Gen Z’s Growing Criticism of the Peace Corps

The Peace Corps was built upon the ideals of “world peace and friendship,” but Gen Z is analyzing the organization through a new lens.

Peace Corps Swearing-In Ceremony. US Embassy South Africa. CC BY 2.0

A growing number of Gen Zers are vocalizing their concerns about the Peace Corps, a program introduced by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Kennedy initiated the program with the intention of fostering global peace through volunteerism, however, Gen Zers are criticizing the Peace Corps for its roots in neocolonialism and American exceptionalism.

In his 1961 Special Message to Congress, Kennedy described the living conditions in developing countries as primitive, framing volunteers as heroes. Today, more than 240,000 Americans have served in the Peace Corps, working in sectors such as education, agriculture and community development. While a decrease in Peace Corps volunteers amongst Gen Z is in part due to its lack of economic incentive, many Gen Zers are challenging traditional modes of volunteerism and examining the Peace Corps through the lens of white saviorism, criticizing the program for the lack of diversity among its volunteers. In a 2020 factsheet, only 34% of Peace Corps volunteers identified as minorities.

Former Peace Corps volunteers don’t necessarily view their trips as acts of “heroism.” Instead, they see volunteerism as a two-way street. “One thing most people forget about the Peace Corps is that it is not simply about going overseas ‘to help.’ The Peace Corps is intended to be a multi-dimensional exchange,” says Paul, 62, who volunteered through the Peace Corps in Mali for two and a half years. “Volunteers returning to the U.S. tell stories about other countries not only to raise awareness, but to show how people are similar around the world. In the end, we all got more from the folks ‘over there’ than they got from us.”

UC Berkeley has produced more Peace Corps volunteers than any other university in the country, but recent student discourse surrounding the Peace Corps isn’t necessarily positive. “Peace Corps volunteers are going in with a Western notion of education. We’re assuming that people abroad should believe and trust volunteers simply because they’re American,” says Natalie, 20, a sophomore at UC Berkeley who considered joining the Peace Corps post-college. Gen Zers argue that instead of addressing criticisms and reforming the program accordingly, the Peace Corps is more concerned with protecting its wholesome, noble image and enforcing U.S. imperialism through the development of capitalistic structures. Decolonizing Peace Corps is an anti-imperialist organization seeking to abolish the Peace Corps altogether. A growing number of Gen Zers are joining the movement, and the organization’s Instagram account has garnered over 9,000 followers. A change.org petition and Venmo account are linked in the account’s bio, along with other resources to learn about colonial occupation in developing countries.

The future of the Peace Corps is uncertain, with a growing discourse surrounding whether or not it be abolished, reformed or maintained as is. Gen Z is at the forefront of this dialogue, seeking to reevaluate the mission of the Peace Corps and redefine what it truly means to volunteer, striving for a more culturally sensitive approach to international aid.

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Agnes Volland

Agnes is a student at UC Berkeley majoring in Interdisciplinary Studies and minoring in Creative Writing, with a research focus on road trip culture in America. She currently writes for BARE Magazine and Caravan Travel & Style Magazine. She is working on a novel that follows two sisters as they road trip down Highway 40, from California to Oklahoma. In the future, she hopes to pursue a career in journalism, publishing, or research.

The Thorny Issue of Orphanage Volunteering

Well-founded criticisms tangle with on-the-ground realities. Should volunteers be part of the mix?

In a barrage of tweets last year, JK Rowling didn’t mince words when it came to her feelings about orphanage volunteering. Taking to Twitter, the Harry Potter author said she would never support the growing phenomenon of individuals travelling to developing countries to carry out volunteer work—especially when it comes to orphanages.

“#Voluntourism is one of [the] drivers of family break-up in very poor countries. It incentivizes 'orphanages' that are run as businesses,” she wrote.

While Rowling brought new attention to the subject, her criticism is not original. For decades, working at orphanages has been a popular volunteer abroad activity. However, recently the criticism has intensified as the industry has grown. Many countries, including Nepal, Uganda and Cambodia have witnessed an increase in the number of orphanages—one that coincides with a rise in foreign volunteers.

Social support or dodgy business?

For Hanna Voelkl, a social worker, volunteering in orphanages is an absolute no-go.

“Voluntourism in orphanages is a business basically playing with the emotions of people and using vulnerable children in poverty to do so. They are not sustainable at all and do a lot of harm,” she says.

As part of her Master’s research, Voelkl spent two months in an orphanage in Ghana conducting a qualitative case study of the experiences of orphans who interacted with international volunteers there. Her research was one of the first studies that approached the issue from a child’s perspective.

Her conclusion? The children associated the volunteers mainly with giving and receiving material goods. Voelkl believes volunteering in orphanages only serves to perpetuate stereotypes of Western volunteers as “saviours”, without focusing on the needs of the children or empowering communities to help them.

During her research, Voelkl became sceptical that money being sent to the orphanage even reached the children. When she first arrived, the number of children who didn’t have shoes, toothbrushes, mosquito nets, beds or educational materials shocked her. While she was not able to verify it, she believes this may have been a strategy to create the impression that the orphanage needed funds in order to solicit more donations as a source of income for those who run it.

When she overheard Ghanaians talking about starting orphanages as profitable businesses, her suspicions were raised further—and they may not be unfounded. UNICEF has expressed concern that orphanages in Cambodia are turning to tourism to attract money. As a result, children are put at risk for abuse and neglect, and well-meaning tourists are unwittingly funding a system that separates children from their families. Cambodia has seen a 75 per cent increase in orphanages since 2005. Over that same period, foreign arrivals increased by 250 per cent.

This same trend can been seen in Nepal, where there are 743 children’s homes; a number that has “mushroomed” in recent years, according to a Arjun Garigain, a researcher on orphan care in Nepali communities.

This is a change that Claire Bennett, co-founder of Learning Service, an organization that teaches people about responsible volunteering, has witnessed firsthand living in Nepal.

“There were very few orphanages until money started coming from foreign donors,” says Bennett. “The more that foreign volunteers and donors support orphanages, the more children are separated from their families or their communities in order to fill them.”

A lack of alternatives

American Linda Unsicker, 68, says that in all her years of volunteering that’s never been her impression. She and her late husband spent 11 years giving their time in various countries around the world. Her most recent solo venture was with a children’s orphanage in Rabat, Morocco, where she’s now been three times.

“The volunteer's function is to give some one-on-one time to the children to help the fantastic staff also have more time with them,” she says.

Bennett acknowledges that children in orphanages are crying out for attention, but she doesn’t believe the problem can be solved with “a conveyor belt of untrained foreign volunteers.”

“As harsh as this sounds, it is a little selfish to go abroad to interact with vulnerable children because it feels good to you, when there is a lot of research to say that this damages children,” says Bennett. She says that high volunteer turnover has the potential to fuel attachment disorders. What the kids ultimately need are trained, long-term caregivers with whom they can form healthy relationships.

Farhana Rehman-Furs, Chief Program Officer at Cross-Cultural Solutions (CCS), a volunteer-sending organization that includes assisting at orphanages among its programs, acknowledges that in some regions of the world, “a handful of bad seeds in the industry have negatively affected certain orphanages." But she says this could be avoided if prospective volunteers were better informed and were more careful to choose placements through organizations that follow best practices for sustainable development, such as having strict vetting policies for establishing international partnerships and thorough monitoring and evaluation of programs.

“We agree with child development experts that children benefit most developmentally from a secure family environment. [However] the reality on the ground in many of our countries is simply not conducive or developed to institute adoption and fostering as a possibility,” wrote Rehman-Furs in a response to Rowling’s tweets. “We support the campaign by experts to combat ‘pop-up’ profit-making orphanages, yet we also know from experience that for many children, orphanages are the only alternative.”

As the only alternative, volunteers can play a role in the day-to-day operations. In partnership surveys and evaluations conducted by CCS, orphanage staff reported that international volunteers helped not only in providing care to children, but also in “combatting pervasive stereotypes.” 

Another volunteer-sending organization, Pod Volunteer, takes a similar stance. “Local [orphanage] staff are often overstretched and volunteers help with the general workload and day-to-day running of the orphanages with tasks such as maintenance, cleaning and laundry enabling there to be more time and opportunity for the local staff to spend directly with the children,” they state on their website. 

Ultimately, Rehman-Furs points out that it's the volunteer-sending organization's responsibility to take the protection of children seriously. She adds that CCS has worked with most of their orphanage partners for more than a decade and when a volunteer is assigned a placement, money is never sent to the orphanage. As a result, there is no direct financial benefit for the orphanage to host volunteers. The volunteers' placement fees cover their accommodation, food and the salaries of CCS's in-country staff, who ensure that volunteers are properly trained and are not engaging in any activities that they're not qualified to do.

Support in all the wrong places

It's been widely reported that the majority of children in orphanages are not, in fact, orphans; most have at least one surviving parent and likely other living relatives, as well. In Cambodia, for example, UNICEF puts the number of "non-orphans" in institutional care at 77 per cent. In other countries, it's even higher.

But does this mean the majority of children in orphanages don't really need support and care? Quite the opposite, in fact. The prevailing reason vulnerable children are placed in orphanages by their families is because they are desperately poor and, in the absence of other supports, feel it is the only way for a child to have adequate food and the possibility of an education.

In the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, there were reports that thousands of children had been orphaned. In response, the Indonesian government invested in institutional care to protect these vulnerable children. Foreign money poured in—to the tune of $5.4 million between 2005 and 2007—and many new children’s residences were built. But a 2006 case study, conducted by Save the Children-UK and the Indonesian Ministry of Social Affairs, determined that more than 97 per cent of the "tsunami orphans" had, in fact, been placed in care by their families.

The destruction caused by the tsunami—and the crippling poverty that ensued—meant that families could no longer afford education for their children. Residential care was seen as their only option.

But what if that money had been directed toward supporting families and communities instead of building more residential care facilities? It's entirely probable that the majority of those children would have remained with their families.

Is there a legitimate role for volunteers?

Institutional care can expose children to abuse and neglect and, particularly with children under the age of three, causing significant psychological harm. It’s been widely documented that children fare better in a family-like setting. But are there situations where residential care is a valid solution? UK-based charity, Save the Children, says "yes"—but it is an emphatically limited yes.

They acknowledge that in some situations, placing a child in short-term institutional care might be the only option—for example, children requiring specialized care for severe disabilities or teenagers temporarily awaiting a more suitable long-term alternative. But otherwise, they stress that all other family-based options should be explored (fostering or adoption, for example). They also stress that in situations where residential care is the only option for a child, it should be in the form of a group home, with a small number children and consistent adult care in a family-like setting.

Is there a role for volunteers in these cases? Bennett argues that even highly skilled volunteers—such as early childhood educators—shouldn’t be involved directly with children. Instead, their skills are better put to use running capacity building programs with permanent local staff.

Mark Riley is the director and a co-founder of Alternative Care Initiatives, an organization working with the Ugandan government and others on child welfare reforms in Uganda and east Africa. In a 2016 article for the Guardian he says orphanages don't address the underlying problems causing children to be separated from their families and, in many cases, they contribute to the problem. "Orphanages are an intervention without an exit strategy," he writes.

But he also points out that with increasing awareness of the negative impacts orphanages can have, many traditional supporters of orphanages are changing their tack.

"Some of these organizations receive foreign volunteers and mission trips, [but] their emphasis is on supporting families and alternative family-based care, with good social work practices at the centre."

This article was originally published in the Winter 2017 issue of Verge Magazine - Travel With Purpose®

SAM MEDNICK

Sam Mednick is a Canadian journalist currently based in South Sudan. Over the past 12 years she’s reported on humanitarian, human interest and conflict stories from around the world. Sam’s work has taken her to the Middle East, Africa, Asia, South America and Europe, writing for VICE, the Associated Press, Devex, Barcelona Metropolitan, iPolitics amongst others. Sam also produces and hosts the Happy Melly Podcast, interviewing authors, speakers and thought leaders about what it takes to live productive and fulfilling lives. Previously, Sam lived in Barcelona for almost 10 years and hosted its first English weekly radio show, Fuel4Fridays.

5 Terrible Things You Do When You Travel (That Don’t Seem That Bad)

THE CURSE OF LIVING IN THE MODERN world is that evil acts are not required for evil things to happen. A mother looks away from her 3-year-old son for a few seconds, and a gorilla gets killed. Tourists see a calf that looks cold, try to help it, and inadvertently ensure its death. A 21-year-old student takes an ill-advised souvenir in North Korea and becomes an imprisoned pawn in an ongoing diplomatic fight.

Small acts can have huge repercussions, and you don’t need to act maliciously to cause serious harm. The problem, of course, is that most of this harm is caused by innocent ignorance, and human ignorance is almost limitless.

So not doing harm can seem like an uphill battle. Here are a few things you do regularly while traveling that cause more harm than you realize.

1. You wear sunscreen while swimming in the ocean.

I know: Baz Luhrmann told you to always wear sunscreen. And he wasn’t wrong: UV damage sucks, and can cause some serious health problems. But if you’re going to go swimming in the ocean, you want to make sure you’re wearing the right type of sunscreen.

Most regular sunscreens contain a chemical called oxybenzone, which can disrupt coral growth. Coral reefs are the most important aquatic ecosystems, and are dying off around the world thanks to climate change and overfishing. But oxybenzone in sunscreen isn’t helping either: a single drop of it in an Olympic swimming pool-sized body of water can have harmful effects on coral reefs. So instead, buy and use a reef-friendly sunscreen.

2. You give money to child beggars.

Helping a child is maybe one of the most noble impulses a human being can have. Unfortunately, that makes it really easy to exploit. Especially in developing countries like India, “organized begging” is a serious problem. Children are recruited by violent thugs and are forced to beg. And since disabled children make more money as beggars, the thugs will sometimes mutilate the kids. Some kids are intentionally hooked on drugs, so they won’t run away from their criminal syndicate supplier. And the money ends up in the pockets of the criminals, not helping the actual children.

Instead of giving money to kids, set aside money for a worthy organization. Here are a few that help the poor:

Oxfam
UNICEF
Population Services International
Free the Slaves
Save the Children

3. You participate in orphanage tourism.

Another entry in the “awful things that are done in the name of helping children” is the terrible orphanage tourism industry. This isn’t to say that orphanages that accept tourist visitors are all terrible places, but some are.

Intrepid Travel did a great piece on this a few weeks ago. They pointed out that orphanage tourism perversely makes orphans into an in-demand commodity, and that often, the kids actually have families. Orphans are not zoo animals, and in a just world, they would not be a commodity. If you really want to help, don’t feed the orphanage tourism industry.

4. You volunteer in not-very-helpful ways.

If you’re a doctor or a construction worker, you may have skills that could be very helpful in a foreign country. If you have those skills, you should volunteer abroad. But if you don’t have a very specific set of skills, then often, your help with, say, building a house, isn’t going to be all that valuable.

Voluntourism comes from a very noble impulse, but it’s super tricky. Before going abroad to volunteer, ask yourself: “Am I the best person to help out here? Am I properly trained to do this work? Will I really be helping?”

If you aren’t sure, the better choice may be to donate money instead.

5. You go a little too far in trying to take a picture with wild animals.

2016 has been the year of the harmful animal selfie. There’s the woman who got her clock cleaned when she tried to take a picture of an elk. There are the horrifying discoveries that have accompanied the closing of Thailand’s “Tiger Temple.” And seal calfs keep getting abandoned by their mothers after tourists take selfies with them.

Look: it’s understandable. You want to take a picture with the cute animal. But there are a few simple rules you can follow if you don’t want to do harm:

Do not approach wild animals. They are wild animals, and unless you really know what you’re doing, you can harm them, and they can harm you.

If you see a tourist attraction that allows you to interact with animals that it would normally be dangerous for humans to interact with, then the animals are probably being kept sedated. So don’t hang out with lion and tiger cubs, as irresistibly cute as they may be.

If you want to see the wildlife, the best place to see it is in its natural environment. This will require that you be patient, and it may mean you don’t see everything you want to see. But it’s better for the animals, and it’s ultimately more rewarding.

Animals aren’t humans. Don’t assume that their behaviors will be the exact same as human behaviors, or that they do things for human reasons.

These aren’t the only ways in which ignorance can do a good amount of harm, but they’re a good place to start. If you want to do more good than harm when you travel, do your research ahead of time. It’s natural to want to help, but you should know how to help before you start helping. Otherwise, it’s very likely you’ll do more harm than good.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON MATADOR NETWORK. 

MATT HERSHBERGER

Matt Hershberger is a writer and blogger who focuses on travel, culture, politics, and global citizenship. His hobbies include scotch consumption, profanity, and human rights activism. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and his Kindle. You can check out his work at the Matador Network, or over at his website.

Little White Girls Aren't the Problem with Voluntourism, Privilege Is.

“Isn’t race only an issue for those who make it one?” a British woman at Tourism Concern’s International Volunteering Conference asked. “Americans are, after all, obsessed with race,” she added. This wasn’t said as a compliment; it was posed with a hint of derision, as if our attempts at open dialogues on race are only one of a slew of problematic traits that she could point out. Now, I can’t say that we have the whole “talking about race” thing down in any way. Most of the time we suck at it, but while the questioner was wrong her query brought up a good point.

Race dynamics are an important factor in voluntourism, but they aren’t everything.

When it comes to the power dynamics of voluntourism, it is all about privilege. Privilege comes in a multitude of forms and is sometimes hard to identify. There is racial privilege, then there is economic privilege, educational privilege, geographic privilege, gender privilege, religious privilege, privilege that comes with adhering to heteronormative standards, skinny privilege, and a million more that have yet to be recognized or that I just do not know.

Privilege is, at its core, easy to identify but difficult to own up to. Those who experience it, myself included, struggle to openly recognize its existence as we hope beyond hope that our kind intentions and good will are enough to overcome it. But they aren’t. Intentions are not enough. The specter of privilege is unshakable and those who wish to deny it, those who say that race and other forms of privilege only matter when we bring them up, are naïve.

This is not to say that those who are privileged cannot do good work. Rather, their privilege, especially educational privilege, can be an asset in volunteering. Having a particular skill to offer can be priceless. Engineers can create solutions for regional water issues, doctors can train local physicians in new techniques, and educators can teach their local peers new styles resulting in better-educated students. Having specialized skills is awesome and often very helpful.

But privilege isn’t always an asset and often times in order to do aid right, volunteering shouldn’t even be a part of the equation.

This is specifically true for young would-be volunteers. Developing countries are, by and large, resource poor. One resource that they have more than enough of is unskilled labor. So why are we exporting unskilled labor to them by the millions?

To think that the only way to provide aid is to volunteer is to ignore the opportunities that exist for people to actively stimulate economies through ethical tourism. With voluntourism, those looking to volunteer carry their donations and privilege thousands of miles and an unbalanced give-and-take relationship is almost always inevitable. Accepting ones role as a tourist by supporting locally owned businesses is a form of stimulus sure to last much longer than a wall you spent three days painting in Honduras.

So this isn’t really about little white girls. It’s about everyone.

It’s about unrecognized privilege and it’s about an unequal exchange where volunteers benefit greatly and those who are meant to benefit rarely do so in a sustainable and long-term manner. More than anything, it’s about learning to help without having to hold the title of volunteer.

Travel as much as you possibly can. Experience cultures and get involved with communities, but do so in a way that economically invests in the places you care about and want to see made even better. Do this by staying in locally owned hotels, eating at locally owned restaurants, and frequenting locally owned businesses. Sometimes that means doing the hard work yourself, but there are some great companies and non-profits that are can do the work for you. Tourism Concern offers a number of options and Onwards started running trips in the spring.

Recognize privilege, open a dialogue, and accept that what you can offer comes with limitations.

Most importantly, don’t just volunteer in communities; invest in communities.

Quotes are paraphrased. 

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON PIPPABIDDLE.COM.

PIPPA BIDDLE

Pippa Biddle is a writer. Her work has been published by The New York Times online, Antillean Media Group, The FBomb, MTV, Elite Daily, Go Overseas, Matador Network, and more. She is a graduate of Columbia University with a degree in Creative Writing. Twitter: @PhilippaBiddle
 

What are ALL voluntourists good at?

In recent years Voluntourism it has gotten a bad name.  There are a lot of valid reasons that people have been turned off by voluntourism, including:

• voluntourism’s potential to foster colonialist attitudes and cause harmful side effects (as in Illich’s thoughts on Peace Corps)
• projects which place unskilled foreign travelers in jobs requiring skilled laborers or taking away local jobs
• short term interactions with children without proper child protection policies (Some argue that English teaching is a great way to engage English-speaking travelers in volunteer work, and perhaps sometimes it is, but I feel that even this is not always a good fit. Often times native speakers know the language, but are not trained teachers and repeated short-term interactions can have harmful side effects for children.)
• volunteer placement agencies charging exorbitant fees from their overseas offices with little to no money reaching the development projects themselves (no need to link to a lot of them for examples, just google “volunteer abroad”!)

These reasons are some of the reasons that I too am skeptical of voluntourism initiatives. I have seen some damaging results of travelers philanthropy which did not embody effective voluntourism or development practices and ended up causing more harm than good.  At PEPY, we have made many mistakes ourselves, especially in our first few years of operations where we designed trips for tourists to “teach and give” rather than “learn and support” and where we designed trips around the needs and demands of travelers rather than those of the communities we were working with.  Many of our initial mistakes are highlighted in the documentary “Changing the World on Vacation” by Deeda Productions. Although watching some of your mistakes on TV and seeing yourself say some ridiculous things you no longer believe in is not a fun pass time, I appreciative that filmmaker Daniela Kon’s work will serve as a learning tool for many others and reminder to me about the lessons we have learned.

As we have examined at the hands-on service portions of our trips looking to find the most useful way to engage tourists in something they are skilled at, we asked ourselves: What ARE all tourists experts at?

The answer we came up with is this: All tourists are experts at being tourists!  Of course!

They know what THEY want when they travel, and that knowledge is often the missing key to successful community based tourism initiatives. Now of course, you and I don’t share the same wants/needs as every tourist and living in Cambodia with a huge child sex tourism industry, I surely wouldn’t want to take the opinions of all tourists to heart when developing new programs. I do though believe that if we find similar minded people looking for an eco-friendly and responsible adventure, one very useful skill they all can bring is the ability to give their feedback and ideas about how to design such a trip.

Tourists can use these skills to help local communities who have a tourism product to offer but are perhaps lacking the experience to market or tailor the trip to tourists.  They can also help promote positive environmental practices by highlighting their desire to see natural environments and physical and cultural preservation in the countries they visit.

By matching travelers up with community based tourism initiatives, we hope to improve the whole adventure tourism supply chain by:

• giving thorough feedback and ideas for improvement to community based tourism initiatives and groups looking to offer such products
• offering marketing advice
• promoting positive environmental practices and preservation initiatives
• creating informational and promotional material for the organizations we believe in from signs helping travelers find their way to the site to English language placards or hand-outs describing the locations highlights in areas where English speaking guides might not be available
• Physically helping to improve offerings in the area (constructing signage, cleaning surroundings, beautifying local infrastructure, building safety or protective tools such as fencing or walkways, etc)

We believe that, by designing trips which improve the local adventure tourism supply chain, we can place travelers in a position where both their time and funding are valuable while also helping to ensure that tourism dollars support local initiatives.

We have done some of this in the past, but had not embraced the concept of “using voluntourists as tourists” as much as we currently are in our upcoming tours. Our updated website (coming soon!) will highlight these offerings.  In the meantime… what do you think?  No, it’s not building a house for a family nor petting kids in an orphanage, so it might not have the same appeal as other offerings, but we believe that if we highlight the added value travelers can bring to responsible (aka. well-vetted) community tourism programs, people will be excited to support these programs.

What do YOU think?

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON LESSONS I LEARNED.

DANIELA PAPI

Daniela is the Deputy Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She has spearheaded student programming initiatives at Saïd Business School including the Leading for Impact programme and had taught on MBA courses including the Entrepreneurship Project and a course on high-impact entrepreneurship. Daniela is a graduate of Saïd Business School's MBA programme and was a Skoll Scholarship recipient. 

Prior to coming to Oxford, Daniela spent six years in Cambodia where she grew a youth leadership organization, PEPY, an educational travel company, PEPY Tours, and an advocacy organisation, Learning Service. Daniela is co-authoring a book advocating for a 'Learning Service' approach to philanthropic and volunteer travel and has worked as a consultant to other social impact organizations, typically supporting their strategy redesign by incorporating her experience in social marketing and user-centered programme design. She recently wrote a report called 'Tackling Heropreneurship' focused on fuelling collective impact through an 'apprenticing with a problem' approach.

Check out Learning Service for more. 
 

Voluntourism: What could go wrong when trying to do right?

Voluntourism: What could go wrong when trying to do right?

During the past eight years, as I have joined and then lead volunteer programs in Asia, I have seen many of the same mistakes repeated when it comes to international “voluntourism”, I have made many of these mistakes myself. I know how easy it is to offer a trip that is easy to sell, fits in with travelers’ demands, appears to have a plan for a positive impact, but in the end ends up being either a waste of time for the local community partners or, in the worst cases, causes more harm than good. Here are some of the common problems I have seen in the voluntourism market and some tips for travelers on how to choose the right program.

Creating one-off projects which have little long-term impact

Often times the real needs of a project are not things that volunteers can easily support. Language barriers, lack of local knowledge, and lack of skills prevent volunteers from being a good fit for most development project needs, so instead tour companies often create projects for the volunteer.

These projects typically involve little investment of energy and ideas in people. The core needs of the partner might have been teacher training for their school, soil enhancement techniques to improve farming, etc. Because volunteers can’t help with those things, a project is instead created to fill the desire of the traveler to “feel helpful”, and the core needs are overlooked for those where it was simpler to insert unskilled volunteers. These projects might be building a fence or painting a school, and it is likely that the tour company will do little to monitor the project other than stopping by twice a year with their tourists to take a picture of “the school they are helping.”

Real life example: I really did travel with a tour company that decided to allow us to paint the school that was on their bike route. We painted it poorly, I must say, as we rushed to complete it in one day (and most of us felt too tired to put in a big effort). We probably spent $200 on paint (25% of which we dropped on the floor). The project was in rural Thailand, and $200 could have probably bought a lot of educational resources, hired a few teachers for a month, or done a list of other things which would have added more educational value than our patchy blue paint job. If they insisted on painting, if they had instead funded $3000 towards a locally identified educational need (for example, a weekly life-skills training course), plus bought $200 worth of paint, at least then our combined efforts would have been more than just the blue paint on the floor.

How to choose: Ask the tour operator about their relationship with the NGO partner. Have they worked together long? If the answer is yes, that’s a good thing. How do they choose what projects the travelers will engage in? If the local communities or NGO partners are making the decisions and have veto power over ideas they don’t like, that is better than ideas coming from the tour company based on unfounded assumptions of needs. For all of these answers, getting in touch with both someone who had gone on the trip before and someone working in the country where you are visiting to get their perspective on the company and NGO partner will shine a more realistic light on the situation.

Forgetting that volunteers are NOT free

A lot of tour operators will bring their clients to a project and expect an NGO or community program to entertain their guests by speaking to them about their work or organizing a small volunteer project. They put the NGOs or orphanages on their site, sell them to clients as part of a tour, yet keep all of the tour profits themselves. Sometimes the tour company says, “We leave it up to the tourists to see if they want to donate!”, but it should not be the tourists’ responsibility to ensure that the development partner gets value out of the trip in exchange for their time.

Real life example: As an NGO, at PEPY we sometimes get requests from tour companies to come see our projects. They want to include a visit to our programs as a part of their tour, which they will market to their clients. To entertain a group for a few hours and explain our projects would take time away from management staff.

How to choose: If you know that your skills are not precisely matched with the needs of a project, or if the interactions you are having with partner NGOs are taking their time away from their core mission, ask and find out if the tour company is compensating the person or group presenting to or facilitating your community interaction.  If they are not, yet the tour company is marking this part of the experience as a selling point of the tour, then they are probably putting the desire for their own profits over a the need to provide real support for these groups.

Giving things away

As Saundra has told us over and over again and as I have learned through seeing the negative effects of an unbridled tourism culture of giving things away “to the poor people”, giving things to people is never going to solve their problems. Instead, it can destroy local markets, create community jealousies, and create a culture of dependency.

Real life example: I wish this WASN’T real… but sadly, this is what a lot of “responsible” tourism has come to. There are tour operators in Cambodia where you can pay $45 for the day to be driven out to a “poor village where you can hand out food or school supplies to the poor family of your choice”. Oh yes, people pay for this. It’s like buying food pellets at the zoo to feed the goats. Except these are people. Not goats.

How to choose: Question any organization that allows you and your tour group to go anywhere to “hand out school supplies” or “deliver a book to a child”. If those items are needed, they should be distributed through local power structures, in ways where those with the highest needs are prioritized, and where capacity building is tied in with the giving away of things.

Monitoring projects poorly or not at all

How can a tour company that comes through an area a few times a year know that they are “improving lives through our wells”? Do they go back and test them? Fix them? Get feedback? Sometimes we think we are helping people, but it is not until we try it and fail that we realize our plan was flawed. What is worse is if we continue to repeat our failures, either from lack of willingness to admit them, or lack of effort to research our impacts.

Real life example: A tour company in India allowed tourists to hand out goats to families on their tours. In the middle of the tour, a person from a nearby village came and told the director that the man who had been put in charge of choosing which poor families should get the goats had been charging the families for the goats for years. The tour company had been making their English speaking tour guide rich, were not helping “the poorest of the poor” that they claimed to be, and had furthered corruption and mistrust in the village.

How to choose: Ask about the NGO’s monitoring plan. If you are building any structures or giving away any technology, find out how those things are being put to use and who will monitor the needs in case of damage or additional ideas for improvements. Is there a responsible NGO partner involved in these projects full-time who can make the changes needed to ensure the program’s success? If you feel that the tour company’s projects are one-off initiatives with little relationship building on their part with the community, find a new operator.

Giving unskilled volunteers jobs that require skills

Even painting requires some skills, and clearly our group in Thailand didn’t have them. Teaching English should not be left to 19 year old gap years, especially in countries where there are plenty of unemployed local English speakers. If we don’t know how to do what we are supposed to be doing as volunteers, we might cause more harm than good, and at minimum, we will waste a lot of people’s time.

Real life example: There are many orphanages in Cambodia which take volunteers to teach English. Some come for a few weeks, others for a few days. When they leave, the classes have no teacher, there is no curriculum to ensure that the students aren’t learning “Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes” every day, and the school is not better able to solve its own problems in the future because of the volunteer’s visit. If skilled teachers had spent time teaching English teachers English, they would have improved the system at least slightly, but sadly, everyone just wants to pet the cute kids.

How to choose: If you are looking for a long term placement, make sure to pick an operator that does very thorough matching of skills and needs. For short term placements, choose groups focused on educating you as a traveler, and giving you the skills and tools to improve the world when you go home. We have to learn before we can help. Choosing a trip focused on your education, which doesn’t assume that every wealthy traveler has construction skills, will empower you to be better equipped to support responsible initiatives in the future.

Forgetting to make the rest of the time on their trip “responsible”

There is a lot of discussion about the “volunteer time”, but what about the rest of the trip? Where are you being put up? What restaurants are you eating at? Those things matter just as much as the volunteer time, and just like carbon offsetting, if you are trying to do good by giving money to development projects, yet causing harm in all of your day-to-day activities, the two do not balance out.

Real life example: A responsible tourism organization based abroad was planning their trip to Cambodia and had contacted us to learn more about our work. When I met with the trip coordinator at their hotel, I realized that they had chosen to stay at a hotel owned in part by a very well known corrupt politician. Had they spent the time to ask anyone working in responsible travel in Cambodia about their hotel and restaurant choices, they would have found much more well-respected places in which to spend their money.

How to choose: Ask your voluntourism partner about the rest of the trip and how they make their choices. If they outsource their entire trip to a partner or if they are selling trips in tens of countries around the world, they likely do not know the people and places they are visiting well, and are less likely to be offering you a chance to have a positive impact with your tourism dollars.

Fostering moral imperialism

This one is the biggest problem I think, but the least talked about. We assume, because we come from wealthier places with better education systems, that we can come into any new place without knowing much about the culture or the people, and we can fix things. We can’t! THEY, the people who live there and know the place well, can. Our job in the development world can and should be to support them in doing so. So, we can’t assume we can come do it for them and “save the babies” by visiting an orphanage for a few hours on our trip to India. And we sure shouldn’t think that our time is oh so valuable that we should fundraise money to pay for OUR flights to go paint a school poorly. My job, in running a tour operation, is to educate travelers on at least these two points: improvements take time, and the people we are visiting have just as much—if not more—to teach us as we have to teach them.

Real life example: Just search for voluntourism on the web. “Come to XXXXX, Africa and save the world,” followed by instructions on how to fundraise tax free dollars, which include the price of your travel abroad.

How to choose: If we are going to send our students abroad without charging them, we should at least tell them the truth: THEY are the ones benefiting in this situation. Let’s start being realistic and not deciding to go abroad to help, but instead to learn. If you find a company that discusses the trip as “life-changing” for the communities you are visiting, scroll further until you find one that admits that the real selling point is that the experience will be life-changing for YOU. That is OK! That is why we travel, so let’s not try to hide that. If your tour company talks about all of their successes at helping people, but will not give you examples of times they have made mistakes, lessons they have learned, or things they are doing differently now compared with three years ago, don’t trust them. They clearly think that just because they are setting out to do good, that they are. Remind them that Good Intentions are NOT Enough.

It’s time to stop making the same mistakes

Now that enough of us have made these mistakes and learned from them, it is time for others to stop making the same mistakes. To make the overall impact of volunteer travel more positive will take a movement of travelers demanding responsible practices from their operators. Please add comments or tips for travelers which you think might give them additional ideas for picking the best organized voluntourism programs.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON LESSONS I LEARNED.

DANIELA PAPI

Daniela is the Deputy Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She has spearheaded student programming initiatives at Saïd Business School including the Leading for Impact programme and had taught on MBA courses including the Entrepreneurship Project and a course on high-impact entrepreneurship. Daniela is a graduate of Saïd Business School's MBA programme and was a Skoll Scholarship recipient. 

Prior to coming to Oxford, Daniela spent six years in Cambodia where she grew a youth leadership organization, PEPY, an educational travel company, PEPY Tours, and an advocacy organisation, Learning Service. Daniela is co-authoring a book advocating for a 'Learning Service' approach to philanthropic and volunteer travel and has worked as a consultant to other social impact organizations, typically supporting their strategy redesign by incorporating her experience in social marketing and user-centered programme design. She recently wrote a report called 'Tackling Heropreneurship' focused on fuelling collective impact through an 'apprenticing with a problem' approach.

Check out Learning Service for more.

DANIELA PAPI

Daniela is the Deputy Director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She has spearheaded student programming initiatives at Saïd Business School including the Leading for Impact programme and had taught on MBA courses including the Entrepreneurship Project and a course on high-impact entrepreneurship. Daniela is a graduate of Saïd Business School's MBA programme and was a Skoll Scholarship recipient. 

Prior to coming to Oxford, Daniela spent six years in Cambodia where she grew a youth leadership organization, PEPY, an educational travel company, PEPY Tours, and an advocacy organisation, Learning Service. Daniela is co-authoring a book advocating for a 'Learning Service' approach to philanthropic and volunteer travel and has worked as a consultant to other social impact organizations, typically supporting their strategy redesign by incorporating her experience in social marketing and user-centered programme design. She recently wrote a report called 'Tackling Heropreneurship' focused on fuelling collective impact through an 'apprenticing with a problem' approach.

Check out Learning Service for more.

Orphanage Volunteering’s Shocking Link to Child Abuse

I never thought that playing catch with a kid could be a bad thing, or that goofing off could contribute to long-term psychological damage. Even now, as I write it, it all seems a little absurd. Is it really possible that making kids laugh could do permanent harm?

Every year, millions of people travel around the world to volunteer. Orphanages are one of the most popular destinations, and it makes sense. Many volunteers like working with children, often because children are enthusiastic and working with them is very active and “hands on.” Most of the tasks volunteers are given when working with kids are simple, and it is rare that volunteers are expected to have any specialized skills or to participate in any in-depth training before starting their volunteer work.

At the same time, orphanages are often understaffed and poorly kept up. Operating with limited resources (or under the appearance of limited resources), they are frequently on the lookout for people who are willing to pay to work. Placement companies and organizations provide orphanages with paying volunteers to help with childcare, teaching, cooking, and maintenance. Volunteers are told that they’ll be providing orphaned children with a more nurturing environment while orphanages get a steady income and a constant flow of helping hands.

All of this sounds fine and dandy, but the problem with orphanage volunteer work isn’t in the volunteer’s desire to help, but in the very existence and implementation of orphanages themselves.

Not many would-be volunteers realize that more than 80% of children who are labeled as “orphans” have a surviving parent. Even fewer understand that the traditional kinship structures of many non-western countries, especially those where orphanage volunteering is most common, actually result in very few children being left without someone to care for them (Richter and Norman, 2010; UNAIDS/UNICEF/USAID, 2004).

Which begs the question: why are there so many kids in orphanages?

There are orphans that need a home, and sometimes that means that they have to go into group care, but for many of the children who are labeled as orphans and blazoned across brochures, it’s poverty, not a loss of family, that put them there. Desperation will make people do unthinkable things, especially with the promise of ample food, a solid education, and a comfortable bed. Because of this, all around the world caregivers are willingly giving up their children to orphanages. Sometimes, they even get cash in return. This isn’t altruism on the orphanages part, it’s well-disguised human trafficking.

None of this is the volunteer’s fault, but just by working at orphanages, volunteers are contributing to the problem and, inadvertently, may be supporting the exploitation and traumatization of children - the opposite of what their goal was in going to volunteer in the first place.

Once the volunteer arrives at the orphanage, they might get a feeling that something is off, but it’s easy to push that feeling away when there are kids who genuinely do need help regardless of how they got there. The do need attention and love, they do need teachers and caregivers, and when they get those things children, especially young children, are often overwhelming grateful. It’s hard to walk away, and it’s easy to ignore the problems when there’s a kid on your lap, a kid on your back, and another looking for a place to grab onto.

While the industry is definitely shockingly corrupt, there are many orphanages and children’s homes that truly believe that they are acting in their ward’s best interests and are committed to putting the child’s, not the paying visitor’s, needs first. The way children get into an orphanage, and the ongoing exploitation of them once they have arrived, are part of a systemic problem that may not apply to every orphanage. However, there are also more personal impacts of short-term volunteering, relevant across the entire industry, that may be just as harmful.

Three key aspects of child development that most people can agree on are:

1. Children benefit from long-term relationships with adult figures.
2. Those adults don’t have to be a family member in the traditional sense, but having a stable familial atmosphere promotes positive development.
3. Children without stable relationships with adults often suffer from psychological and behavioral issues that are directly related to a lack of stability and guidance early in life.

All three of these are proven concepts that apply around the world from Cambodian orphanages to the American foster care system. Orphanages that rely heavily on free or paying volunteer labor and, as a result, tend to have only a small local staff, act in complete disregard of these three concepts. They drastically reduce the opportunities that their children have to form long-term relationships, they create an unstable environment where people are constantly rotating in and out and, by doing those two things, they are causing psychological damage to the children that they are supposed to be helping.

As a privileged “gringa,” or white girl, who spends time in impoverished communities, I’ve come to realized not only what my presence can mean, but also what it can do. I know that when I was doing short-term volunteer work, I was as much of an exotic distraction to the children I was working with as they were to me. Even when they had the opportunity to form relationships with locals who could serve as role models, it was my presence that was highlighted. I, the person who was going to leave in just a few days, was given all the attention that should have been shined on the heroes who the children were interacting with every day.

Some might argue that this is giving volunteers too much credit since that all they are there to do is help. Any person who has had children climb on top of them in a frenzy for attention, clamor to have their picture taken, or cry in their arms as they prepare to leave, has to admit that they are in a position of immense power. By choosing to support orphanages that rely on volunteer labor, well-meaning volunteers are inadvertently using this power to exacerbate a broken system and disincentivize governments and NGOs from finding lasting systems-based solutions.

Even if the orphanage that you’ve been eyeing looks perfect, short-term volunteering at orphanages feeds a market that trafficks in, exploits, abuses, and permanently traumatizes the very children that you are looking to help. Even in the best of cases, short-term volunteer work, especially unskilled and non-specialized placements, encourage an uneven power dynamic in which the volunteers are held above the locals. They are looked to as benevolent angels, turning the lens away from the men and women who could serve as positive adult role-models for children who desperately need a stable family environment.

I’ve would never have labeled myself as abusive before I volunteered at an orphanage, and I think it’s fair to say that most volunteers would recoil at the suggestion that they could be categorized as abusers. Now that I know what orphanage volunteer does to children, I have to call it out for what it is - abusive and exploitative.

So no, you shouldn’t go. Don’t support orphanage volunteering. Don’t support child abuse.

You can support this effort in two ways:

1. Sign the petition calling on travel operators to remove orphanage volunteering placements from their websites.
2. Share this post, along with your thoughts on orphanage volunteering, using the hashtag #StopOrphanTrips. 

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON HUFFINGTON POST.

PIPPA BIDDLE

Pippa Biddle is a writer. Her work has been published by The New York Times online, Antillean Media Group, The FBomb, MTV, Elite Daily, Go Overseas, Matador Network, and more. She is a graduate of Columbia University with a degree in Creative Writing. Twitter: @PhilippaBiddle

Is Voluntourism Worthwhile?

Is it worth it to volunteer where there isn’t a sustainable social, political, or environmental impact? I think of those stories of Habitat for Humanity where volunteers think they build a house during the day only to have their crappy work torn down and redone later.

Sincerely,
Wants To Fix The World

Thank you, so much, WTFTW, for giving my first one-word answer to a question of the week:

Nope.

Okay, now to go into a bit more detail: The voluntourism impulse is an awesome one. It means that people don’t just want to take from the places they visit, but to give back as well. It’s akin to helping with the dishes when you’ve eaten dinner at a friend’s house. It’s all that’s right about humankind.

Which is why it’s really depressing that it’s usually a waste of time.

The story I believe you’re referring to is from this excellent article by Pippa Biddle, which is worth giving a read. She talks about a voluntourism trip she took in high school to Tanzania, which cost $3000 a pop:

“Our mission while at the orphanage was to build a library. Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure. It is likely that this was a daily ritual. Us mixing cement and laying bricks for 6+ hours, them undoing our work after the sun set, re-laying the bricks, and then acting as if nothing had happened so that the cycle could continue.”

What Biddle concludes is that the problem wasn’t that a library wasn’t needed, it was that she simply wasn’t the one to do it. This is the case with many voluntourism trips: they exist more to give the volunteers the endorphin rush humans get when doing something nice for someone else than they do to actually help. The presence of unskilled volunteers may, in some cases, actually be more of a hindrance than a help.

But sometimes voluntourism is more insidious. The popularity of supporting Cambodian orphanages among western tourists has actually fueled a market for orphans. There are the reports of voluntourists actually taking jobs from better-qualified locals. And for many locals, voluntourism looks more like an expiation of colonial guilt than a good-hearted act of service. In his book Travel as a Political Act (1), travel industry titan Rick Steves points out the name that Salvadorans have for Americans who come to visit and express solidarity, only to return home a few days later feeling self-satisfied: “round-trip revolutionaries.”

Just this week, Prisca Dorcas Mojica Rodriguez, founder of Latina Rebels, made an extremely strong case against voluntourism. Rodriguez was born in poverty in Nicaragua, and vividly remembers the many visiting westerners. She remembers them as good people, but:

"They really wanted us to like them, because they loved us — indiscriminately. It was the sort of love where they did not get our mailing addresses or phone numbers, because it was not about becoming lifelong friends. They loved being around me, it was something about my poverty, brownness, and how they felt like they were saving me. They loved that feeling."

She continues:

"I do not have fond memories of the Beckys and Chads who came to my country and took pictures with me so that they could hang the photos in their dorm rooms and go on with their lives.

Those same Beckys did not stand up against Trump’s xenophobic agenda. The Chads stayed silent during that Cinco de Mayo party that their roommates hosted, perpetuating problematic stereotypes about ALL Latinxs. The Beckys know that NAFTA and CAFTA rulings keep kids like me in poverty, but still shop at stores known for using slave labor and sweatshops.

Those Chads and Beckys have never done anything for me."

As a white person from America, this can sound harsh (2). But it’s worth noting that, especially in Central and South American countries, our country has played a pretty significant role in supporting horrible, genocidal dictatorships in the name of protecting “American business interests.” These dictatorships have frequently taken the place of legitimate left-leaning democracies.

It doesn’t matter if you agree with this assessment of the history of US colonialism in the western hemisphere or not: it’s a fairly widely-held perception in the rest of the Americas (and in parts of the Middle East as well). And in that view of the world, an American paying thousands of dollars to come down for a weekend so he can build a library, feel good about himself, and then return to his affluence, seems like an inadequate form of repentance.

So… should you participate in voluntourism at all?

My suggestion is a gentle no, with a set of clarifications:

1. If you have a set of skills that could be effectively utilized in your destination, absolutely go. Have a medical degree? Join Doctors Without Borders and go do some good. Can you do some consulting work with local NGOs, or provide training that may be desperately needed? Please, go.

2. “Voluntourism” and “volunteering” are not the same thing. If you’re really committing to a project — and not just rolling a pre-packaged project into a vacation — then what I’m saying doesn’t apply. Looking at you, JETs, TEFLs, and Peace Corpsers.

Personally, I think the better thing to do when going abroad is to simply listen to the stories, the history, and the culture of the people that you’re visiting. You should not assume to have answers to a society’s problems after a weekend visit. You don’t. Instead, listen, read, and learn. If you want to help as efficiently and effectively as possible, donate money to people who are already in place to help, and then work on making your society a better place. A more humane America would help make a more humane world.

Still want to try voluntourism?

If you do want to participate in voluntourism, my Matador colleague Richard Stupart put together an excellent guide to finding the most ethical voluntourism projects possible (and, I should note, there are good projects. It’s not all cynicism and neocolonialism). Feel free to add other good ethical voluntourism resources in the comments.

Footnotes

1. Review: meh.
2. It may also paint white voluntourists with too broad a brush — I have no doubt that some Chads and Beckys have spoken out against Trump, NAFTA, and CAFTA, but that’s kind of beside the point — the statement is, as the philosopher Ken Wilber says, “true but partial,” and the truth deserves as much attention as the nuance it misses.

THIS ARTICLE WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON DON'T BE A DICK TRAVEL.

MATT HERSHBERGER

Matt Hershberger is a writer and blogger who focuses on travel, culture, politics, and global citizenship. His hobbies include scotch consumption, profanity, and human rights activism. He lives in New Jersey with his wife and his Kindle. You can check out his work at the Matador Network, or over at his website.

How to Find Authenticity in a Globalized World

Why do we travel? 

For those of us privileged enough to be able to travel voluntarily, reasons often include becoming more fully ourselves and experiencing something genuinely different. This desire for authenticity, in ourselves and in that which we perceive to be other and outside our current experiences, is widespread enough to be noticed and exploited by the tourism industry, with signs reading “experience the REAL Thailand” and “find yourself in Bali”.

Seeking authenticity in our travels comes from a good place. It highlights our desires for genuine interactions with other human beings, for learning about the experiences of those with different life paths and identities, and possibly even for utilizing our privilege to support real people instead of opportunistic corporations removed from the locations in which they operate.

However, as is the case with many good intentions, this desire for authenticity can be harmful. Much of this harm stems from a strict and arbitrary idea of what counts as authentic and the fact that the privileged traveler has the power to decide what makes the cut. For instance, while spending 3 months in Zimbabwe a few years ago, I asked several friends what their cuisine had looked like prior to British colonization.  As their current main foodstuff, a labor-intensive dry porridge called sadza that holds its shape when spooned onto a plate, is made of cornmeal, it couldn’t have existed prior to the transfer of corn to Africa from the Americas.  I’ve had similar questions about Italian, British and South Asian cuisines before tomatoes, potatoes, and chili peppers made a similar journey.  From my perspective, sadza was a colonial by-product, as was the black tea served alongside it.  When I shared this view with my friends, the effect was clear: my strict and arbitrary definition of what could be considered authentically Zimbabwean delegitimized and minimized their identity and emotional ties to the food they knew and loved. 

This highlights a tendency in our search for authenticity - to regard older traditions and cultural forms and those which predate recent cultural exchange as more authentic.  This viewpoint is understandable, especially as a reaction against the infiltration of Western corporations such as Coca Cola into most crannies of the world, including a remote village in eastern Zimbabwe, and the Westernization of many popular tourist destinations, from food offerings to street signs. Yet the reality is that all places and peoples are dynamic.  Historical and current globalization, the movement of people, ideas and things, has fostered cultural exchange and the transformation of traditions over time.  Cultures also evolve without interaction with outside forces. When we define authenticity as similarity of a particular part of a culture to its version at a particular point in history, we mistakenly regard people and places as static, freezing them in time.  

Aside from our tendency to award authentic status to more longstanding traditions, we also withhold this label unless the cultural form feels “other” enough and different enough from our cultural forms to be plausibly untainted by them.  But ironically and cruelly, our globally dominant culture and associated language simultaneously demand conformity for material gain and social acceptance. Without this, the inherent amount of difference between cultures would render many practically inaccessible to travelers.

When we travel in search of authenticity with these unconscious assumptions and unfair expectations lurking in our minds, we often end up unknowingly demanding that locals perform a certain version of their culture for our tourist dollars. The result is a paradox: we want specific historical versions of cultures that are different enough from our own to feel authentic but similar enough to actually understand and enjoy. We travel to search for authenticity, but by traveling we reinforce the global dominance of our culture which demeans and degrades the other cultures we seek to experience. Seeking authenticity obscures it from us.

It also shortchanges us. Traveling with a particular idea of what authentic looks, tastes, smells and sounds like creates expectations and takes our attention away from what is.  When we’re less present with ourselves, where we are, and the people around us, we’re less likely to feel deeply satisfied in addition to being more likely to cause accidental harm.

So, what to do? Here are some guidelines for navigating these realities:

1. Take people and places as they are now

Don’t force them to live up to some idea conjured up by tourist companies, history books, or your own mind as the antithesis to your everyday life. Don’t expect them to be similar enough to be accessible and understandable to you. On the flip side, don’t expect them to be different enough so that you can feel like you’ve escaped your daily grind and your culture.  Manage your expectations or avoid forming them.  Of course, it is very hard to travel with no inkling of what you’re going to find once you arrive, but be honest with yourself.  Why are you drawn to particular places? What expectations do you have?  Find balance - have just enough foresight to plan yet not enough to keep you from accepting what is when you’re there. The best days often come when you're not expecting them. 

2. Only do what you actually want to do

Travel guides and guidance from friends are riddled with “must sees”.  What if nothing on those lists strikes your fancy?  I almost always skip museums when I travel.  While you could argue that I’m missing out on important historical context, I would argue that I’ve never absorbed this information from museums even when I’ve forced myself to go to them. Luckily, each place and culture and even person is unfathomably complex and contains endless dimensions. Engage in the same activities you enjoy in back home and try new ones which feel right.  Do you in a new place. By living your truth while traveling, you’re more likely to find authenticity in the place you’re visiting.

3. Engage other cultures carefully

Cultural exchange can be mutually beneficial but it can also be oppressive.  Acknowledge the power dynamics in your interactions with non-travelers. Be aware that you probably embody and therefore unknowingly reinforce ideals that other people must conform to in order to gain social currency and acceptance.   And make sure your engagement with other cultures doesn’t cross the line into appropriation. Appropriation can take many forms, but it almost always involves travelers benefiting materially from or being praised for a particular cultural form while the people to whom that cultural form belongs are ridiculed, persecuted, or exploited for it. Engage from a place of humility to learn, not to seek validation or make money. Always respect the stated boundaries of engagement, and where appropriate, wait to be invited.

SARAH LANG

Instigated by studies in Sustainable Development at the University of Edinburgh, Sarah has spent the majority of her adult life between 20+ countries.  She is intrigued by the global infrastructure that produces inequality and many interlocking revolutionary solutions to the ills of the world as we know it.  As a purposeful nomad on a journey to eradicate oppression in all its forms, she has worked alongside locals from Sweden to Zimbabwe.  She is a lover of compassionate critique, aligning impacts with intentions, and flipping (your view of) the world upside down. 

Travel Volunteerism: Airbnb to Offer Users a Way to Help Local Communities

After 8 years in business, travel accommodations company, Airbnb is expanding its platform and the services it offers by launching Airbnb Trips. Initially a peer-based home rental service, the company went on to partner with major travel brands like Delta and American Express for airline miles, points, and business tools for users. Now, Airbnb’s co-founder and CEO, Brian Chesky, is rolling out plans to do more than just provide customers with access to private lodging; he also wants to provide travelers with things to do once they reach their destination. During November’s Airbnb Open, a travel and hospitality festival held in Los Angeles, Chesky told the audience that planning a trip takes longer than the actual trip, and his company wants “to take the research project out” of travel. 

On Airbnb’s updated app, users can now create an itinerary under “Trips” and book “Experiences”— activities that range from those of typical tourism to exclusive events and meet and greets. About 1 in 10 of these Experiences are allocated for “social impact experiences,” which airbnb.com describes as volunteerism and getting involved with a “cause you care about [where] 100% of what you pay goes directly to the organizations.” Some of these causes relate to social inclusion, mass incarceration, and animal rights, and activities include dance, gardening, feeding the poor and composing music. These Experiences will reportedly cost between $150-$250, and Airbnb has waived its commission for social impact experiences.

Chesky says that Experiences will be available in 12 destinations—Detroit, London, Paris, Nairobi, San Francisco, Havana, Cape Town, Florence, Miami, Seoul, Tokyo and Los Angeles. He also says the company will expand Experiences to 50 additional cities around the globe this year, with the ultimate goal of being able to provide Experiences in every Airbnb host location. 

Experiences, Chesky says, are ways to immerse oneself into local communities and are a part of a “holistic travel experience.” Social impact experiences are identified on the app by a “social ribbon.” The site notes that participating in this type of social volunteerism allows travelers to “join with passionate locals” and “leave your mark on the community.” Social impact experiences are always hosted by charities and non-profit organizations.  Chesky also says that Airbnb has a partnership with the Make-A-Wish Foundation—the charity for children with life threatening illnesses—and that Airbnb will be granting “a wish a day.” This will be done via donations, accommodations, and “transformational experiences” according to its website.

Brian Chesky, the founder of Airbnb.

Learn more at airbnb.com and on their YouTube channel for a look at Social Impact Experiences at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwwMT05jqfU&feature=youtu.be

ALEXANDREA THORNTON

Alexandrea Thornton is a journalist and producer living in NY. A graduate of UC Berkeley and Columbia University, she splits her time between California and New York. She's an avid reader and is penning her first non-fiction book. 

Fight Volunteer’s Guilt

There is a feeling that all volunteers can relate to: post-volunteering guilt. It’s that feeling of returning home after an amazing experience working abroad, only to wonder “did I do enough?”. Did you spend enough time with the kids you were teaching? Build enough homes? Vaccinate enough dogs? Play enough games of soccer? The list can go on and on.

My husband, John, and I are experts at realizing this guilt. We have worked abroad in three different countries.; Teaching English, providing childcare, building houses…you name it. We met while both teaching in Lima, Peru for an organization called Tarpuy Sonqo. (tarpuysonqo.org – check it out if you’re heading to South America). He worked for six months building three houses, and developing a full curriculum for the 4th grade students. I spent the following two months continuing his teaching work. Our hearts were completely invested in our efforts, and of course we fell in love with every baby, kid and adult that we met along the way. (Another feeling that every volunteer can understand.)

When we returned stateside and started dating, our conversations were consumed with when we could return back to our classrooms in Pachecutec, the largest slum outside of Lima. We worried how our students were doing, if the projects we’d started were continuing, and if the volunteers we’d trained were maintaining our high standards. But with full-time jobs, eventually buying a house and adopting dogs, it was becoming unrealistic to return to Lima for more than a week or two. That wasn’t long enough to make the impact we had in mind.

Instead – we decided to take the business we were already running, and use it as a tool to provide continued support to the causes close to our heart. My travel photography company – Kristen Emma Photography – quickly developed into a forever-fundraiser for international charities. Our new motto became “Capture the world to help the world”.  We decided to give 25% of our sales back to charities local to where each of my photos were taken. Anything from South America was given back to Tarpuy Sonqo – and other photos donated to a select charity based on their continental location. Within a few months of art shows we were supporting teachers in Peru, dog adoptions in the UK (dogstrust.org.uk), prenatal medicine for women in India (villageclinic.org), AIDS research and meds in South Africa (aids.org.za), even penguin conservation through the Pew Charitable Trusts and my recent trip to Antarctica.

Not only were we thrilled to be helping our Peruvian students – but our clients were amazed! With the rise of charity companies, and the one-for-one model, people are always looking for products that give back to various causes. Adding the charitable aspect to our business model was good for the charities – but also good for our bottom line. That certainly wasn’t our goal, but it helped put food in our dogs’ mouths. :)

The lesson learned is that volunteers can use their guilt as motivation to keep helping. It’s not always possible to physically get back to their area of choice – but they can instead work to find methods of help in their everyday lives. Of course, not everyone has a business that they can use like we did – but there are other approaches to helping:

·      Getting married? Set up a gofundme page for a charity, rather than asking for gifts. (John and I raised over $5000 for Tarpuy Sonqo. It built an entire park in the slums where we taught, and a jungle gym in a 2nd location. Exchange rates are always your friend. :)

·      Birthday? Have your friends bring a non-perishable good instead of a present for you, and then donate it to the local food shelf. (You don’t really need another pair of earrings anyway.)

·      Clean out your basement, sell what you don’t need on craigslist, and commit some of the proceeds to your volunteer location. (Those college books you’ve been holding onto could fund new books for your students in Kenya).

·      Have friends who are looking to travel? Put them in touch with your volunteer coordinator. A lot of organizations will trade housing and food in exchange for a few hours of work per day. My company of choice is New Zealand-based International Volunteer HQ. They’ve got volunteer placements all around the world, and their credibility makes sure volunteers stay safe while having an incredible experience.  Check them out at ivhq.org. They charge some fees, but its always cheaper than a hotel!

·      Volunteer locally! There are an abundance of opportunities to help in your own neighborhood. If you speak another language, you can teach ELL classes at your community center. Any work you found abroad can definitely translate to your own community – teaching, childcare, food shelves, and homeless shelters.

In the short seven months since we developed our charitable mission, we’ve raised over $1500 for our partner charities. Although it may not sound like much, it’s $1500 more than they had before. We could have easily NOT raised any money, but what good would that do? Its important to remember that even just $10 raised is helpful to any of the thousands of organizations around the world.

KRISTEN MACAULEY

Kristen is a Minnesota-based photographer, specializing in fine art travel photography. She has lived in three different countries, and traveled to all seven continents through her photography endeavors. Her goal is to use photography to show similarities between cultures, regardless of their location. In order to give back to the communities that she photographs, 25% of all sales are donated back to local charities around the world. See her work on Etsy or on her website. 

A Criminal State of Affairs

THERE ARE ENOUGH LAWS TO TACKLE IT.

THEN WHY IS UNTOUCHABILITY STILL PERPETUATED?

Ten Years ago, I started on a journey to document practices of untouchability across several states and religions of India. 25,000 kilometres, 9,000 minutes of footage and four years later, I put together a documentary called India Untouched. The main reason for making this film was to challenge the belief of most Indians that untouchability is a thing of the past.

In the years since the making of that film, little has changed. We still receive reports of barber shops refusing to shave Dalits. Homeowners unwilling to rent their houses to Dalits. Children segregated and discriminated in schools, women not allowed to draw water from wells, families pushed out of temples. Segregated mosques, churches, even crematoriums. Pervasive violence aimed at those who challenge caste discrimination. Social and economic boycotts for those who dare to transgress caste boundaries. Newly-weds chased and killed because they chose to marry outside their own caste. Rapes. Acid attacks. The list goes on shamelessly.

What is more shameful is that these practices are manifestations of a belief that views certain castes as nothing but an impure sect, which should remain servile and accepting of its lesser status. Our failure is to see this belief as endorsing of and perpetuating criminal behaviour.

Article 17 of the Indian Constitution states that “Untouchability is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of untouchability shall be an offence punishable in accordance with law.” However, society continues to look at untouchability as a social given, grounded in ‘tradition’. Instead, we should see such practices for what they are: criminal acts. If your house were burgled, you would expect the case to be treated as a criminal act/offence. Such a luxury is not afforded, however, to Dalits facing discrimination and persecution. The laws in place to address the scourge of caste-based discrimination may be progressive, but the mechanisms that exist to enforce legislation are regressive.

A large part of the problem is that law enforcement agencies operate in a reactive rather than a proactive manner. Despite the prevalence of caste-based behaviour leading to untouchability (criminal offences) these agencies wait for an aggrieved party to file a complaint — and report violation of Article 17 — rather than do their job in enforcing the law. How else does one explain the fact that police stations and courts have not taken any suo moto cognizance of these everyday events? How else can we understand that there are no public or government campaigns to remind citizens that untouchability has been abolished, and that those practicing it will be treated as criminals? In order to fall in line with the shifted morality and ethics of our time, we need a strong and proactive law enforcement mechanism. We do not have this in India.

On 14 April 2012, we launched a campaign at Video Volunteers (a media and human rights organisation) to draw attention to the issue of untouchability. To date, we have collated 30 videos that document breaches of Article 17. Together with the videos, we collected 2,800 signatures that were sent to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) with an appeal that the videos be taken as evidences of offences, and that those involved be prosecuted. Despite submitting the petition and video evidence twice over, we have not received any sort of acknowledgement — let alone action — from the NCSC. We have now sought answers with an application under the RTI Act. It’s a sign of the times when one needs to file an RTI with the institution responsible for protecting the rights of Scheduled Castes, just to find out what is going on.

As a society, when we hear about untouchability practices, we should feel outraged, as we would with other criminal acts like murder and rape. It’s time we accepted that the practice of untouchability is not the vestigial remains of some backward, social phenomenon or tradition: it’s a criminal offence. Let’s start calling it what it is.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN TEHELKA.COM

Stalin K. 

@stalink 

Stalin is the Managing Trustee of Video Volunteers India. He is a leading voice in the community media movement in India (including as co-drafter of the government’s recent community radio policy), a human rights activist focused on issues of caste and communal violence, an award-winning filmmaker (screened at Hamptons and winner of the Mumbai International Film Festival and Indo-american Arts Council Film Fest in NY, Earth VIsion Film Festival, Tokyo), and a sought after trainer and guest lecturer in media and human rights at universities around the world. He has produced 25 films on development issues, set up two community radio stations, designed a dozen rights-based campaigns, and conducted over 300 training workshops. Stalin has worked with more than 100 NGOs and regularly distributes his films to over 1000 groups, placing him at the heart of India’s NGO networks.

Am I Making a Difference?

Mingling in hostels you tend to meet many adventurous spirits finding their way in the world. Among those I met a young girl with similar interests in the social work/humanitarian field in Chennai, India. She was nearing the end of her yearlong journey and as we talked we reminisced about the hardships and victories we found along the way. She told me of her 1st day working at an HIV positive orphanage in Bangalore where a child fell and cut herself. My new found friend's immediate reaction was to clean the wound, which she instinctively did, as everyone watched open mouthed, too afraid to say a word. After numerous blood tests she found out she had not contracted HIV, but it was a wake up call. She had forgotten she was in a different place, without the luxury of basic necessities. Finally we got to the point I asked  what she felt her biggest accomplishment was during this trip? She looked me straight in the eye's and said, "I feel like I have accomplished absolutely nothing, I have made no difference in this place." Here was a girl who had been devoting her life for the past year to HIV positive orphans, trafficked girls, and battered women yet she felt like she had accomplished nothing. I was floored and thought if she hasn't made a difference have I? I proceeded to make a list of how I felt when I was impacted by volunteers when I was younger, and what difference they made in my life today. As I thought, I realized we need to look at our small victories. Realize we can't change a country overnight, but we can provide a motherless child with love. We can let these children see what else there is in the world. We can give them the confidence to succeed. We can open their minds. Whether it be for 2 days or 2 years, that child is going to remember the love they felt from you. This is why we started Humanitarian Travel Tips doing medical screenings and vocational training. We can't change a country overnight, but by providing glasses to a child who can't see a chalk board we are changing their opportunities and their life forever.

Without glasses these children can't learn. They are put into the lowest classes of children deemed unfit for learning, given little to no teacher supervision, and leftover books (if there are any). With glasses they are able to move up in school, they won't fall through the cracks, they have the opportunities to reach their full potential. The girls who got the glasses go on to be educated women who as a whole have fewer children and take better care of those children. On the same token teaching women a vocation like sewing gives her the ability to provide for her family, send her children to school, and give the children the nutrition they need to concentrate during school. They raise educated children, thus changing a generation. Too often we underestimate the power of the good we are doing and we shouldn't. Every smile, every friendship, every amount of love you give to a person makes a difference to that person. I have been at orphanages long term and you don't realize how long after you leave those children still talk about you, or the pictures you give them they will hold onto forever. Don't underestimate the power of good in this world you can do. 

CHAMBREY WILLIS

@chambreyw

Chambrey is the founder of Humanitarian Travel Tips an organization that raises the standard of living to people in developing countries through health screenings and vocational training. We are excited to announce that we are now welcoming volunteers to join with us on these initiatives this summer. Chambrey is an avid yogi, got her undergrad in Finance and is working on a  guidebook outlining step by step how to best fundraise for your next big adventure. You can find her on facebook or follow her blog.

The Peace Corps in Rwanda, Part 2

A Peace Corps Christmas in Rwanda

In my last update, I talked a bit about the path that led me to the Peace Corps and the basics of the three-month training program that was my day-to-day life. For a while, most of that remained unchanged. After returning from visiting my final site outside Nyungwe National Park, I was back to the grind of daily Kinyarwanda lessons; classroom management sessions, and any other miscellaneous bit of training that the Peace Corps deemed necessary for its education volunteers.

I mentioned in my first post how the community-based training program, while undeniably effective when it comes to integration and language acquisition, can quickly leave you desperate for just a small taste of the familiar. As soon as we had the chance, we all embraced that ideal wholeheartedly with the help of surprise birthday parties, pumpkin carving for Halloween, a massive collaborative Thanksgiving dinner, and most recently coming back together for Christmas and New Year’s celebrations.

Admittedly, some of the days have felt long and drawn out, but it’s amazing how fast the weeks have flown by. As I write this, my training has finished and I have been officially sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. After three months of training as a group, we are now scattered around the country in the communities that we will be working in for the next two years. The whole transition is a somewhat bittersweet. While I’m experiencing a freedom that I haven’t had for what seems like an eternity, it also means separating myself from the people, both in my host family and training group, that I’ve grown close to over the past months. In addition, as an education volunteer, I was installed on site during the holiday break. This meant that for a while there was little for me to do but hang out in the school offices or walk around and introduce myself (a bit of a challenge since most of the people in the community assume, at first glance, that I’m the same volunteer that has been working here the past two years).

On top of the conflicts that come from simultaneous feelings of freedom, boredom, and missing friends, I’ve been finding that my site is in an unusual limbo of classic Peace Corps life and unexpected luxury. I can start my day with a bucket bath and hand washing a load of laundry, followed by browsing the web in my school’s modern offices. I can then head up a partially eroded hillside staircase past a couple troops of baboons and struggle to light a charcoal stove in order to cook dinner. I can lounge in my tile-floored house and watch a movie, only to be woken up in the middle of night to chase mice out of the room.

To be clear, none of these are meant as complaints; just the opposite. I was all set to be handling all these things and more, but my assignment here is most definitely not what I was expecting from the Peace Corps (in the best possible way). Just walking around the campus is an experience in itself, with forested hills stretching into the distance as far as the eye can see. 

I cannot wait to get started with my work here, although that still seems to be a long way off. While the semester for the rest of my colleagues started last week, I’m here to teach at a school for conservation and environmental management that has the students completing internships around the country for their first month. As a result, I’ve got a nice, long, and quite possibly cabin fever-inducing chunk of time off before I can begin teaching in February.

Thankfully, I’ve been able to stave off boredom by traveling for the holidays, visiting friends and getting to see a bit more of Rwanda in the process. The festivities made it a little more like home with the help of cheap Christmas decorations bought in the capital, a tiny plastic tree, and a can or two of white foam marketed as ‘fake snow’ (a surprisingly good substitute for a white Christmas, once you get past the lingering soap smell in the air). But now the holidays have come and gone and everyone is getting to work for the New Year, so it’s back to site for me. With any luck I’ll be able to find some projects to pass the time and supply me with some good stories moving forward.

READ SCOTT'S FIRST UPDATE ON THE PEACE CORPS IN RWANDA.

SCOTT JENKINS

Scott Jenkins grew up in Ridgewood, NJ and graduated from NYU in 2012 with a degree in Anthropology and Linguistics. His passion for travel, adventure, and helping others led him to apply to the Peace Corps in September of 2012. He was invited to teach in Rwanda, where he is currently serving for the next two years. 

TRIP REVIEW: Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro and Build a Farm Along the Way

We read the news and we learn what’s wrong with the world. I honestly couldn’t care less. Yes, there is war, there is starvation and death. People cheat, organizations lie and the international economy is in need of a stimulus package from God. Now you know everything you need to know about our global shortcomings. Let’s do something to help. There is an ancient Greek proverb that says, “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” With the amazing amount of interconnectivity and social complexity these days, it’s easy to view Earth as one, big society and I think it’s time we began planting a couple more trees. It’s organizations like Roadmonkey Adventure Philanthropy that are making it easier for us do so.

It started with a passionate New York Times correspondent with an extremely manly name, Paul von Zielbauer. After making a career out of reporting on topics such as the Iraq war, the privatization of prison medical care, state government and more, Paul founded Roadmonkey. Driven by a desire to “give motivated people the chance to dive deep into a foreign culture and work hard for people in need,” Roadmonkey Adventure Philanthropy was born in 2008. The term “adventure philanthropy” now stands as the keystone to Roadmonkey’s philosophy. What is so unique about this organization is that the volunteers are given a chance to help those in need, but they are also getting to explore and get off of the beaten path at the same time.

Roadmonkey’s take on philanthropy is evident in their upcoming Tanzania trip. First off, let’s point out that only 6% of Tanzanians living in rural areas have access to modern electricity services. These people live off of the land and any help offered would probably be appreciated. Participants will fly out to Tanzania and lend a hand in building an organic farm for one of the local communities. A pretty standard, run-of-the-mill volunteer trip, right? Oh, I forgot to mention that the volunteers will also be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro. The trip starts off with a seven-day trek up and down the mountain, don’t forget to bring your tent. The Participants will literally learn about the country from the ground up, so when it comes time to contribute to the community they will actually have a stake in what is being built. They will have experienced the culture, experienced the people and they will know that they are actually making a change.

There is only one roadblock for this Roadmonkey trip and it’s a particularly common one as well. Money. The best deal is to sign up for the trip with 8-10 other people, which cuts the price down to $5499 per person, not including airfare. No small chunk of change. This limits the trip to the privileged or to those with rigorous budget control. For those of you who are looking to volunteer international without planting your wallet in the community garden, this trip might not be for you. However, if you have the time and the money and are looking to add some spice to your life while bringing change to those less fortunate than you, look no further.

Roadmonkey Adventure Philanthropy is breaking down the border between volunteer work and adventure. If you can afford it, this company will send you all over the world and you can be sure of a good time. For those of you who are enticed by the opportunity, but can’t afford it, check back with Mission.tv for more trip reviews.

LEARN MORE ABOUT ROADMONKEY.NET

Kino Crooke spent the last three years juggling school and travel. He most recently spent the last two months traveling across Spain before moving to New York to work with CATALYST.

The Serial Volunteer

Looking back, the majority of my most clairvoyant, my most grandiose and my most sincere moments have occurred when I’m flying 30,000 feet in the air. Darting through wispy white clouds, soaring over cerulean blue, and marveling at just how many parking lots we as a species require; also very quickly becomes a time of self-reflection and truth (granted, this is all provided you have a window seat).  On August 7th, 2011 flying home to New York City from the Dominican Republic, my partner had one of these moments. 

“I don’t want to be a serial volunteer,” she said after a particularly long spell spent looking out that magical aperture.  

Unsure of whether she was stating her resolution to never work at a breakfast food production company, I asked what she meant.

“I don’t want to continue jumping from volunteer organization to volunteer organization, never donating more than a few moments of my time,” she said. “How can we truly have a lasting positive impact if we never spend the time getting to know the nuances of an organization and the community that it works with?”

We’d spent the better half of two years volunteering with different organizations, always managing to find something wrong with each—something that would push us to continue our search for the perfect place, the perfect spot, the perfect fit.  At this rate, we were set to continue jumping around the globe merely dipping our toes in the humanitarian aid world.  And, for some people this is fine.  This can actually be an economical way to travel with the added benefit of supporting good organizations.  However our goal from the beginning was to find somewhere that we could help to create lasting and empowering change. 

Remembering this, I realized she was right. If we were serious about helping to create that lasting change, we would need to stop trying to find the perfect organization, because the perfect organization doesn’t exist—they change and evolve the same way people do. The same way our thought process of volunteering was evolving those 30,000 feet above the earth. Maybe if we invested ourselves in one organization and truly took the time to get to know the people of the community we were trying to help; maybe then we would find what we were looking for—impact.  But that wouldn’t happen if we kept jumping around.     

“I don’t want to be a serial volunteer either,” I said. 

And alive with the excitement that comes from life changing realizations, we talked all the way back home of our now imminent return to the Dominican Republic.

Adam Salvitti Gucwa is a seasoned traveler, entrepreneur and student whose volunteer focus centers around education and the Dominican Republic

Joel Runyon Runs For the Impossible Challenge

Challenge your concept of impossible. Meet Joel Runyon, he did. Laid off from his part-time UPS job and fed up with living in his parents basement, Joel decided to "start living a life worth writing about." Last summer, Joel joined Pencils of Promise's program The Impossible Ones. He took on a challenge that previously seemed impossible, to run an Ultra Marathon, 50k in one day, and raise $25,000 to build a Pencils for Promise school. Joel will run this weekend in Chicago.

A Video Volunteers Film: The Fight for Justice Against Acid Attacks in India

In this Video Volunteers film, the IndiaUnheard correspondent, Varsha Jawalgekar, exposes the acid attack on Chanchal Paswan, 19, and her sister, 15, while they were asleep on their terrace. The attack was a result of their opposition to previous sexual harassment by the men. In the West, horrific attacks as such would be covered by major news media. However, in India, Video Volunteers is doing immensely important work getting information about this out and accessible.

CONNECT WITH VIDEO VOLUNTEERS