There are a lot of reasons that seem very encouraging to volunteer abroad, and some of the benefits cannot be denied.
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It is a good way to demonstrate affiliation to those in need
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Projects can bring about local change
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There are some companies with good intentions, and do work towards change for good
However….
Voluntourists’ ability to change systems, alleviate poverty or provide support for vulnerable children is limited. They simply don’t have the skills. And they can inadvertently perpetuate patronising and unhelpful ideas about the places they visit.
Volunteering may bring short term fulfilment to the communities you are helping. However, the bigger issue of why these people need help or what is causing the issue is never addressed. Volunteering often just covers the cracks, providing a short-term solution to a system that needs totally deconstructing. Is changing the lives of a few people in a small village, enough to solve the issue for the rest of the people suffering?
Voluntourism with children also perpetuates the notion of a desperate Africa needing the benevolence of the West. This is just a restructuring of a colonial discourse of “backward” societies that needs to be undone if any serious ideological change is to come about. If our ideologies about poverty do not change first, the way we address it never will. By “helping” people, it continues to perpetuate a defenceless ideology which does not give people agency in kickstarting their own change.
Sometimes the insincerity of volunteering abroad becomes apparent for people who are going mostly out of a desire to enrich themselves, rather than with the intentions of helping people. Helping people of course is on the agenda, but the intention should be this, rather than almost exploiting them for a better social image.
Volunteering can also seem like quite an ironic enterprise. With the intention of re-building and helping communities, it also coincides with possibly removing tasks that locals could be doing that could kick start their economic growth. Taking jobs away from locals almost undermines the help you are doing in the first place.
Is teaching English the best way to help develop a country? Surely English is not the first tool children need to start working towards a better life. They need to be equipped with skills relative to their local community, culture and language, rather than providing them a small insight into the English language, that more often than not is a temporary attempt to teach it, having little affect in the future.
We need to question whether people actually need the help in the first place. Some volunteering companies actually exploit imagery and narratives of poverty to implant impressions of somewhere in need, just to attract volunteers who are willing to pay to “help”. Many of the big volunteering companies actually make profits through volunteers rather than creating a sincere charitable system. Fees to volunteer abroad are huge, and often these do not go to the people you are helping.
Volunteering is often a temporary project, and more often than not causes instability for those who are receiving the aid. Volunteering does not often provide sustainable solutions, when the volunteers leave, they may have created a tool or project that the local people can sustain, but also could have left a western ideology and project that is not fit for the local community. When volunteers come and go it is a disruptive and disjointed strategy.
With this said, volunteering need not be abandoned because humanity can only exist by depending on the kindness of others. The best way to change the system would be to restructure the issues that cause poverty in the first place, however since this an almost impossible task given the grip that capitalist growth has over the accumulation of money, we should instead do research when volunteering, looking into companies that have moral and sincere intentions behind them, who do not promote and exploit poverty of people for their own economic gain, but rather use funds to channel them back into the community and kickstart an autonomous development, giving local people agency to make change. This should be done instead of perpetuating the cycle of underdevelopment which continues the money-making scheme of volunteering.