To think voluntourism needs to be called out?

[icreaminbarnsley]

I've had numerous requests this year by parents of teen dc who are going to various African countries to contribute to their crowdfunding "to help the people in [insert country]". They further explain that said child will be building schools/wells, teaching English, designing sanitation projects....but the latest I received was that their child would be "advising locals on how to set up a business". This in particular has really annoyed me, as the child is doing A Levels, has no business of their own, and no business acumen that I'm aware of. How can you be so brass necked and unaware to be spouting stuff like this? I totally get going to a different country is going to be a fantastic experience for the dc, but who is dressing it up to make it sound like these teens have something important to offer and are needed abroad, in areas that they have absolutely zero experience? I also get that the locals might benefit from the money that the dc need to pay to undertake such an experience, but is it really the locals who benefit, or is it the mainly the 'charitable' organizations that are based in the UK?

AIBU to feel we need to call this a unique opportunity to experience life in [insert country] and not delude ourselves into thinking the locals are benefitting from groups of western teens, who are not builders, engineers or business advisers?

Then there should be fundraising to train more local medics.

In the meantime, qualified volunteers for 6-12 month stints can volunteer to fill the gap.

None of this is relevant to the subject of this thread which is the voluntourism model of ‘volunteering’ where (to quote one of the articles I’ve linked previously), unskilled westerners treat visits to countries in Africa like a visit to the WestWorld theme park.

When I was in high school, there were two high schools very close to each other. Students from my high school asked why we weren't being offered this sort of trip that the other high school were doing

Our head teacher put on an assembly to talk about voluntourism and arranged for a voluntary trip, out of school hours, to help at a food bank and soup kitchen. (He also made sure it wasn't local, so there was no chance of running in to anyone from school who may need a similar service)

He was shocked at how many of us turned up

At the end, the centre gave out big bars of chocolate to everyone, and almost in unison we took them and turned around and handed them to somebody who was using the centres facilities

Our headteacher said he had never been prouder of his students than in that moment, he didn't know they were planning on giving us the chocolate

We went on to raise money for the centre, doing similar fundraising events to the other high school, off our own back, with all of the money going to the charity. Quite a few students volunteered again, without school input. I wish I could have, but my health declined and I wasn't able to. I did help with the fundraising though

It taught us a lot more than if our school has just said ok let's offer the same as the other school, and the charity benefited a lot more from 100% of funds raised and continued volunteering.

It meant more, because it was easier to imagine yourself/family member being in a situation where you needed that service, rather than "oh yea poor little Africans" and having a total disconnect between what they are going through and what is happening in our own country

Maybe you’re right, but if the best that comes out of this is that a child has a trip to another country where she meets and forms relationships with local people ( which she probably wouldn’t do on a dream family holiday), then it will all be worth the effort she has put in.

For whom is that a good outcome? What sort of "connections" is a teenager going to make that will help anyone in any way?

This. She won’t ’form relationships’ with local people any more than I have a deep and abiding relationship with the desk clerk at a hotel I once stayed in.

And to be blunt, the locals are paid to indulge what they see as wealthy dilettantes. They don’t like them (who can blame them - nobody likes being patronised and exploited), they want their money.

These trips cause active damage to the local people. Nobody disputes they benefit the voluntourists. They absolutely do. The issue is whether in the 21st century, it is acceptable to exploit residents of developing countries for the benefit of comparatively wealthy westerners, i.e. classic colonialism.

Edited to say: And I believe most of the voluntourists do think they are helping. They need to be sat down and told they really, really aren’t. Something I think many would be horrified to realise.

No, no safari. The whole trip is working with a charity called Grassroots. The only building is building beds . You can google the charity.

Even if the lass wanted to "form a relationship", @CandidHedgehog, I expect the local people have other things to worry about than sending messages and happy snaps to someone they'll almost certainly never meet again

And how much good could they do with a £2,000 donation if most of the money wasn’t being spent on travel / accommodation?

The only grassroots in Tanzania I can find involves children. Is that the one you mean? Because the voluntourism programmes involving children are the worst of all - no proper DBS checks, no care for the trauma caused to children by people washing in and out of their lives every couple of weeks.

At least the useless building projects don’t always actively cause harm!

Yes, I am open minded about it. But who is going to just donate £2000?

Well that says a lot about the motives and character of the sort of people who go on these trips, doesn’t it….

You don't need to donage £2000. Subtract the flights, insurance, hotels, profit etc. You'll soon realise that the amount of money actually going towards anything resembling a good cause is pretty small.

Also @IridescentRainbow , you haven’t said if this is the ‘grassroots’ in Tanzania where the trips are to check sponsorship money is being spent properly.

Because if so, shipping in foreign (usually white) teenagers to supervise the spending of funds by the local recipients comes across as incredibly racist (if I believed this was any more than a pretence for the benefit of the voluntourists which I don’t - no doubt the actual checks are going on ‘off-stage’ as it were).

Neither was I asking about training in developing countries. The conversation has evolved. I'm not sure why you seem so condescending.

It seems like you are very ready to criticise others without having the ability to reflect on your own behaviour.

It is relevant in the sense that some people will lump this together and still criticise. As is evident by some posters here. If you agree that volunteering with relevant skills is different, then fair enough.

You asked about MSF. So I responded that the ideal is supporting local skills. I'm not sure why you're taking it so personally.
Perhaps you could reflect upon why you don't have reasoned response, and can only respond with accusations of condescension?

I've googled the charity.

The voluntourists interview the children and enroll more into the scheme. Why they need people to come to Tanzania to interview the children I'm not sure. It would make much more sense to have Swahili speaking Tanzanians to do the interviews. I could find them some volunteers.

The level of English in Tanzanian schools particularly at primary level and in the rural areas is not good. I live in an area where there are a lot of tourists and even here you need swahili to communicate. We work with local schools, our swahili speaking students are always needed to translate. I really don't see how in this area the children are going to have enough English to be interviewed.

You can also deliver a mattress or carry a chicken. Again not sure why a British teenager is more skilled at that than a Tanzanian.

You can sponsor a child for 3.50 pounds a month. If she really wants to help why not sponsor 47 children for a year and get some change out of her 2000 pounds.

It does look like one of the better organisations but still I don't see how your friend is going to help. It is about her not the Tanzanian children.

It doesn't look like one of the better organizations. The bar is already so low, we don't need to feed the delusions.

Absolutely. Voluntourism done responsibly is a good way to fund charitable projects and have an interesting experience. There’s no evidence at all of significant harm to local communities and lots of evidence of positive impacts.

my employer paid for a trip to Africa for team building where we built a house with habitat for humanity. We had done builds in the uk with them too. We did a safari and some other tourist stuff too but also funded and built a house for a local community organization. Of course that isn’t harmful and it’s just silly to pretend it is.

Not all volunteering in the uk or elsewhere needs to be done by highly skilled people. There’s no reason unskilled people can’t volunteer- in respect of foreign volunteering people are doing it for an experience but that’s ok. It’s tourism it’s hugely beneficial for the local economy and charitable projects.

I’ve posted links to the evidence of significant harm in multiple posts in this thread alone. Even the most basic research shows the substantial harm caused (although I accept you have to look at the later pages of google results - the profit making companies claiming it’s a good thing have taken up the first few pages).

You wasted an enormous amount of money that could have been used to build houses by travelling out there yourself, took paid labour from locals, thereby distorting the local economy and causing hardship to local families, and (unless you are a qualified construction worker) did a worse job than a competent local could have done.

That’s harmful.

Edited to say: Plus the ecological harm of multiple flights so a load of British people can perform unskilled labour in a country teeming with people who could live for months on the cost of 1/10 of one of those flights.

But it let you team build so that’s all OK (/s)

I was going to add a few more, @CandidHedgehog, but honestly don't think there's much point when people do this only to be told evidence doesn't exist

The blind-eye-turning/blinkered attitudes are unfortunate, but as said upthread I can understand that - having lashed out an awful lot of money - folk want to believe it's been sensibly spent

Edited to add 300 posts now, and still no answers as to why fundraisers don't just donate the money directly to their chosen cause

It does have Tanzanians involved in the organisation.

They don't have a link to how to book your safari when you come out to help.

I didn't say it was good but compared with some I have seen it has a few good points. The bar is very low though.

Taking into account what a poster has said about needing Swahili to be of any use, I am even more convinced the whole ‘sign up children and check how sponsorship is being spent’ is a fake.

If this is a genuine charity, my guess is the Tanzanian staff are doing the actual work and then taking the paying volunteers to carefully curated locations to ‘sign up’ existing beneficiaries of the charity who have been coached in what to say.

The voluntourist is travelling around viewing traditional Tanzanian villages rather than going on safari with an uncomfortable implication of treating the village residents like zoo animals. Which is racist.

Having Tanzanians involved is hardly a barometer for ethics is it? Shipping out foreigners to interview children isn't good by any metric. It's concerning that you would think it is, given you are apparently a teacher in Tz... you ought to be hotter on your safeguarding practices than that.

lol - the house wouldn’t been built at all if habitat for humanity had not funded it and built it. We provided jobs for local construction workers who worked on the project with us. After we left there was a house that wasn’t there before and wouldn’t have been there if we never had visited. The emissions were nothing extra to if we had just gone on safari.

you’re lucky that you have the luxury of repeating guardian reader talking points. I grew up in poverty so I’d rather have the house that is needed and otherwise wouldn’t be built.

I’ve volunteered on uk projects for habitat too - was I taking away work from uk laborers? Should no one ever volunteer?