Summer’s here and that means that the worst person you know is probably off to Africa to volunteer and make a huge difference in the lives and educations of children. Except they’re not. Because that’s not how it actually works. They’re not making any differences.
Annually, one and a half million individuals travel internationally to participate in volunteer tourism a.k.a. voluntourism. Voluntourism is a form of tourism in which travellers also participate in voluntary work, with the aim to ‘do good’ and to ‘help those in need’. However, this typically just consists of young university-aged students spending thousands of pounds to travel across the world to do very little that actually makes a change. Actually, more money is sometimes spent on travel than on those they are going to ‘help’, which begs the question, why are they travelling like this in the first place?
These people travel for a number of reasons, whether that be to widen their CV, fulfil their white saviour complexes, or to ‘see more of the world’ whilst conveniently getting a tan. They tend to travel with volunteer groups or organisations who take them to these countries normally to either teach English to children, build schools, or help in orphanages- all of which are problematic.
It’s rare in wealthy western countries to see children in orphanages because such a huge volume of studies has proven that children thrive in family environments and do far better if they grow up in a familial environment rather than an institution. In less affluent countries however, orphanages tend to open as responses to crisis but then the donations don’t stop, so the orphanages don’t close, despite not being good for children and in some cases being corrupt institutions scamming charities for cash.
In Cambodia, between 2005 and 2015, there was a 60% rise in the number of orphanages (despite 80% of the children in the institutions not even being orphans), coinciding with a rise in tourism. Coincidence? No way.
It’s a simple way to improve perception of the self (if you’re completely uneducated and unaware of the realties, of course). A part of me can see why you’d think it was a good thing to do, and it’s the same part of me who used to see the photos in school assemblies of students who’d taken a gap year to volunteer and marvelled at them. There was a time where I fell for it all and believed these people to be kind and altruistic and good.
It of course also alters the way you are perceived by others. When you begin to flood your Instagram profile1 with snapshots of you and smiling children from poverty-ridden communities it’s undoubtable that so many people would just take it at face value and assume you to be amazing. But take a step back and imagine a slightly different post. Imagine walking out to a scheme2 to take a picture with a cold, hungry, white Scottish kid. People would be outraged at the exploitation of this poor child for some views and some likes, so why aren’t we reacting the same when someone does this with a child from overseas? Suddenly, if you change the race and nationality of the child it becomes ‘humanitarianism’? No, it doesn’t.
An argument made in defence of voluntourism is the bonds formed with the children. Look at their smiles in photographs, the way they seem genuinely happy in admiration of these superheroes coming in to teach them. Then a month later, these people disappear. Volunteer bonds are temporary and the impacts made by them are the same. For these children to constantly bond with volunteers only for it to be torn down and then built up once again is heartbreaking. Imagine being one of these children, constantly enduring cycles of strangers who ask them to smile for a picture before they leave, just like the one before did. It’s like living in a constant cycle of break-ups (imagine the torture that’d be if that helps put it into perspective).
The other argument is that it allows schools to be opened and funded with teachers in them and working. Schools that educate 600 students who would otherwise be without a teacher. But these are teenage teachers who tend to be underqualified and unprofessional whereas once again, the money spent on flights and these ‘volunteer programs’ could instead be put into funding teacher training for locals.
Any argument that claims volunteer tourism is good, always has a stronger counterargument.
If you feel the itch to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to help then you’re not feeling an urge to help, you’re wanting to perform. If you wanted to help, you’d do it locally or ethically. The thousands of pounds spent to essentially just top up a tan could’ve been spent at any number of children’s charities to legitimately help things change but instead, people want pictures. They don’t want to be good people; they only want to be perceived as good people.
I’d highly recommend a visit to the ‘Humanitarians of Tinder’ website
https://humanitariansoftinder.com
It features examples of people exploiting these children for their online dating profiles!
I’m Scottish so for anyone who doesn’t understand this term it’s basically the word used to describe the housing estates built by the council for working classesback when soldiers were returning from war. Now, these places tend to be some of the areas with the highest poverty rates and not the most salubrious areas.
as someone who *did* do a volunteering year, it felt weird not posting anything about it, not talking about it with anybody, and it felt weird feeling weird, you know? i'm not saying i'm better that everybody else for this, but rather than it's SO important to explore the importance we've given to the performance on social media, i'm currently doing an investigation about this and your post helped me so much to remember these kind of experiences too! great post!
it’s true. it’s always the worst person you know. I fully agree with this writing. i get so mad seeing this. also, thank you for humanitarians of tinder. this made me SO MAD!!!