.
On the other hand, I did see a lot of teenagers suddenly realize there was a world outside of themselves in a way that was very powerful and meaningful. Not in just an “I’m a good person because I ‘helped'” kind of way. I do think there is real value to that, but that epiphany shouldn’t come at the expense of using real people and communities as essentially object lessons or somesuch. So, ultimately, the trips aren’t good, although they may seem to bring about some good.
It seems like a lot of people think it is better to DO something than to simply send money. People want to do canned food drives even though giving $10 to the food pantry will buy more food and better meet the needs of the community it serves than buying $10 of food at the grocery store ever will. People want to GO and help because they think it is better morally and practically, even though that money would be better spent if it was sent to organizations who work closely with and employ community members to do the work. It comes from a well-meaning place even though it’s wrong. I feel like right now, in my current place, I spend a lot of time urging people to stop thinking of it as “just writing a check” and to understand that it’s usually actually the best way to help.
I think this is really interesting/well-said. I had to do service hours for a high school graduation requirement (county-wide thing, maybe elsewhere in the state but I don’t know) and there was definitely a sense that donating money is like… the “easy” way out? And if you’re really committed, you’ll show up and actually DO something.
I think it’s like this article says, if you have the skill set and time to meet the needs of the people/place/organization you want to help, then great. Volunteer hours are usually needed. I know of several local organizations that couldn’t do the good work they do without the regular help they get from high school kids and such. When it gets problematic is when people want to do what makes them feel best instead of listening to what is really needed.
Kind of off-topic, but I donate canned food to my local food bank because I *can’t* just write a $10 check. My budget is very, very tight, and I buy a can or two extra every week and when I get a bag full, I take it to the food bank that is on my way to work. Or, nowadays, sometimes I take that bag of food to someone I know who needs food and won’t go to a food bank but will just not eat some days out of the week.
Plus, giving the cans is way more anonymous than giving a check, so they don’t waste money sending me mailers asking for more money. I give what I can, and it’s a waste of resources to try to ‘remind’ me of the need, so I might just keep doing that even when my budget recovers from my current situation. It may not be the best, but it’s the best *I* can do.
I hope I didn’t come across and naysaying giving actual things. I do the same. When I do my weekly shopping trip I pick up something I know the local food pantry always needs more of and I donate those. It is a lot easier to do something like that than to set aside one or two dollars a week and send it in when it accumulates to a decent amount.
But a lot of people seem to think that writing a check (or giving cash) is a copout in a way that giving a thing is not. Truth is, most places need both, and many times the cash can go farther.
Oh, no, you didn’t, I was just giving a perspective of someone who gives things, and why I do it. It would probably be better if I was more disciplined and could budget out the money I use to buy the cans and save up cash to give, but I’m not, so I do what I can do. 🙂
I can’t imagine going on a voluntourism trip; it would make me very uncomfortable from the start, for many of the reasons people are listing. If I ever have the money to travel, I will just be a tourist. It has been interesting reading some of the different experiences people have had; I’d never thought about some of the subtler issues, such as creating unemployment in the community, but that makes perfect sense!
I think somewhere in our calvinistic work-ethic is this feeling that giving money is the lazy way of buying off your guilt. “Cash against caring.” The trope of the sad child who always gets gifts but never gets proper attention etc.etc. And as a society we’re slowly unlearning that, so we want to do better… What I’m trying to say is that it seems like we have just learned not to do A, but B, but now it turns out that B might also be damaging, and in some cases A is better ermagerd I’m going to live in the forest and never talk to people again or try anything ever…
One of my cousins is deeply into a church like this, and she went to Ghana two times last year, and I just get the ickiest feeling that it is along those lines–I know she comes back feeling ~*~amazing~*~ and ~*~blessed~*~ but there never seems to be anything concrete happening in the community or anything. She lives in an affluent area that borders one of the lowest-income areas in the country, and there is an incredibly amount of charity work that needs doing RIGHT THERE. Volunteer organizations are going begging. And it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that she raises thousands of dollars to go to Ghana instead of donating that entire sum to an organization at home.
Yes! My very sheltered niece goes on these trips every summer (Cuba! South America! Etc.) and a combination of the Othering, proselytizing and condescension really gets to me. It’s really hard to drum up enthusiasm for the photographs she posts on FB (“but Aunt L! why haven’t you liked my photos of XXX yet?”). But it’s tough. She’s 16, so how much of it is just her naivete? Does she deserve a long lecture about global politics? And orientalism? And invisible power structures dictating hegemony of one culture over another?
Hmm… I didn’t go around the world, but I painted my fair share of houses on reservations as a t(w)een. Based on the “proselytizing,” I’m going to guess these trips are religious in nature. I think I would’ve rejected any of those lectures because obviously God had given us dominion over all the world and put us in charge of converting people.
But you might start a conversation by asking her (sincerely) what she enjoyed about her trip, and what parts of herself she discovered there that she would like to keep discovering at home. (If the trip had a come-to-Jesus night, she will already be thinking about this.) Did she get to know people in her group that she wouldn’t talk to at high school? Did she learn about her physical, mental, or emotional strength? Did she discover some kind of confidence, even if only in her faith?
Then I think you could veeeeeeery gently talk about how she is planning to remember those parts of the trip in her regular life and ask why it was necessary to go to Cuba and proselytise to discover that she’s not bound by cliques. (I say this flippantly, but she might feel that it was indeed necessary! Listen to her answer.) Did she share mutually meaningful experiences with the Cuban people she met, or were they mostly there to facilitate her epiphanies? How does she think these trips affect the people and places they’re visiting, for better and for worse?
Thank you for this. I work in a somewhat related field and the message I try to impart on those I send abroad to live and work in local communities is, “This is not about you. Do you really think the host organization is spending all this money to bring you over just so you can have an adventure? No.”
I want to also add: Don’t be a voluntourist in your own town. I think there are a lot of folks who have the best intentions but do more harm then good. Mainly show up when you say you’re going to show up and do what the volunteer coordinator asks you to do (even if it sucks) but feel free to add to those.
Yes! My husband and I are discussing service day options for an alumni group we’re involved with, and we’ve been trying to think through all of the options of what is a reasonable work option and what isn’t. Some of the parameters are about the organization itself–we did this last year with two Habitat chapters, one of which was organized and the other one wasn’t–but some of the conversation is about the kind of projects we want our group to participate in, and what kind of impact a group could make in a one day activity. It’s a little tricky because the more I think it through, the more I sometimes think volunteering does more bad than good. For instance: planting trees. Usually volunteer-planted trees are significantly more likely to die than professionally planted ones, but it makes volunteers more interested in caring for the environment (and donating) that most groups will call it a wash. :/
I worked at a homeless shelter for a few months and we had a revolving door of one-day volunteer groups that were completely necessary for the soup kitchen to function. So even if all you commit is one day there are a lot of places that still need that help! But yes, there were good groups that helped the kitchen run smoothly and there were bad groups that caused stress and mayhem.
Soup kitchen! We might look into those.
What about the “clean up this creekbed”-type activities? That might have the same problems (or new problems) than the rest of these. But from afar, it seems like it could be environmentalism + accomplishable in one day + large-group friendly + relatively unskilled. Anyone have experience with those?
I used to work quite extensively on water quality/watershed issues, and I think those are okay. In my previous organization we made a big point of differentiating between “end of pipe” solutions and dealing with the problem at the source. Creek clean ups and the like are definitely the former, but the former is okay when you’re just trying to raise awareness of the problems of dumping and you’re hoping that it’ll trigger an epiphany in enough people’s minds.
Yes. This. If you want to volunteer, it really really really helps if you can COMMIT. In a lot of volunteer orgs, it sucks when people turn up for an hour one weekend because then either a paid employee or a committed volunteer has to take time out to show them what to do–even if it’s a dirt-simple task, they have to be shown where things are, what to do, etc. Unless the volunteer job is LITERALLY “show up and pile rocks into a wheelbarrow,” turning up randomly and sporadically can create a host of problems.
Commitment is one of the single most important things you can do as a volunteer. AND it is an awesome thing to have on your resume, and volunteer supervisors can serve as references while job-searching.
I was “treated” to photos taken by a sweet but simple-minded woman returned from her church mission trip. They painted a Caribbean church. A couple of photos showed clearly, though unintentionally, that the 10-year-old cinder-block building had at least 5 layers of paint on it.
I imagine a patient local population saying, Oh, another do-good group. How shall we minimize their disruption in our community? Just let them paint the church. That should satisfy them.
And so many of the local church members were unemployed. Would it not have been better to donate paint? And don’t get me started on *painting* cinder-block.
This is really good, and really challenging.
I’ve always wondered about Habitat for Humanity. Do those houses actually, like, stay up?
I have experience with Habitat. The houses are very well built. Habitat’s policy is to have licensed contractors in charge of every aspect and will hire contractors when volunteers are not to be had. However, the residents Habitat helps often fail as homeowners. They lack the skills to budget effectively or the stability to tend a house while keeping a job and raising children, for example. I would like to see Habitat maintain a mentoring relationship with new homeowners for several years. They’re great at providing housing. Teaching home ownership, not so much.
Thanks! That’s good to know. I’ve always thought to myself “Shoot, I’d never live in a house an idiot like me helped build,” so it’s heartening to find out they’ve got good practices in place.
I absolutely agree about mentorship, too. Heck, that’d be swell for first-time homeowners in general, I imagine.
On the topic of US nonprofits, Rebuilding Together has a really good model for this, too. Contractors in charge, volunteers doing gruntwork. They make improvements for existing homeowners in low-income communities, such as fixing structural damage, adding accessibility features for aging homeowners, block-wide greening, etc.
I really appreciate this post. Voluntourism sounds so fun! Going to ~exotic places and ~helping and all that! HMM NO. I haven’t really done any voluntourism, but so many people I went to school with would show up with pictures of themselves surrounded by tiny brown kids who they were teaching English or whatever, and it always made me feel uncomfortable and a little icky, which I was not good at articulating at the time. I like volunteering and I want to do more, but I am always super wary of how helpful I will actually be and if just waltzing in will actually be useful. So, thanks for this post and for the reminder about trying to be helpful for other people and not just for your own ~experience~.
Ugh, I did one of these one summer in college and it was dumb. It was apparent basically the moment I hit the ground that it was a big resume-padding scheme for college kids. Did I do more harm than good? No, I did *nothing.* I mean, I improved my Spanish quite a bit, that was good. But I wasn’t doing anything close enough to a real activity to worry that I was displacing local economies. Yet some of the kids I went with are still talking about how life-changing it was? Ick.
I spent a semester in Thailand through Global Routes, teaching English (preschool through high school). At best we were an amusing diversion for the younger kids. A few of the older kids actually wanted to learn some more English, and I don’t think we helped them at all. I’ve used my experience there to talk several friends out of various volunteer trips…
BRB, printing out hundreds of copies of this and papering the campuses of GW, Georgetown, and AU with it.
Seriously, not to cross streams, but I have, in real life, a Master’s degree in International Development. This is the shit that I do. And the one thing that got hammered home throughout that degree is “we basically have no idea what we’re doing, and everytime we try to unfuck things, we really just fuck them up further.” The professionals can’t get it right most of the time, on a gigantic scale, with all the weight of history and experience behind them. The fuck are you to think you can actually do some good in a few weeks or days? I work for a place that makes grants to people so they can do the work themselves, which I think is pretty much the best anyone can do.
If you want to ~do some good~, do it in your own community, make a longstanding commitment, and do it by putting the people you want to help in charge of what’s going on, and have them tell you what to do. That’s the only way you’re going to actually do some good. (This will most likely be proven wrong in 20 years, just like every development theory has been, but it makes more sense than anything else I’ve seen.)
Also, if someone could go back in time and give 15-yr-old me this article and tell me to go into social work or teaching or similar, I’d appreciate it.
Yes yes yes. I write aid proposals/grants for a living, and I could not agree with you more. If we can’t find the right people — professional people — *from the place where the project is happening* to run/advise/support a project, then we know we’re not going to get anything done no matter how many PhDs our chief of party has or whatever. To think that you can swoop in for a few weeks and do something useful is just mind-bogglingly arrogant.
AU grad here–I had the same thought reading the article. If I still lived in the area I’d be leaving stacks of article around campus right now.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The faulty, poorly built gutter system along the side of that road was put there by 32 sophomores from Dartmouth on spring break.
I was definitely on a voluntourism trip a few years ago — for three months — and it was a pretty awful experience because I could just see how little I was contributing and how much money and effort I was wasting just by being there that could have been put to better use. This makes me feel better, and I’ll be bookmarking this to pass along to friends looking for something to do.
I don’t want to bring everything off track, because this was a super article AND the comments are great, but I was thinking about this (satirical) study abroad tumblr the whooooooooole time: http://gurlgoestoafrica.tumblr.com/
That tumblr caused an existential crisis for me when my own particular corner of tumblr discovered it 4 years ago (in the midst of my getting the degree I mention above.) It was a useful crisis, but still.
Ha, I came across when my class started to study abroad and thought “Huh, well, maybe I made the right decision to stay put”
I was involved for a long time with an organization kind of similar. I signed up when I was a teenager and I was totally oblivious to voluntourism and sustainability issues, and I stayed involved for many years despite learning about it and feeling some conflict. I think the organization is trying to get better, and changing its programs — 15 years ago most of the projects were construction-related, but now most of them focus on youth leadership development, etc. I found that there were lots of individuals within the organization willing to have these kinds of discussions, but the organization at large seemed a little clueless, or at least unwilling to engage in this type of critical thinking. I think it’s getting better, and ultimately I think it does more good than harm, but it’s definitely worth examining and constantly re-examining. And the organization doesn’t do anyone any favors by ignoring those issues, either.
A few years ago I went to Jamaica to volunteer in an orphanage. I taught there for 2 months. The kids were fantastic and their house mothers were brilliant caring women. But I too very quickly felt that maybe what I was doing was causing more harm than good. Not on a day to day basis. The kids and I got along brilliantly and I did manage before I left to teach Tafari (an adorable 8 year old) to “carry the 1” when adding without being reminded. But my last week, I felt terrible. Here were 34 fantastic children who had already been abandoned my their families, and here I was, a random Australian doing the same after 2 months.
That being said, I did not completely regret my decision to go, I just had to do something to make sure that there was some difference made by my presence and to make sure that the kids didn’t feel like a tourist attraction. I returned the next year for another 5 weeks. This time I went by myself without the assistance of the voluntourism company I’d used the year before. This made it much less expensive and the money I saved I gave to the orphanage directly. Unfortunately the Childhood Development Agency shut the orphanage at the end of 2012. But I have kept in touch with as many of the kids as possible and am currently paying the rent for the oldest of the girls so that she can attend University that she worked so hard to get into on a scholarship.
Basically I think that most people want to make a difference and because they do they believe the hype of voluntourism companies without thinking of the possible negative consequences. I know I did. But I believe that you can still try and recify the well meaning mistake by trying to make the contribution into an ongoing thin thing, either financially, or by returning. I just hope that by contributing to her education and talking with her on a regular basis about school and anything else that she wants to share, I’ve at least made a positive change in one kid’s life. I’ve certainly made a friend.
I will admit to having participated in a voluntourism program a few years ago, though it was touted more as a cultural immersion experience. I lived with a host family in a small town in Africa and “taught” English and did a slew of other things I was completely unqualified to do. At the end of it I realized how little I had done. I am now getting a degree in an area that, I hope, will help me actually do something if I can go back. I am also currently working on bringing one of my host siblings to the US for college, which will be hugely beneficial to the family I lived with.
I think that these programs can be very damaging to communities whose needs are not being served (we don’t need you to build another school, we need help running the one we already have/we don’t need more toilets, we need water filtration/we don’t need education on tooth brushing we need farming innovations) but they can also be a good opportunity for people to get their feet wet in community work and learn about NGOs and what poverty actually looks like.
Great article though, and great conversation!
Excellent article! I live in Cambodia and am currently working on a project called Learning Service, which deals with a lot of the topics you bring up. Our goal is to connect would-be volunteers to the information needed to help them make responsible and sustainable choices regarding volunteer placements.
We’re also releasing an educational video series, our latest deals with how to transition to life back home after you’ve volunteered abroad. If you’re interested, you can learn more and use our resources at learningservice.info.
Again, great article! I’m glad conversations are starting around this topic.
Excellent article! I live in Cambodia and am currently working on a project called Learning Service, which deals with a lot of the topics you bring up. Our goal is to connect would-be volunteers to the information needed to help them make responsible and sustainable choices regarding volunteer placements.
We're also releasing an educational video series, our latest deals with how to transition to life back home after you've volunteered abroad. If you're interested, you can learn more and use our resources at learningservice.info.
Again, great article! I'm glad conversations are starting around this topic.
Seconding the eco-tourism suggestion!
For example, the MESCOT project in Malaysian Borneo (http://travel.mongabay.com/news/2013/1230-borneo-rainforest-tourism.html) is a community-run rainforest tourism cooperative; it creates jobs for people in the community and members receive payouts based on their shares. (They also have a microfinance facility, which is very fantastic because banking is inaccessible to most people in rural Borneo.) It also gives the community a viable economic alternative to palm oil, aka the root of all evils (or just the cause of some terrible environmental and human rights abuses and DESTROYER OF THE RAINFORESTS. I have strong feelings about palm oil.), while preserving the forests – so in this case, tourism does a lot of good!
TL;DR community-run tourism can be empowering. It can be tricky to find eco-tourism sites that are truly benefitting local people, but the ones that are are worth supporting.
In fact, BKPM (Badan Koordinasi Penanaman Modal/Investment Coordination Agency) regulates foreign direct investment and foreign ownership of property so many of those businesses are co-owned by locals and expats. Bali has certainly benefited economically from the surge of tourism since the 70s – although its undoubtedly had some negative social effects. I can't say I've ever had any trouble finding Indonesian food. There are many wonderful places to visit in Indonesia outside of Kuta, both on Bali and other islands if you want a more "authentic" experience.
Sorry if this sounds like I'm piling up on you, this is a subject I have a lot of personal interest and mixed feelings about… I'm intrigued by the traveler's quest for authenticity and this push back against feeling like a tourist. I am Indonesian-American, now living in Jakarta with my white boyfriend and sometimes he's made comments about his Indonesian experience that bother me in a way I can't quite articulate. Several times after having traveled to a remote island, he'll say something along the lines that he's "the first white person that that village had ever seen" as if that is more valid/laudable?
”Know where you’re going, what you’re doing, and why”. This is one of the best post i have overcome. Definitely it is helpful for many people who are planning their gap year or willing to make volunteer contributions.
Aaaaaah this is so true and useful, especially the part about considering the need for your volunteer work before your desire to do it. And this line” “A position can be filled by a volunteer; but a position shouldn’t exist to make sure a volunteer slots into it.”
I think there is a lot of value to voluntourism though, if you consider it really carefully and find a project that actually benefits people and isn’t taking anyone’s job. People who have the cash and ability to travel and work for free can be a great resource. I agree that a lot of work by volunteer tourists is imperfect, but in some cases the services wouldn’t be offered at all if volunteers didn’t do them. Also, successful volunteer run projects can show the government how strong demand for a service is and motivate them to adapt it into policy (i.e. offering English classes at public community centers). I live in Rio de Janeiro and I’ve been somewhat involved in volunteer work here, so my opinions might be Brazil-specific, but here’s my advice for people who want to volunteer…
Teaching English can be super useful even if you don’t have a degree IF you’re teaching in a place with job opportunities for English speakers (in tourism, petroleum, etc). There’s this silly generalized belief that teaching English is always good because it’s the universal language or whatever, but if you’re in a place with a growing tourist industry (or other internationally connected field) it can be essential to increasing peoples’ job opportunities. I have a lot of friends here who learned basic English at an NGO with foreign volunteers and got better jobs as a result. Same goes for basic computer skills.
If you have programming skills you should definitely check out projects that teach app development–there are a lot of new projects doing this in Rio, and unlike most job training classes, they can actually lead to students making bank.
If you want to work with kids, I actually think it’s fine to visit an educational NGO and do a one-day project or game if you can’t stay for six months. Volunteers who stay for a few weeks are more troublesome because they create attachments and expectations. If you just visit for one day, the kids get to meet a new person and do a fun activity but there’s no disruption to their schedule. If you can only stay a few weeks, DO NOT teach unless you know for sure there’s another teacher lined up who will continue your curriculum.
My biggest piece of advice is to be open to doing unpleasant work. I run a community garden in a favela and we use volunteer labor for the really shit jobs that no one else would want to do, like hauling out trash and entertaining annoying children who just want to dig everything up. In this case, there’s no risk of volunteers taking jobs from locals because if they didn’t do the work no one would. Volunteers are also useful when you have local interest but locals can’t do the set-up work because they have actual jobs. We had volunteers do all the heavy duty weeding and digging to prepare the garden, and now locals plant the garden in their spare time.
My second biggest piece of advice is to approach the situation as normal, and not an opportunity to have a deep experience. If you talk to locals, make normal small talk and chat about the work you’re doing. If you approach people as “an underprivileged woman struggling against adversity in a slum” you will definitely sound like a jerk. People in developing countries are just people and they can talk about a fascinating variety of subjects, not just their tragic suffering.
I would also add that if you do decide to do a volunteer trip or donate to a small org you should try to get in touch with past volunteers and ask for their thoughts, to make sure the project isn’t too corrupt or incompetent.
If you’re not sure about your ability to do any of this, just take a normal vacation and donate money instead of volunteering. Your money can probably make a much bigger impact than you can (if you donate it to a good org, of course).
People who conduct academic research in the developing world should consider this article TENFOLD.
Also check out Guludo in Mozambique.