To Volunteer or not to Volunteer?
Last updated 08/05/2008 10:51:28
Young volunteers gain greater understanding of the complex issues facing developing nations – and what can be done about them.
"Voluntourism" – combining elements of an adventure holiday with charitable work – remains one of the most remarkable travel revolutions of the last ten years.
Hundreds of operators now run programmes in countries worldwide, with projects that include everything from school-building to nursing orang-utans.
The Live Aid generation have driven this market, aided by cheaper air fares and the rise of "gap year" culture - s ome 200,000 British people now take a gap year each year, spending on average $9,500 each. A report released by Future Brand Travel Index in November 2007 found that voluntourism and "green holidays" are now major attractions that compete with backpacking and traditional holidays for a share of the market.
My own "voluntourism" experience – at the tender age of twenty-two, took place in Ghana. Beginning as a trainee journalist, I quickly switched placement to a charity fundraiser before ending up in an orphanage with toddlers. The reasons were simple: nothing I was involved in was properly organised, corruption among the "hosts" of each project was rife, and the more I worked the more I realised that I was, in effect, depriving a perfectly capable local person of a job. Teaching toddlers the alphabet in the company of bemused local volunteers seemed about the least damage I could do.
I wasn't the only one with such deep misgivings. Last year, a damning report by VSO urged would-be volunteers "not to bother" – their hard earned money better spent on holidays and backpacking. This backlash was inevitable: companies purporting to sell "charity" projects continue to mushroom around the world. Often little or no accountability is required, the impacts on local communities never assessed. Anxiety over carbon footprints and global warming mean it hardly seems justifiable to travel to Borneo for a month of "helping out" - especially when the money spent could pay a local person for a year to do the same job.