To think voluntourism needs to be called out?

I give a regular donation to a UK charity. Something that everyone will come across in their life at some point.

Definitely not to some shady project to make teenagers feel good about themselves.

No one is obliged to help anyone at any level. There is plenty of work that needs to be done in the UK, let alone across the world. So if you are going to help, it needs to be without compromising the local job market and a project with long term impact. Short term volunteering rarely supports communities to be more sustainable or provides skills or infrastructure which will make a difference to daily living. Simply put, it’s an experience for the volunteer, not the community they are supposed to be supporting. If you want long term impact, learn a trade or become something in industry and then seek to use those skills and experience in areas of the world that genuinely Ned that support. But if you do that, you are looking at months, if not years of your time. Few people care to help for the length of time it takes to have that impact.

Exactly. A lot of the voluntourism is just for their own means. Just to look good.

Regularly donating to genuine researched charities and not begging money to go on a holiday and disguising it as a helping. 🤷🏿‍♀️

Truly, why wouldn't you do that if you want to help?

I think it's becoming a bit of a trope now actually. It's more associated with entitled posh kids with a saviour complex and nobody wants to employ them because they bring those traits to work.

This.

Voluntourism frequently actively causes damage to the communities where it occurs. It isn’t ‘help’ and it would literally be better for the people who take these trips to sit at home and do nothing (or, you know volunteer at the local charity down the road).

And that’s without taking into account the ecological damage of flying across the world to do unskilled manual labour that a local could do for a fraction of the cost and feed his family accordingly.

“The people there don’t need Ugg boot wearing blondes telling them what to do” is how people who do this were once described on mumsnet.

Voluntourism is not helping

all these kids could easily volunteer in England, but that’s of course not as exotic and won’t give you access to cute vulnerable kids that you can plaster on your instagram.

And I do volunteer my time for a board for a small charity in england and we are struggling to find volunteers that we desperately need.

Out of curiosity, how are you helping?

These sort of schemes exists everywhere. A report about the orphanage system in Haiti showed that some individuals made hundreds of thousands out of gullible American volunteers and the kids were barely fed.

Lots of adults defend it, and see nothing wrong with it, so I'm not ashamed that my (admittedly quite naive) 15 year old thinks it looks good when he's basically being given a sales pitch in assembly.

I wouldn't 'call it out' but I would ignore requests for sponsorship.

Well with all due respect, that’s your opinion. But it can be worded to add a positive uniqueness to a young persons CV. Speaking as an ex employment advisor.

That's very sad.

There are plenty of charities in the UK that need volunterrs

I think we need to 'call out'. Every time a chugger approaches me for Shelter with a spiel that 'young people can't afford houses' I tell them they should not be automatically entitled to a council house at 18 because they can't afford to rent privately and they don't want to live with their parents. Tough shit. Either rent privately or live with your parents. Don't want that? Go live where the employer provides accommodation - what my friend did, going into hospitality business just to get away from home. I support homeless veterans on the other hand through Erskine veterans charity contributions, but that is because I think veterans should be entitled to housing automatically, whilst teenagers - not. Yes, we need to 'call out'. We need to tell people we are not mugs, we know what their games is.

Bravo x 10

If your child falls for this crap in assembly given by Kenyan/Ugandan/Sri Lankan you should be embarrassed that your child is so thick and ashamed by their hubris.

I find it awful - white saviour tours. If they want to help, they can work and send their part-time job money to real Africans on the ground, people who are running things. No names named, by my dc school did this - building huts or whatever, I refused to allow mine to go - they stayed in a nice resort hotel and were bussed daily to build these huts!!!! Posted pictures on Instagram, with 'billowing curtains'. And they had showers - not a bucket of water, but showers. I find it so distasteful - like going to a human zoo in the 1920s, shame on this nonsense. This engages me, really does. Nothing to do with the 'donate the money' aspect, but exactly with the tourism and white saviour bit.

How is ‘locals’ defined? How much of the money went into the pockets of the ‘locals’ (who may not be local at all) who requested the playground?

Who paid for the upkeep?

Even if this wasn’t the classic ‘building a playground’ where the work is demolished the minute the bus load of tourists leaves ready for the next bus load to build the same playground, this is still done more for the satisfaction of the tourists.

The cost of one plane tickets could fund a local workman and feed him and his family for months. If the voluntourism model didn’t exist, fundraising for local building projects might actually benefit the locals more than the tourists.

Because it's racist and damaging? That's why people need to call it out.

It's almost routine. Children are shipped into schools and orphanages. Sometimes stolen, sometimes struggling parents bribed or misled. Kids are kept in a permanent state of neglect, no matter how much money is donated. Because it brings in serious money. Not to mention the complete lack of safeguarding. Child abuse is scarily common in these settings.

If you were so young you could neither pay for, nor research your own trip, why on earth would you think you had anything at all to offer anyone abroad?
As you say you were a teenager then. Now you are an adult with the ability to reflect and educate yourself. So do it please.

Did you even do any due diligence regarding the legitimacy of the orphanage?

I admit that brought back an umpleasant memory, @Digdongdoo

A friend spent years in Nigeria, and apparently "pop up schools" were quite a thing, where prior to the arrival of certain western visitors a few winsome kids would be brought in, dressed in uniforms and given books about Britain, and taught what to say to the "rich foreigners"

I'm also told that very little of the money ever actually made it to the kids themselves, but of course that's a whole other subject