How Not to Volunteer Abroad: An Interview with Author Pippa Biddle

In her new book, “Ours to Explore: Privilege, Power, and the Paradox of Voluntourism,” Pippa Biddle asks travelers and volunteers to look at the ways their actions affect the global community.

Philippa (Pippa) Biddle is the author of “Ours to Explore: Privilege, Power, and The Paradox of Voluntourism.” Her freelance work has been published by Guernica, The Atlantic, Wired, BBC Travel, AMC Outdoors, Maine magazine and more. You can preorder “Ours to Explore” here. 

Biddle sat down with CATALYST Sarah Leidich to discuss her latest book and offer her take on voluntourism.

Q: What inspired you to write this book? 

A: For me, so much of working on the book was trying to call people into a conversation and call out the industry and not the individual. With voluntourism, so much of the critique has been focused on specific people. 

It actually wasn’t my idea. I wrote a piece called “The Problems of the White Girls” that went viral and a literary agent reached out who suggested that there was a book in it. I spent about a year working with them on a proposal before I realized the book they wanted me to write was not the book I was interested in writing. They really wanted me to write a how-to-do-it-better, and I didn’t want anyone to do it. So why would I take an entire book to do that? But the process of working with them really showed me that there was a book in this—that there was enough material, enough research, enough interest to have a book. 

Q: Before we talk about avoiding it or preventing it, can you define contemporary colonialism? How does it function today?

A: To me, contemporary colonialism is the continuation of colonial ideologies and empires into today. The reason that I use the phrase “contemporary colonialism” as opposed to neocolonialism is because oftentimes, the way we think about colonialism today is informed by and yet somehow held separate from the colonialism of the past and empire-building of the past, specifically empire-building done by Western European and North American powers. In North America, primarily the United States. To me, that differentiation between past and present is completely false. 

It actually allows us to de-implicate ourselves, and by ourselves I mean people who are residents of powerful nations, beneficiaries of power dynamics, and travelers and voluntourists. Contemporary colonialism is simply a different phrase that refers to colonialism that I hope better amplifies the fact that there is that unbroken thread between past colonialism and present colonialism—it’s just modified itself for the present-day environment. 

Q: Is it possible for volunteers to travel abroad without engaging in contemporary colonialism? 

A: I don’t think it’s possible for anyone to travel anywhere without engaging in contemporary colonialism, but engaging with something isn’t in and of itself necessarily problematic. However, you have to recognize it to begin to address the problems with it when it is problematic. Just the fact that some people can travel for leisure and some cannot is an engagement with contemporary colonialism. The fact that I can, pre-pandemic and probably still right now, go to Tanzania and arrive and get a tourist visa for probably $100 and be in the door, but someone from Tanzania cannot reciprocate that action in the United States, is an example of contemporary colonialism, regardless of whether I’m going there to be a volunteer or go on a safari. 

Q: What steps can travelers, especially privileged travelers, take to avoid acts that perpetuate the harmful side effects of travel? 

A: I think that one of the biggest things we need to ask ourselves before booking a trip somewhere is “why are we going there?” I think a lot of travelers don’t take that moment to ask themselves “why do I need to go to this place?” And once they answer that question, to make decisions that fulfill their “why” in the most respectful way possible, which sometimes means not going. For example, if I were to say I really want to go to Ecuador because I’m really fascinated by Ecuadorian cuisine, then if I were to go to Ecuador, I should be focused on eating at restaurants that are owned and run and staffed by Ecuadorians. This sounds like an obvious thing, but most tourists don’t do that extra step. They go somewhere and eat at the places that are easy, that have the menu in English, that the resort has on their short list. The resort is probably foreign-owned, so the restaurants are probably owned by people associated with the resort. 

The whole idea that travel should be something leisurely is really off-base. Travel is not a leisure activity. Travel is an activity that demands conscious engagement and thoughtful consideration, and as long as we treat it as something that is in the same realm as a relaxing day on the beach in your hometown—if you happen to live by the beach—we’re going to be doing it in ways that are disrespectful. 

Q: You write about the tension between communities sometimes believing that voluntourists and missionaries are actually doing good work and then the harmful reality of this kind of travel, volunteering and missionary work. Is there a way to reconcile the relationship between intention, perception and outcome?

A: In the book I use the term “pathological altruism.” Pathological altruism really speaks to this tension, because it is the inability to see that something you are doing with the intention of the impact being positive is having a negative impact, and through that inability to see it, insisting on continuing to do it regardless. I think that the intention to do good is a very good core intention and stripping back to that core intention is a really positive thing, but the idea that intention should be immediately followed by action is misguided. 

I used to work for the Jane Goodall Institute doing educational programming, and one of the things that we brought into classrooms a lot was a thing we called the “Knowledge-Compassion-Action Cycle.” The Knowledge-Compassion-Action Cycle is basically the idea that when we learn about something, we begin to care about it, and once we care about it, we are able to act in the best possible way, and through action you will learn more knowledge. I think a lot of people are skipping that middle part of true, deep knowledge and care. For example, with children in orphanages, if people who chose to volunteer in an orphanage cared about child welfare, and they’re jumping to the idea of volunteering at orphanage, that shows me that they haven’t gone through the knowledge procession and they haven’t gone through the compassion process, because there is no way you go from child welfare to orphanage if you’ve actually gone through that process. It’s trying to integrate more time and education and slowness into what we care about so that we have that time for knowledge and compassion to develop before we choose to take action. 

Q: So if knowledge is developed and compassion is developed, and travelers are moving through the communities with intent, are there changes to the voluntourism industry you would like to see? 

A: Something that makes me nervous about suggesting changes to the voluntourism industry is that it could be misconstrued as me saying that if the industry were to make those changes, it would be OK. That is not what I’m saying. However, there are things that can be done to mitigate the harm as we slowly dismantle voluntourism. The first thing, hands down, is to stop working with kids. Unfortunately, a lot of the trip providers that have stopped working with orphanages have simply pivoted and now take volunteers to work with youth groups, so the only thing that’s changed is that it’s not a residential environment, but so many of the same issues still exist. Honestly, if voluntourism stops working with kids, a fair amount of the market for voluntourism will dry up because the number one thing people want to do on these trips is work with kids. If that is not an option, the industry will shrink. 

Parallel to that, I am adamant that prospective voluntourists deeply engage in the education around what they’re taking part in. One of the things I write about in the book is the “EdGE” platform by Omprakash, which is a nonprofit. EdGE is their learning platform, and EdGE is not perfect and Omprakash is not perfect, and Willy Oppenheim, the founder, is the first to admit that. But it provides trip providers and educational institutions that are facilitating voluntourism, as well as individual travelers that are going on their own, with a curriculum that attempts to educate them on some issues like White privilege and the White savior complex prior to them getting on the ground, so they go through the learning curve that I had years after going before they even go. Does that mean they will not be part of the White savior complex and White privilege? No, but it is a really important step. 

Q: How would you encourage people who are looking to be philanthropic or looking to help? What would you say to them? 

A: Think global, act local. Learn about global issues, engage in global conversations, learn about places, travel as a tourist who is respectful and thoughtful, but you have to remember that even the opportunity to travel is a privilege. If we have this idea that the only way to help is by going somewhere else, we are discounting billions of people on this planet who simply don’t have access to that opportunity. So think global, and then when you choose to act, look locally. 

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Sarah Leidich

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Sarah is currently an English and Film major at Barnard College of Columbia University. Sarah is inspired by global art in every form, and hopes to explore the intersection of activism, art, and storytelling through her writing. 

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.

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. 

Cambodian Orphanage Shows Effects of Voluntourism

We all start with the best intentions, and want to make a positive difference in the world when we travel. But when orphanages become volunteer tourism destinations, they create incentives to direct children with living parents away from their homes, 3 out of 4 Cambodian "orphans" have a living parent. Studies show family-based care is a far better solution for these kids. 

CONNECT WITH ORPHANAGES NOT THE SOLUTION