Wednesday 16 April 2014

VOLUNTOURISM!?


The debate about "voluntourism" – that unsightly word – has reared its cynical head again and again. Every so often the spotlight is turned on western students using their free time to help those less fortunate in developing countries and the much head-scratching and soul-searching ensues. Others have argued that Voluntourism creates a “Western-infused cultural oasis” very distinct from the communities that the locals live in, and potentially damaging to their development as the people they come to like, perhaps even love, are continually coming and going.
Pippa Biddle, the author of a recent post entitled "The Problem of Little White Girls, Boys and Voluntourism" is right when she mocks the idea of untrained students being considered "godsends" or replacements for trained doctors, engineers, or teachers, and she is right to say that "only through an understanding of the problems communities are facing, and the continued development of skills within that community, that long-term solutions will be created." But she is absolutely wrong to conclude that this means international volunteering should be discouraged or that her skills were useless. They weren't -- they were just being massively misapplied.
Recently again, the Guardian published a piece by Somalian blogger Ossob Mohamud, with the headline Beware of the 'voluntourists' doing good. She argues that the west is turning the developing world into "a playground" for the rich to "assuage the guilt of their privilege". Mohamud clearly had a difficult volunteering experience. She says she felt ashamed at the excessive praise and thanks of locals, cringed as she took photos with African children whose names she did not know and was left feeling that she had simply inflated her ego and spruced up her resume. But Mohamud's insistence on drawing a wider social message from her own unsatisfactory trip is unfair and potentially damaging.

It's easy for 'voluntourism' to seem like a dirty word, and there is a very fine line between a genuinely helpful and mutually beneficial experience and one that, at best, has little to no impact. Let me take you, though to the fuundamentals of its coinage. 

What Is Voluntourism? 

As the word implies, voluntourism combines vacation travel with volunteering at the destination visited. One can say, killing two birds with one stone.  It’s also spawned a new vocabulary: voluntourist, ethical holidays, travel philanthropy, and more. Voluntourism is aligned with the more established concept of “sustainable tourism,” defined by Sustainable Travel International as “lessening the toll that travel and tourism takes on the environment and local cultures.”  Their motto is: Leave the world a better place. 
What I fail to understand is the crucifixion of ‘voluntourists’, labeling them as fake, but we don’t have the same sentiments for those who tour while on their business trips! Should they also not be allowed to see the beauties of the foreign land that they were sent to do some work? Whether volunteering is an objective or is subject to one’s travel is clearly none of our business to socially judge or condemn on any grounds. 

I through working with ‘Tofauti on the move’ have personally witnessed the volunteers - students and recent graduates from cross-border universities - forming genuine friendships with the locals, developing emotional attachments to the children and becoming truly invested in their future. Cynics might thus say that when they return to their respective countries they leave it all behind and life moves on. But for many, volunteering can be life changing; and many of our past interns can attest to that.
 
"Charity” in its essence is just a bridge between the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-Nots’. Obviously, no approach is without its flaws, but it is vital that people do not group charities doing this well with companies who are putting very little into the developing world. Charities or NGO’s stem up from society’s disregard and marginalization of the few, from a community level to a global level, hence we also have the UNITED NATIONS.
The undergraduates face a stark choice about how to spend their time before entering employment, particularly now that money is tight and jobs are scarce. Charities that invest in the developing world need keen, energetic, ambitious people to help them along. "Voluntourists" they may be – but their work can have a huge impact on their own lives and the lives of those they help. It would be an awful shame if they or more specifically WE were put off. 

One thing to note though before I go ahead, is that ‘Tofauti on the move’ is not a voluntouring NGO, as we offer no tourism packages whatsoever. But that does not stop us from working with touring companies, Corporates for their CSR, and any other NGO’s and even parastatals for that matter. As our mandate is sustainable development irregardless of any Tom-Dick-and-Harry that wants to help foster viable social aggrandizement to the destitute.

It is also important to remember that voluntourism and aid work are two distinct markets, appealing to two completely different groups. Aid programs perform an essential role, but people involved with it are long-term participants, volunteers or otherwise. Voluntourism is for people who are going on vacation who do not have the time to be involved with traditional aid programs.

What Does this Trend Mean to Traditional Volunteering?

At the moment, the vast majority of volunteer vacation projects send people from North America and Europe to developing countries in Africa, South America, and Asia.  This is largely because it requires money, time, and access to travel abroad and those three resources are available mainly in the First World.  But perhaps someday the concept can be practiced in both directions. Case in-point, Hurricane Katrina was a disaster than engaged people from around the world.  For the Americans, it may be sobering but also illuminating to recognize that they too, might be recipients of the help of others.


Development and aid work are fundamentally about relationships. They address the relationship between people and their environments, the relationships imbedded in the power structures of social, cultural, and political systems, and the relationship of the developed and developing world. And they depend upon relationships to be successful: relationships with community leaders and members, governmental decision makers, and NGO's, just to name a few. As with all good relationships, the strongest, most lasting, and most sustainable require time. Lots and lots of time. More time than most people are willing or capable of donating.
Ideally, development and aid work should be done by country nationals, people that already know the culture, the language, and the nuances of their country. Even more ideally, I believe, developing countries should be training and educating people who are actually from specific in-need communities. Not only are these people fully culturally integrated, but they already have established relationships with individuals and leaders within those actual communities.
This slight reformulation implies a change in the role of outsiders (both as individuals and countries) in the developing world, but it does not mean that developed nations have no part to play at all.
Instead, they need to re-prioritize and re-evaluate their approach to relief so that they use their resources to empower countries to develop themselves. This should be according to the countries own standards and not the hindrance of them with the developed countries standards. The role of western countries in international development is to be defined not by their own interests but by the expressed needs of developing nations.

So while I applaud the intentions of the voluntourists of the world, I think it is important for them to remain grounded in reality. They need to be constantly cognizant of their privileged positions to be doing development work in the first place and the limitations of both their time commitments and outsider status. All international experiences are important and contribute to a general worldliness and awareness that is so lacking in our generation. But unless we are willing to accept the inter-relatedness of our privilege with someone else's poverty and allow that understanding to change how we live our lives, we are just exercising our privilege even more.






Here's a quick synopsis on how to be an effective volunteer:
: Work with local staff, don't try to do their jobs! 
Profit -- Who is truly benefiting from your trip? Is it a for-profit volunteer placement organization, a tour company, your Facebook or Instagram photo album? Or, is it the community you are meant to be helping? What percentage of the benefits of your trip, in volunteer work or financially, is legitimately helpful, and not just fun? Go direct; find organizations where you can concretely understand where every dollar of your contribution is going, and where your work is needed most.
:Don't be a superhero, just be you! 
Local Tanzanian fundis (craftspeople) have a huge comparative advantage when it comes to building walls, over little white girls and boys with no training. However, little Western girls and boys might be great at setting up social media for a small local nonprofit, doing computer training with impoverished teens, or doing an art project that they can turn into a fundraiser for their home community -- all of which require skills and access that are much rarer in rural Tanzania than in central 'Connecticut'. It's all a matter of fit- what can you offer to this community that they don't already have? The first step is to shut up, and listen hard to the community you work with. You can't possibly help with community needs if you don't even know what those needs are. It sounds like Pippa learned the first part of this lesson -- that we don't know everything about how to "fix" other societies, and rushing in where one doesn't belong is a recipe for disaster. But she seems to have missed the second half -- that if you listen, you can find places where you actually are needed, and wanted, and can help. You just have to be quiet for a while to hear it.

At Tofauti on the move, we generally don't take new volunteers for less than 4 weeks. It usually takes about 2-3 weeks to settle into a new culture and community, and for stays any shorter than that, the physical and staff costs of training the volunteers usually outweighs the benefits of their assistance. It also takes time for volunteers to truly understand how and where they can be of most use to the local staff, but once they settle into the rhythm, they become a huge asset.
:Volunteering is not a vacation, and orphanages aren't zoos! Good volunteers are the lifeblood of many small nonprofits and it is frankly irresponsible to equate all international volunteering with a 2-week high school package tour. In our case, volunteers grow our small Tofauti family: They raise awareness and expand our network to new communities. They add value to our work every single day.
But of course, I am far from an unbiased observer as I am a full member of Tofauti on the move. Still I believe one should never fear being corrected. So, I am about as far from objective as they come -- this work is my life, literally and metaphorically. But, I promise that if you have a chance to see the type of impact volunteers can have when the fit is right on a small scale, but with so much love -- you would change your mind towards criticizing volunteering.

That being said, the quality of work a volunteer does is very much independent of the Tofauti on the move bureaucracy anyway--it depends largely upon the individual, their skills and capacity, as well as their motivation and resolve. 

~Hongdi Zhao
Chinese Ambassador- Tofauti on the move


No comments:

Post a Comment