Critical Views

Assessing Volunteer Tourism (Voluntourism) and Traveler Philanthropy

by Daniela Papi

I recently read a blog, one of many, which was striving to analyze how positive “voluntourism” can be.  The questions tend to revolve around one core question, “If volunteers are unskilled or getting involved in unnecessary or low priority work, and they themselves are getting a lot out of the experience, are they really doing good?”

As I was thinking about this and trying to put my ideas into words, an image popped into my head: a spectrum of “positive impact” that ranges from 100% financial contribution to 100% volunteer contribution.  This implies that if your volunteer time is:

a) necessary and high priority for the organization or community,

b) introducing locally unavailable skilled labor or

c) providing volunteer services that would otherwise be costly to the organization,

then financial support in addition may not be necessary. However, if none of the above applies, then there should be a donation requirement offsetting the costs of hosting volunteers. In either case, financial contributions help sustain ongoing project needs, thereby making the volunteer trip valuable beyond the activities taking place during short-term volunteer projects.

Does that make sense?  If it doesn’t, perhaps this chart will illustrate the point.  Based on my experiences, if volunteer tour operators or traveler philanthropy projects fall on or above the dotted line, they will positively impact their partner projects through the introduction of skilled and necessary labor on one end of the spectrum, significant funding on the other end of the spectrum, or a combination falling somewhere between the two. 

Arsenic Threat Reflects Risk of Unregulated Development

By Michael Woodard

Last month IRIN News published a story about arsenic contamination posing serious health risks to millions living along the Mekong River. The article reports that in Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Vietnam, residents relying on contaminated groundwater and unsafe wells are exposed to arsenic levels higher than the World Heath Organization’s acceptable standard. The health problems caused by chronic exposure to arsenic are grave. Arsenic is known to cause cancer of the skin and other organs, lead to respiratory disease, cause various skin ailments, and have major health implications for young children. While the article proposes that arsenic contamination in the Mekong region was caused by recent sedimentation, the risk of arsenic poisoning has long plagued South Asia’s rural poor.

Critical Views on Volunteering Abroad

The "Center for Global Engagement" states in this website below that "It seems to us that the more critical voices you can add to a worldview that still drives you firmly in the direction of doing something, the better suited to creating change over your lifetime you'll be."  I couldn't agree with them more.

I think it is important for those of us working in development and tourism to remind ourselves of the vast possibilities for negative impact we have in both fields and to constantly work to mitigate that negative impact.  If we avoid reading the criticisms about the arenas in which we work, we will not know what to avoid nor how to distinguish ourselves from those critics.  We are also likely to learn and be reminded of things we could do better. 

Here are some critical views on development agencies and volunteering: http://www.justmeans.com/allthings/128/Top-Five-Critiques-of-Develo...

They are worth reading, and I passed them on to a group of friends in the travel industry.  Here was our subsequent conversation:

Are International Volunteer Organizations Good?

The PEPY Team Journal

Are International Volunteer Organisations Good?

This article brings up many of the worries we at PEPY have about international volunteer organizations, ours included. We are working hard to find a way to make PEPY stand out from the growing pack of international "volunteer" projects by making our tours opportunities for participants to learn and to grow not just to "give". We are grateful that articles like this are being written and discussed which voice our common concern that, if this industry continues to grow unchecked, it has the opportunity to continue to do harm rather than the good it claims to promote. To read the article click here.