You don’t have to travel to Bolivia or Vietnam or Tanzania to find causes or individuals in need of assistance. Voluntourism can, however, potentially inculcate the pretentious fiction that the only needy beneficiaries of volunteer service are in developing countries. It’s easier that way: after our adrenaline rush of charity we can return to our privileged lives knowing we’ve satisfied our duty to help others.
Yet, the most successful community development and volunteer endeavours are the products of sustained and committed involvement—which a two-week spell cannot imitate. The brevity of volunteer travel programs that makes them so popular also detracts from their efficacy. Projects may be long enough to provide moral fulfilment to the individual volunteer, but they might be too fleeting to have matching benefits to the community.
Granted, the spirit of volunteer travel is noble: international volunteerism fosters solidarity, trust, and reciprocity among diverse cultural groups and heralds global community cohesion. As students, when we embark on our voluntourism adventures, we should ensure programs prioritize the short and long-term gains of the project over the wants of the volunteer. Similarly, we should pledge to use our unique assets and skills to generate tangible benefits for the community, not just impressive additions to our resumes.
By Christina Jelly, a senior majoring in biochemistry and philosophy at the University of Arizona.
Photo courtesy of Exquisite Safaris. Photo of Jane Kaye Bailey founder of The Butterfly Tree Project and Mukuni Village beneficiary.
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As a person that has traveled to volunteer abroad, the case is not 'justifying' spending money on a trip. The idea is- if one wants to visit a country, why not lend a helping hand while you're already there? If one can afford to buy the ticket, get the immunizations and take time off work- why not add a few more weeks on to your trip and experience a culture while living with a family in a well-connected community? Why not introduce yourself to people and arrive with genuine interest rather than looking in from a distance? What happens during the experince is absolutely life-changing for the majority of individuals that live, work and/or volunteer abroad. There is a lot of money here in the US and the small amount spent by volunteers in developing countries isn't actually taking away from the social welfare system in the US. The article above raised a few valid concerns, but the answer is not to refrain from voluntourism because our leadership can't address major social issues.
CHARITY BEGINS AT HOME! Quit trying to justify spending all the money on a trip. Just go have a good time. If you really want to do good, Think of how much more good that money would do right here in the US without spending it on air tickets, shots, etc and subjecting yourself to abuse by airport security, terrorism, kidnappings and disease etc. When there are NO MORE HOMELESS people in America, THEN other countries will respect us for spending our precious time and money there.
I couldn't DISAGREE more. Having served as a volunteeer and service-learning center director for years, I learned that the reasons "why" a person volunteers isn't as important as what actually happens during their service experience. Invariably, volunteers develop new rationales for serving, and new, and often unexpected, understanding and insights for those they are serving. In fact, I saw (and research supports) that volunteers with had no previous service experience were MORE likely to volunteer in the future after their initial volunteer experiences. So, I believe it's the experience, not the "why", that counts. So, voluntourism-- sure, why not!?
budget their finances well enough to take care of their people without non-profits taking the lead and being criticized for doing so.
I couldn't agree more with your last paragraph. There are a lot of young people that volunteer abroad, which is noble and an easy way to convince their parents to fund their trip. I've witnessed the short-term volunteer lifestyle of 18 year old students that want to leave the country for the purpose of partying without supervision and a drinking age. But to for every 1 of them there are 10 others that are truely trying to understand a culture and/or learn a language. Organizations like Cross-Cultural Solutions do encourage their volunteers to sign up as interns and work on projects that will better the community and enable the student to earn credits while doing so. There is no doubt that the communities served by CCS have drastically improved because of the financial support offered through volunteerism. The ideal volunteer would research programs that best serve the community. The ideal organization would have a clearly defined mission and stay true to it. The ideal country would...
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