General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGrowing Western demand for altruistic vacations is feeding the white-savior industrial complex
My friend Jack likes to tell his favorite story about a summer he spent volunteering in Colombia. He recounts that story anytime hes handed the opportunity, at parties, lunch meetings and airports. He highlights varying facets of the story on different occasions the snake he found in his tent, his camaraderie with the locals and his skills at haggling. The message to his audience is clear: I chose hardship and survived it.
If designer clothes and fancy cars signal material status, his story of a deliberate embrace of poverty and its discomforts signals superiority of character. As summer looms, many Americans college students, retirees and others who stand at the cusp of life changes will make similar choices in search of transformational experiences. An industry exists to make these easier to make: the voluntourism business.
A voluntourist is someone like Jack, who wishes to combine exotic vacation travel with volunteer work. For anyone interested in being one, a dizzying array of choices awaits, from building schools in Uganda or houses in Haiti to hugging orphans in Bali. In all of them, the operational equation is the same: wealthy Westerners can do a little good, experience something that their affluent lives do not offer, and, as in Jacks case, have a story to tell that places them in the ranks of the kindhearted and worldly wise.
As admirably altruistic as it sounds, the problem with voluntourism is its singular focus on the volunteers quest for experience, as opposed to the recipient communitys actual needs. There is a cost associated with such an endeavor. A 2010 report by the Human Sciences Research Council, based in Pretoria, South Africa, analyzed the thriving AIDS orphan tourism business in South Africa.
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/4/volunter-tourismwhitevoluntouristsafricaaidsorphans.html
Nuclear Unicorn
(19,497 posts)RobinA
(9,894 posts)What difference does it make if I'm building a school in Uganda for the experience? If Uganda needs a school, I get the experience, and Uganda gets the school. Win-win.
Supersedeas
(20,630 posts)Democracyinkind
(4,015 posts)closeupready
(29,503 posts)long to be colonists again' - but the conclusion is good, as are some of her points (i.e., volun-tourism is potentially good, we just need to fix some of its flaws). She writes for Dawn, Pakistan's English language news source, so I suppose her resentfulness is to be expected...?
At any rate, K&R for discussion. Al Jazeera is a good source of all kinds of views and interesting commentary.
The Straight Story
(48,121 posts)I follow them on twitter (which is where the headline came from) and there is always something interesting.
The take away for me here is that I am reading something for which I had previously not really given any thought to. Things like "The orphans conditions are effectively transformed into a boutique package in which saving them yields profits from tourists. The foreigners ability to pay for the privilege of volunteering crowds out local workers." So while doing something you see as a positive it could well have a negative.
I don't like the writer's style all that much but it does bring up some interesting things.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)Supersedeas
(20,630 posts)Donald Ian Rankin
(13,598 posts)If it's doing more good than harm, it's a good thing.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Why can't they go to Disney World or Las Vegas instead?
Atman
(31,464 posts)Every two years (after election-season bonus) she books a four-six week "voluntourism" trip to some far off land. One year it was helping build schools in a village in Tanzania. One year she worked at an orphanage in Nepal. She pays a lot of money to "volunteer," and comes back with lots of stories, and Apple photo-books for the office.
I agree with the other responses...is it self-indulgent? In a way. Is it a bit transparent, in that she's young, quite well-off, an heir to the company, and really has nothing else to do with the other 22 months of her life. I kind of admire what she's doing...she's not asking to be paid, she's actually PAYING to go help people in need of help. I suppose you could just send a check to Sally Struthers or Alyssa Milano and feel you've done some good, but my colleague walked the walked, and PAID to live in some pretty squalid conditions. Paid much more than many of us would pay for a trip for a tropical island resort.
"the problem with voluntourism is its singular focus on the volunteers quest for experience, as opposed to the recipient communitys actual needs."
All parties seem to benefit in several different ways. Sorry if it's not the perfect definition of "Altruism."
Warpy
(111,286 posts)Never mind the water is only intermittently safe and five miles away and never mind you people have all got COPD from cooking and lighting with kerosene indoors and never mind you spend months away from here every years trying to find enough pasture to keep your goats alive, we're gonna build you a school."
That's the problem. I think you really need to live with these communities for a while before you know what their problems are. Even asking them doesn't do much good since they've lived with problems so long they really don't see them as problems.
There is a kid in Sierra Leone who went through garbage cans for years, scavenging electronics to cannibalize and who built himself a low power radio station out of it. If you'd have asked him some years ago what he needed, he's likely to have told you "more garbage." He's on TED Talks if you want to look for him.
However, the problem wasn't that he needed more electronic garbage to cannibalize. It was more that he needed affordable parts and the money to purchase them, which meant overturning the system of rich nations stripmining poor ones via cash crop agriculture that gobbles up all the good land, leaving the country's people scratching a living out of barren dust. That's something no missionary or great white savior ever seems to want to recognize, let alone take on.
Instead, they decide the community needs a school few can afford to attend and that semi nomadic herdspeople won't be around to attend.
Atman
(31,464 posts)Thanks.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)Americans recognize that the work/tv/sleep cocoon that surrounds them isn't fulfilling.
The problem is that they refuse to recognize the local problems because there's a competing personal need for an exotic "genuine" experience.
Thus, volunteering at the food bank/DV shelter/soup kitchen is kind of boring, because it doesn't enable you to regale your fellow partygoers with thrilling tales about your experience of bugs, mud and deprivation.
"Voluntourism" Exactly.
closeupready
(29,503 posts)We are social animals. It's a fundamental desire - for novelty, awareness, education, kicks? And I'm not seeing why that is something to be ashamed of. To the contrary, if it is an impulse that can be exploited in order to better the world, isn't that what 'civilization' is all about?
Some people just like to complain.
exboyfil
(17,863 posts)to do manual labor in another country. I could understand where skilled labor is needed, but doesn't make more sense to use the funds to purchase the materials and hire local labor? This definitely does not apply to medical professionals who make an incredible difference with their volunteering of time.
Something can be said for the empathy and better understanding of those receiving the aid. My daughter went on a mission trip to a Mexican border town over spring break. She did not bring any skills of much value to the experience in my opinion, but there is a good chance she will continue to serve in this way, and she does plan to become a medical doctor. Assuming she will be able to volunteer given her anticipated massive debt load, I would hope she would continue the commitment.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)went to Brazil to perform surgeries at some of the remote villages that didn't have access....they did it for about a dozen years...some of the doctors still do, I believe...this article seems highly biased...I'm sure there are one and done do-gooders, but I'm willing to be they're a small minority.
That said, this is an opinion piece and the author is using some "facts/experience" to make the point, so take it with a garin of salt.