Why I stopped being a voluntourist

http://pippabiddle.com/2014/02/18/the-problem-with-little-white-girls-and-boys/

by hansy • 12 years ago

357 179 12 years ago

wyager2• 12 years ago

It slows down positive growth and perpetuates the “white savior” complex that, for hundreds of years, has haunted both the countries we are trying to ‘save’ and our (more recently) own psyches.

Why does this have anything to do with race? Is it any different for a black person with no useful skills to go on one of these voluntourism trips?

tptacek• 12 years ago

No, as the article explicitly points out.

wyager2• 12 years ago

Then why does the author end the article by talking about the "white savior" complex, and why is the article titled "The problem with little white girls"?

tawan• 12 years ago

IMO Yes and I was expecting the article will point that out just by reading the title.

I was in Tanzania a few years ago as a tourist and I came across many young westerners doing all kind of things like HIV prevention. Sometimes I thought I belong to a minority among westerns by just being a tourist.

I was trying to view the situation from the other side. What must it be like to be a black guy living in Tanzania being told by little white teenagers how to have sex? Little black kids getting cool toys only from white folks, all teachers who know cool stuff being white. I don't stretch the argument too much if I claim that you will get the impression that all good things come from white people and that black people are too stupid to even have sex. As an educated person I know that this is not true and I can differ between spurious correlation and real causes, namely growing up in a developed country, but I doubt that little children are able to do so. They will assign many things to skin color just to realize that they can't change their own and then will think they are doomed and have to hope for the good will of the white saviours for the rest of their lives.

pokpokpok• 12 years ago

yes, because teaching the children living there that white people are rich and you can never be white is worse than being accosted by rich people from another land who at least look something like them

matt_heimer• 12 years ago

It really it isn't so much about race as it is privilege (race only in that statistically a lot of white kids in the burbs are well off). If you don't have to work for anything it is hard to become good at anything while at the same time since you aren't failing at something you end up thinking you're such a super duper special person. Basically even the nice people get screwed up by being a special snowflake all their developing life.

The only part that is probably really about race is that the well off white kids are probably less likely to get told they are unhelpful idiots on these trips.

ChrisNorstrom• 12 years ago

White people are finally starting to "get it". http://youtu.be/dyf2Cf5GkTY See Dambisa Moyo's interview about her book "Dead Aid" The statistics showing how aid is actually hurting African countries and not allowing them to develop on their own the way the rest of the world has.

Einstalbert• 12 years ago

Bill Gates fights incredibly hard to try to prove that aid is incredibly effective and considers this a "myth" to be dispelled. What do you think about the concept?

kamaal• 12 years ago

Except that Bill Gates isn't going around building furniture himself. More like donating a small part of money for purposes like that, and a big part of money for science and technology which can help eradicate bigger problems(like disease and hunger).

sien• 12 years ago

Don't just read Moyo.

Read 'Poor Economics' by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Duflo is at MIT and is all about trials to figure out what works with aid.

Read 'The Bottom Billion' by Paul Collier who is a development economist at Oxford.

Read 'The Idealist' by Nina Munk which is about how we can say that Geoffrey Sach's millennium village project has failed.

Read 'Africa Rising' by Vijay Mahajan about how many countries in Africa are actually been doing well economically for the first time in decades.

Read 'The White Man's Burden' by Bill Easterly about how he thinks aid has all failed.

The development of the poorest countries is incredibly important. These people all have thought heaps about it and are very serious about wanting to help.

Nobody really knows what the answer is but at least get a picture of the different viewpoints.

olifante• 12 years ago

I second Poor Economics, great book. It's fascinating how the book shows that entrepreneurship is actually MORE prevalent in poor societies than in rich ones.

shliachtx• 12 years ago

This has some good points, but it seems (from my experience) that this applies to some degree to a lot of nonprofits. The volunteers actual contribution is minimal, but the nonprofits allow and even encourage it, because it encourages engagement and donations by the volunteers.

jcampbell12• 12 years ago

I took a trip to Africa to go on a Safari and climb Kilimanjaro. I was amazed at how many do gooder tourists there are.

The conversations go like:

Me: What are you here to do?

Them: Build a school.

Me: Oh, you are a carpenter.

Them: No, part of a school program.

Me: Oh, you are providing unskilled construction labor. Didn't realize Tanzania had a shortage.

Near the end of the trip, I met a friend's cousin, asked what she was doing, and she was going from village to village verifying that chlorination systems in NGO built wells were working. I was impressed. I asked how she got that gig, and she told me a story about her going to Tanzania to build a school. She decided to make a real difference.

Her story changed my attitude. I am certainly less snarky about kids going to do unskilled construction labor.

saraid2165• 12 years ago

I asked how she got that gig, and she told me a story about her going to Tanzania to build a school. She decided to make a real difference.

When you (or she) don't explain how she got from A to B, your epiphany has a lot less force. Most kids that come back from these trips seem to have no idea that they weren't helping. How did she realize it? How did she do something about it? How did she start actually doing something?

winfred• 12 years ago

Use your imagination? Someone wants to help, goes to A, someone else there will be paying attention to how that person is behaving, how effective or ineffective etc. Call it simply human behavior or scouting or what not. For most of the visitors that's it, they'll be thanked at the end and feel good, but some might get a call or an email at some point to ask of they want to be more involved with B.

jcampbell12• 12 years ago

Yeah, I didn't explain it well. The first trip was with her church, and the job was 5 years and an engineering degree later. It was the first trip that sparked the interest and gave a comfort level with the country.

auctiontheory2• 12 years ago

I am certainly less snarky about kids going to do unskilled construction labor.

Most middle-class Americans could find a neighborhood within 15-minutes drive that could really use their help. But "my adventures in East Palo Alto" just isn't as exciting on a law school application, or a date, as "tales of Eritrea."

spiritplumber• 12 years ago

Pretty much this. Go to Habitat for Humanity and if you live in a city they'll generally be doing something local.

cowsandmilk• 12 years ago

But "my adventures in East Palo Alto" just isn't as exciting on a law school application

You're wrong on that one. Talking about volunteering every weekend in East Palo Alto will get you a lot further on a law school application than your essay on a week in Africa. Admissions staff aren't stupid. Strong commitment to local activism is valued much more than paying large sums of money to travel halfway around the world on a glorified vacatiion.

cafard• 12 years ago

A friend went down to Central America with a group to do basic construction stuff. They were all from the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, where the majority of construction laborers are from Central America, so it seemed odd. On the other hand, the volunteers did have passports to get back into the US.

mountaineer• 12 years ago

There's a book I'm just beginning, When Helping Hurts[1], that dives into this subject deeper. Complicated for sure.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/When-Helping-Hurts-Alleviate-Yourself/...

herbig2• 12 years ago

Most Peace Corps type voluntourism works on the premise that throwing "white" folks into a country and telling them to fix things will generate results. This is because, you know, we understand the incredibly complex social, economic, political, and cultural dynamics of countries better than they know themselves.

We're better educated, and if these backwards countries would just start doing XYZ they'd start to lift themselves up and out of poverty. You know, things like alternative livelihood by making souvenirs out of trash. That's the ticket.

But we don't understand the issues and aren't equipped to be able to even determine what a particular region of the country actually needs, especially not in 2 years or less.

Real results can only come from funded research into what the underlying issues are and how best to combat them. Also, if the United States weren't so economically oppressive.

I disagree however, with the notion that being "white" is a hindrance in the developing world. Being "white" is an advantage everywhere.

abat• 12 years ago

I've met people who did Peace Corps, and my opinion was much better after meeting them. First they actually became fluent in the local language. Second their focus was often more on enabling locals than on trying to do stuff themselves. For example, they would work with locals on how to push through applications for grant money from developed countries. Dealing with American foreign aid bureaucracy was actually a skill they were well suited for due to their background and education. Finally, they lived on almost no money in the community for a long period of time. The standard of their living was commensurate with the average person in the host community.

herbig2• 12 years ago

Personal development is fine and yes, the Peace Corps is incredible for that, but only one thing you mentioned is beneficial to the host country: money.

If pushing through grant money is the volunteer's primary talent, they can just as easily do so without spending all that useful money on plane tickets and training.

The other issue is that money by itself doesn't solve problems. You have to use it to solve real issues. But the Peace Corps doesn't fund research into what the issues are, because that's expensive and unsexy to anyone touting what the volunteers are up to. So you get grants to fund construction of libraries when everyone in the country can already go to an Internet cafe and read Wikipedia.

count• 12 years ago

Heh, right, because those locations the Peace Corp sends folks are doing so damn well by themselves!

hrktb• 12 years ago

To add a git to abat's comment, sometimes "white" volunteers will be willing to go places where local people don't want to go, like remote or dire poor villages. The most hard working people will have found their way out, and they will focus on maintaining or improving their situation rather than going back to help (except if they are really successful). At some point these places will lack educated and forward thinking people, and volunteers coming out of nowhere can actually have a positive impact, at least on the mental side. Highly inefficient globaly, but not always meaningless.

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

Have you ever met anyone who was actually in the Peace Corps? The few folks I've talked to were remarkably competent folks.

_mulder_• 12 years ago

I disagree. I think a volunteer from the US or Europe can have a big impact for exactly the reasons you list as negatives.

For a start, they come bundled with the optimism, determination and an innovative mindset that is normal in the Western World. Even if they're way off the mark and not skilled enough to build a school, sometimes just seeing someone from outside their community who isn't shackled with local politics or local racism and is just doing something, anything, can be a source of inspiration to the local population.

One Peace Corp volunteer I met was posted to a former Soviet block country. The locals were still stuck in the Soviet mindset that the government would provide for them. He introduced them to computing, he mapped out their entire town onto Google Earth and set up a WiFi service. Yeh it's not much, and they weren't dealing with starvation or illness like parts of Africa, but just by having an 'outsider' living in the community can be a help just by itself.

VLM4• 12 years ago

"we understand the incredibly complex social, economic, political, and cultural dynamics of countries better than they know themselves."

Yeah, that's exactly what the qualified ones do. Exactly why we send them. But there are not enough qualified volunteers.

The problem with the Peace Corps, from discussion with my cousin who did his tour in Africa in the 80s and scared me out of even considering it myself, is the PHBs say they only send over qualified volunteers but fundamentally, "we need one thousand warm bodies" so they have a ranked list where he came in very near the top with a recent degree in agronomy and unfortunately somewhere between near the top, and warm body 1000, it drops into the article description of "unskilled inexperienced untrained barely educated laborer white girl or boy". They really needed 1000 agronomists and livestock qualified veterinarians and technician level workers, but what they got was like 100 regional teams of ten or so where on average about one guy per local group had any real idea what he was doing. You're going over there to help modernize farming out of the ancient era and you have no idea what soil chemistry is... well, I guess you get to hold the shovel, not much else you can do while I run this soil analysis. Another problem is it dilutes the brand so to speak of the work they do... there really are useful volunteers, just the ratio of useful/useless depends strongly on who volunteered that year and the demand and a variety of political concerns. Finally he spent most of his time basically managing at a distance and without any official authority his unskilled fellow americans as they attempted to do a highly skilled and technical job, so the locals didn't even get any direct benefit from his work (although via levels of indirection he did benefit them). One interesting perspective is that our world wide logistical distribution system can, in the absence of warfare, quite easily provide people in the middle of nowhere with enough rope to hang themselves, along the lines of just because you can now purchase a certain seed doesn't mean it'll grow, or if one unit of chemicals improves yield 50%, you'd be amazed how many otherwise logical humans will want to try a hundred units of the same chemical, what could possibly go wrong? Not to mention intelligent use of modern tools, finally having the technology to wash all your topsoil downriver doesn't mean its a great idea to do so, trying to make the desert bloom is a fools errand, etc, but I digress.

Now it would not surprise me if there's at least four perspectives opposed to each other, that being what they claim to do, what they actually did in the 80s, what they do now, and my cousin's story. But he did tell a compelling and believable story at the time, as I recall it and there might be some insight in it anyway.

jotm• 12 years ago

Sometimes, problems are easier to understand (and solve) looking at them from the outside, instead of being right in the middle.

arjie2• 12 years ago

About the brick laying, I'm told that you usually do that poorly if you have no experience (unlike activities like making sawhorses etc. which require little skill). Our local Habitat chapter has experts come in for brick-laying.

In the end, 'voluntourists' are just trying to give what they think they're able to. If they aren't net negatives, I see it as a good thing because they will spend money there, they will bring attention to whatever cause, and other such things. When they're a net negative, though, perhaps it's not such a good idea. It's nice that you want to help, but sometimes what you have to offer isn't what they need.

JoeAltmaier• 12 years ago

Especially problematic in disaster areas. If you go unprepared and get dysentery, then instead of help you are one more distressed person - a net negative 2 (or more) from real help.

unsquare2• 12 years ago

About the brick laying, I'm told that you usually do that poorly if you have no experience (unlike activities like making sawhorses etc. which require little skill).

As a former bricklayer, i'll confirm it, unskilled labor shouldn't lay bricks, it will fail at some point.

aestra5• 12 years ago

My parents have a fireplace in the back yard. It has completely collapsed once. My (presumably unskilled in brick laying) dad rebuilt it but now it is falling apart again. I'm guessing the original builder wasn't skilled in brick laying either.

Thanks for the info, I always wondered why that fireplace wasn't staying up.

_ll5a• 12 years ago

If you really want to help people, find a charity to donate to via Givewell. It won't feel as warm and fuzzy as volunteering, but in most cases that's the best way you can actually help people in need.

visakanv• 12 years ago

Relevant: Fuzzies vs. Utilons

http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...

DateK• 12 years ago

I'm using kiva.org and have deposited $9,000 over couple of years. With auto-relend option my account circulated currently $58,325 through 2,268 loans (individuals or groups) in 61 countries.

http://www.kiva.org/lender/kizaemon

For auto-relend I chose all countries except US, both genders. The sectors are Agriculture, Clothing, Education, Food, Health, Manufacturing, Retail. Have not chosen sectors Arts, Construction, Entertainment, Housing, Personal Use, Services, Transportation, Wholesale, as I do not feel these are basic enough.

BrainInAJar2• 12 years ago

FYI, kiva is a scam (in as much as the company is incompetent) that primarily props up predatory lenders in other countries

auctiontheory2• 12 years ago

I used to donate through Kiva until I discovered that the whole "directing" story was just marketing. That doesn't make Kiva evil, but it does remove much of the feel-good motivation of supporting a named project.

rdtsc2• 12 years ago

I have seen, heard of and have been invited to participate in these trips. Some are NGOs, some are religious groups.

Yeah, looking at it from the perspective she wrote, it seems ridiculous. It is an "industry", wrapped in a non-profit, save-the-world PR shroud, that caters to educated, Westerners who can afford to travel overseas. People feel good when they do good. Whether they other side perceives it as good, sometimes it is not clear.

One can ask, is it better if these "unskilled" people never left home? Maybe even with all the seeming waste and incompetence, it keeps people engaged. I suspect most of them would not have just taken the money for that plane ticket, and handed that check to a NGO that knows better how to spend it, and could build 10 libraries for all that money. But I am afraid it is either "send the volunteers and keep them engaged somehow" vs "don't send the volunteers at all and say goodbye to that money and resources".

People like to help others, people like to tell stories, like to have adventures. These trips cater to that aspect. Do people in Africa feel better knowing that foreigners want to come in and at least try to slap a brick on top of another even if they don't know how? I see a lot of criticism of this here, and rationally I agree, but I also feel there is a bit more too it and I personally am on the fence whether this is good thing or not.

jrochkind12• 12 years ago

The OP suggests that their presence is actually detrimental, not just useless.

If so, then, yes, it would be better for them just to stay home, even though only a fraction of the money that people would have spent on their own trips will be donated outright.

It seems likely to me.

It is comfortable and positive to think along the lines of "If even one Westerner gets more engaged, it's a success!" but why would Westerner 'engagement' be the metric of success? It's not about the Westerners.

Do people in Africa feel better knowing that foreigners want to come in and at least try to slap a brick on top of another even if they don't know how?

The answer to this isn't really unknown or unknowable: No, hardly anyone feels that way. Why would you feel better because a foreigner is coming and fucking shit up while you have to pretend you believe they're helping because they have so much more power than you?

rdtsc2• 12 years ago

The OP suggests that their presence is actually detrimental, not just useless.

Yeah I read that and I don't 100% agree, still mostly agree but maybe just 80%.

"If even one Westerner gets more engaged, it's a success!

Not a success but better overall maybe if they just stayed home.

It's not about the Westerners.

That is the big problem, and I think I talk about it as well (kind of snarky) how it is an industry that caters to Westerner's needs. However I am not convinced yet that not engaging them and not bothering is yet better.

but why would Westerner 'engagement' be the metric of success?

It isn't the only metric of success. But even if it is, the answer could simply be because they have more resources and money to help in the future. Maybe 50 out 100 will end up being hippies living in the van down by the river, smoking pot and telling cool travel to Africa stories. But maybe 10 will actually come back and do something more positive next time.

It is also not black and white. Either come and "fuck shit up" as you put it or "come and rescue the country completely from disaster". There is a lot of in-between.

There are groups of skilled professional, namely doctors that go on specific missions to do one specific thing -- fix cleft palates, do eye exams and so on. Do they do more damage? Quite the opposite. There is a lot of in between. Sometimes there are skilled local professionals and they do work together. Sometimes money comes with the silly unskilled white college kid labor and well maybe the white college kids get to play soccer with the village kids while the local skilled labor build the schools.

Why would you feel better because a foreigner is coming and fucking shit up

Well I do have a story for you. I grew up on a country were American volunteers also felt the need to come and "teach us" and "work with us". Nowhere near the situation in Africa. Nevertheless, I remember kids in our school chasing down Americans just to look at them as if they were from Mars or something. Rumors were how they distributed chewing gum and candy. I never got the candy I was too shy. Well now I live here in US, can buy tons of candy, and looking back, it just feels so stupid to do that. But I am glad they came and didn't just stay home. At worst, it was worth for a nice lifetime feel good moment for 10 year old boy.

insuffi• 12 years ago

I agree with almost all of your post in terms of business and how NGOs operate.

However, I'm going to offer a more cynical opinion on why people go to developing countries. I disagree that people who go there are somehow doing it because of moral reasons or because doing good makes them feel good.

It has become a trend - to go to Uganda and post statuses on facebook about how you are in Uganda helping poor, oppressed people.

I think recognizing that you are not really helping them by the virtue of being American/white/christian requires a lot of critical thinking these days, which most of those late teen girls do not possess.

I have first hand witnessed 100s of americans coming to visit(not an african country), strutting around like they're kings of the universe, not communicating with locals, not learning the language, not even TRYING to learn something. Posting messages on facebook about how they love, love, love the country, without ever speaking to a local.

They're just there so that 1) They can fill in their resume with volunteer/study abroad experience 2) To feed their own ago about how they're multicultural and risk-takers 3) for others to think that they're multicultural and risk takers.

Obviously, my post is very biased, but seriously, some people didn't even know how much they paid for flight tickets and board. Those are (sometimes) the kind of people that go and try to help impoverished communities.(I'm cross referencing, because the people I met had gone to African countries as well).

aestra5• 12 years ago

It has become a trend - to go to Uganda and post statuses on facebook about how you are in Uganda helping poor, oppressed people.

This was satirized in The Onion.

6-Day Visit To Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman’s Facebook Profile Picture

http://www.theonion.com/articles/6day-visit-to-rural-african...

gaius• 12 years ago

"Raising awareness" is such bullshit. It's a lie people tell themselves so they can feel good sitting in an air conditioned office earning a good wage running a "social media campaign" and never getting their hands dirty or having to meet any of the people they're "helping".

http://metro.co.uk/2010/09/21/bono-under-fire-over-one-chari...

icebraining2• 12 years ago

But not getting their hands dirty is exactly what the author is recommending.

avalaunch• 12 years ago

The main point the article is making, that not all volunteers are providing a net positive, is an interesting one.

I have a problem with her position, though. She ends the article with: "Be smart about traveling and strive to be informed and culturally aware. It’s 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."

The problem is that it's hard to be culturally aware and to understand the problems communities are facing if you aren't exposing yourself first hand to those communities. I imagine quite a many useful volunteers, the author included, started off as "voluntourists". And perhaps therein lies the greatest strength of these programs - they help expose little white girls (and boys) to other cultures and problems they otherwise would be unaware of and some percentage of those move on to more useful volunteering.

If she is going to advocate the position she's taken, then she could at least end the article with some alternatives for would be volunteers. As is, if anything, she's just alleviating some of the guilt people might feel over not volunteering: "By volunteering I would be causing more harm than good, so the right thing to do is nothing."

jrochkind12• 12 years ago

The problem is that it's hard to be culturally aware and to understand the problems communities are facing if you aren't exposing yourself first hand to those communities.

Absolutely, and on top of this it takes a while to learn that stuff in an ongoing process, and definitely isn't easy -- you aren't going to learn it in a week's exposure.

So that means if one wants to help by 'going there', one should be prepared to make a lengthy and long-term commitment to be there. Likely years. (If not necessarily consecutively).

Because for a while you won't be helpful, and it'll take time to increase your helpfulness, as you figure shit out. Be prepared to persist through some of the time will be really challenging.

If someone is not ready for that, then maybe 'going there' isn't the right role for them. There are plenty more roles one can take to help, many involving raising/giving money, but also educating oneself and one's neighbors, and other work one can do from one's own location.

If someone can't see beyond 'going there' or 'nothing', that's their problem to overcome or be helped to overcome, but it doesn't make it true that 'anything is better than nothing' -- it can be really hard to avoid being useless or harmful in culturally unfamiliar contexts.

gbhn• 12 years ago

This is a good point. Someone doing mostly-not-effective volunteering isn't there 99% of the time. But that's kind of the point -- they've made a connection and now care about the project. That's got to have ongoing value in terms of things that'll be more helpful (either valuable help or money). Perhaps even sufficient for people who are there 99% of the time to re-lay some brick and call it even.

TeMPOraL5• 12 years ago

The main point the article is making, that not all volunteers are providing a net positive, is an interesting one.
"By volunteering I would be causing more harm than good, so the right thing to do is nothing."

The right thing to do, as she actually points out in passing in the first part of the article, would be to do what you're good at and send the money to a competent organization.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...

I remember the Red Cross writing something similar, that basically boiled down to "please stop sending us supply, give us money instead - by sending items you're making our logistics much, much more complicated and deprive the economy of people who need our aid from the money that we'd introduce if we bought stuff locally".

judk2• 12 years ago

Where do competent organizations get their staff? Who is motivated to pursue the training for that career?

isleyaardvark• 12 years ago

Less Wrong also published an article arguing the option of:

choosing a career with high direct social value than by choosing a lucrative career with a view toward donating as much as possible.

That would cover skilled volunteering efforts.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/hjn/earning_to_give_vs_altruistic_ca...

10feet• 12 years ago

The choice isn't giving $3000 to be a voluntourist, and give $3000 to a charity to hire locals to do the work. The other choice is to go to Europe and blow $3000 having a good time.

doreo• 12 years ago

Exactly this, voluntourism is an exchange of money for time spent experiencing a very different culture which you can tell other people about for a long time and also feel good while telling stories to kids or laying bricks. Oh and a week long safari according to the article.

There is very little that is altruistic about the practice and an altruistic option is not an option for most people who go on these trips. I don't know what cut of the $3000 the school in the article got, but if it wasn't enough then I'm sure they wouldn't invite a load of useless white kids around to set their construction back.

einhverfr• 12 years ago

Living in Indonesia for two years has changed my perspective quite a bit. One of the big things about American culture I now regard as totally odious is the idea that everyone wants to be like us and therefore if we remake the world in our image we are doing everyone a favor. Most of the world doesn't want to be exactly like us -- they like some things about us and dislike other things, and what we like about ourselves may not bear any relation to that.

Societies are homeostatic, equilibrium-seeking systems. If they weren't they'd fall apart under the sorts of stresses that life places on us wherever we live. Foreigners coming in to believe they are making a difference inevitably solve the wrong problems and likely solve them badly.

Now, my parents took some boarding school students to help build medical clinics (under the direction of "Where there Is No Doctor" author David Werner) in the mountains of Mexico back before I was born. They were providing unskilled labor in an area that really did have a shortage (because most people were working in the farms). The upshot though wasn't that the clinics got built faster (they might not have) but that my father got interested in medicine and changed careers from being a math teacher to being a doctor. I have never heard my parents talk about what a difference the students made, or even so much about whatever difference they made.

But having talked with David about this he told me about some of his failures, about how they had this big anti-folk-medicine campaign that they hoped would reduce infant mortality due to diarrhea but then when the floods came, people wouldn't use their folk medicine anymore and the mortality rates went up instead of down and he said they had to go back and reposition what they were offering as one remedy among many.

Often we forget that the people closest to a problem are the best prepared to solve it, and we forget to trust them on this. It is far too often the case that the do-gooders and the activists who haven't yet learned this lesson, solve the wrong problems, often badly, and make things worse.

PakG12• 12 years ago

I have volunteered regularly to run children's summer English camps in rural China. The point of these camps is mostly to give the kids an opportunity to have fun and learn some English while they're at it, because such nice opportunities simply don't exist where they are. Camp counselors in North America for summer camps don't go through extensive counseling training either. The bar for such volunteer activity is lower, but the bar should be much higher in other cases. Here are some things I've learned about non-profit organizations that are well-run.

Firstly, well-run organizations want to maximize their ROI. The volunteers usually fundraise for donations or pay out of their own pocket to go on these trips. Essentially, these funds are revenue for the organization. That revenue must then be invested into their business, as their purpose is not to make a profit (hence non-profit), but rather, accomplish their goals to make the world a better place in their specific way. As such, a good organization will get tourists who are qualified to do the work that needs to be done.

The organization with whom I volunteer has multiple programs in medicine, agriculture, construction, education, and local skills training (for local professionals for the above categories). They ensure that the people who are volunteering are qualified to do their work. For example, for my most recent excursion, I couldn't stay the entire camp, so they asked me to run some sessions with local teachers instead, since I had so much experience volunteering to teach their kids. I prepared some lessons and explained to the teachers that I was not a professional teacher like they were, and that my teaching wisdom and experience only consisted of basic theory and volunteer experience. I made it clear that I was not qualified to teach them about teaching. Instead, I focused on professional skills that I brought over from the corporate world. We had sessions on conflict resolution and negotiation tactics using concepts developed by Max Bazerman at Harvard, the Behavioral Change Stairway Model at the FBI, and discussions about conflicting cultural worldviews and personalities, the basics of which are taught in many corporate seminars. I also focused on leadership styles, motivation tactics, and decision-making strategies. My sessions were very well-received and I received lots of thanks from the teachers, as well as a round of applause at the end of my time there.

This organization never asked me to do anything like surgery, building repair, etc. They did ask me to help out with some computer stuff now and then. For their medicine, agriculture, and construction programs, they made sure to bring in only qualified people. Full stop. The organization had a relationship with the local government and had gained respect of the local government because they did things properly. That's the way it should be. When you're a non-profit, don't do anything that will waste the scarce dollars you have been given.

Secondly, it's true that your impact in these countries is small. But it's like the story of the kid who saved the one starfish. The man comes along and asks the boy why he saved that starfish, what difference does it make in the face of so many starfish dying on the beach? The boy thinks and says, "Well, it made a difference for that one." I still keep in touch with the kids I've taught. The Internet is wonderful today and makes this easier than ever, except in those locations where the situation is so dire that you take Bill Gates's attitude of choosing to fight the malaria over getting the Internet up and running. Overall, I know that the kids are impacted on an individual basis because they keep in touch with me, still call me Teacher, and talk with me about things. The people in these communities appreciate that someone took their time and money to go and help them, if what was provided was helpful. Again, that goes back to the organization making sure that the money and effort is being spent in a way that maximizes ROI. It's the same in business. You don't tell a recruiter to do the bookkeeping, you get a bookkeeper or accountant for that. It just makes sense.

Thirdly, these trips have value in that they work as vision trips. A percentage of volunteers will go on these trips and have their eyes open and their thinking changed in such a way that their life goals change. Those people are the ones who will go into this work full-time and throw away the nice cushy jobs in the first world. Those people are also often the ones who can afford to do it because they've been working nice cushy jobs in the first world for a while, so they have the savings to make it happen for some time until outside donations can take over in terms of funding everything. If these trips don't happen, a huge recruiting channel for these organizations for long-term workers completely disappears. These organizations prefer that these trips be available for people from every generation because you don't know where you'll find the people who will have the switch turned on inside themselves, and you don't know which people will have which kinds of support networks that would be willing to help fund this lifestyle. This third factor is possibly the most important reason why these trips are a good thing.

The goal to have a locally-run operation staffed by locals is an important one. But it takes time to get there, and these trips are a part of the process to get there.

edit: clarification

ryanjshaw• 12 years ago

I lived in short-term accommodation in Cape Town, South Africa for just over two years. The vast majority of my housemates were wealthy European girls "volunteering" or on an "internship" in "Africa", between 1-3 months at a time.

While none of them were bad people, in reality, it was a holiday for the majority of them. They were too young to have any real life skills or lessons to share or communicate. Those that did were simply not around for long enough to have any real impact. They all spent more time and money on sight-seeing, partying and South Africa's beaches than anything else.

This was an acceptable relationship for the organisations concerned because they were receiving money, but nobody had any illusions about whether there was meant to be a more productive relationship. The reality is, in these cases, it would have been more productive to just donate the money for the plane ticket, bars and sight-seeing directly to the organisation - but why would somebody do that when they can get a story to tell, and make themselves sound like mini-Mother Theresas? Let's face it, it's harder trying to get people to give you money if you give them nothing in return.

As I see it, the author of the article appears to be challenging people to ask themselves if they fit in the category you fall into (somebody with something to really offer), or the category I've described (somebody who naively thinks they can help; or somebody effectively going on holiday to an impoverished area in such a way that makes them feels less guilty about being rich while giving them a moral-superiority card to play when they're back home) - because there is a real social cost to this latter sort of self-serving volunteering.

PakG12• 12 years ago

Thinking about it, I see now that OP is focusing on the quality of the volunteer, while I am focusing on the quality of the organization. Perhaps OP and I are simply not even on the same page for commentary then, though we appear to be in the same book.

TulliusCicero• 12 years ago

"I have volunteered regularly to run children's summer English camps in rural China."

Right, so in that case you do actually have a valuable skill that very few, if any locals possess: English fluency. That's quite a bit different from voluntourists that are just contributing unskilled construction labor that any able-bodied local would be able to provide.

yummyfajitas6• 12 years ago

If you want to do voluntourism, I suggest something different: start a business or help set up an outsourcing center.

You'll definitely have a positive effect on people by teaching them about western business practices. I'm told by my former coworkers that my standard US egalitarianism was quite unusual. By "egalitarianism", I simply mean "I'm CTO, you are a mechanical turk, we can go eat pancakes and you aren't obligated to make me tea". So were my efforts to ensure that everyone was growing in their career. My feminist sensibilities ("so be late, tell your husband to make dinner") were also a bit scandalous [1].

I came back to India a month ago to attend the wedding of someone I worked with, and I was very surprised to hear all that. I don't know whether to be happy (I made things better) or unhappy (because their next job won't be so good) about it.

By building a good business and maybe destroying some bad local ones, you'll do far more good than you will by doing unskilled construction labor. And very importantly, the people who work for you will learn that western style management is a great way to make money.

[1] By US standards I'm one of those evil misogynists who thinks statistical disparities are irrelevant and discrimination is a testable hypothesis and market opportunity. But drop me in India and I'm suddenly a crazy feminist ranting against rape culture (FYI India has one, the US doesn't).

yequalsx• 12 years ago

"You'll definitely have a positive effect on people by teaching them about western business practices."

This is the most ethnocentric thing I've read in quite a long time. Much of the world would be better off, in my opinion, having never learned first hand about western business practices. Western business practices have caused a vast amount of destruction in the developing world.

yummyfajitas6• 12 years ago

Treating low skill commodity workers as human beings on the same social level as yourself is such a destructive western practice. So is hiring a stranger with a great github rather than your brother in law, hiring a woman if she is the most qualified, etc. Or there is that destructive western practice of managing by output - the boss is working until 8pm but you can go home as soon as you hit your quota.

Blaming westernized companies (by which I mean both western companies and local companies like Reliance/Infosys that try to run things in the modern manner) for the problems of the third world is silly.

All they've done is caused you to learn a little bit about other countries and made you feel guilty that things are a lot worse elsewhere. China would be poor even if your iPhone was proudly made in CA by illegal immigrants (yay for Nationalist Apparel), it would just be easier for you to ignore.

mattlutze• 12 years ago

This is not blindly ethnocentric, it's the OP's thesis based on a feminist critique of the existing business culture in an area OP built a business. His/Her observations were that, for his/her employees, western business culture was potentially an improvement over existing conditions.

OP in particular observes on experiencing lingering caste pressures and strongly misogynistic trends in the expectation of business environments. You're suggesting this is preferable to employee equality and industriousness?

logfromblammo• 12 years ago

In my anecdotal experience, western business practices have also caused a vast amount of destruction in the west.

Western government practices haven't been all that constructive, either.

About the only ideas I think the west should be exporting to the developing world are a general intolerance for corruption and graft, and its engineering standards for multi-story human-occupied buildings.

gnerd7• 12 years ago

But drop me in India and I'm suddenly a crazy feminist ranting against rape culture (FYI India has one, the US doesn't).

So none of those men in US jails and prisons are being raped?

You should enjoy another country without imposing your values on them, it is OK for you to like or love your way of life, you are absolutely allowed to be proud, and so are they. What is not in good taste is assuming your way is always better, assuming they can't solve problems in time as your country has or assuming you or they are their country or responsible for where your/their country currently is economically. When it comes to human rights however, I'm on the same page as you I think, impose away.

I don't eat dogs, some cultures do. I eat beef, some cultures don't. Some eat pork, some don't. Are any of those really ethically wrong, or do we just have different cultures with different reference points? Isn't having different cultures and methods in the world a good thing? You can't always be right, and when you aren't, you might be glad there is another model that exists somewhere in the world. A cultural hedge, if you will.

I look forward to the rise of India in the future, I am sure in time, we will be stealing ideas from there, but perhaps I'm just being naive.

yummyfajitas6• 12 years ago

On the topic of men in prison, the US does indeed have a rape culture. I thought it was clear from context that I'm using the term the way western feminists do, but I guess I should have been explicit.

Of the specific business practices I suggested, which one do you believe is not a good way to make money?

I'm not sure why you use the term "impose". I'm a guy with a laptop, I have no power to impose anything on anyone.

The only value I've ever imposed on anyone is my opposition to eve teasing. I'm hoping political correctness hasn't gone crazy enough to consider that one culturally insensitive, but who knows?

makomk• 12 years ago

The usual feminist meaning of "rape culture" these days doesn't include prison rape (at least not when it's happening to men). Indeed, I've seen people labelled as anti-feminists and misogynists for suggesting it does. It usually though not always encompasses prison rape jokes because those are considered to harm women, but not the rape itself.

From a modern feminist perspective, billboards of scantily-clad women have more to do with rape than men being non-consensually forced into sex.

anu_gupta• 12 years ago

Well done you, for bringing your values to your culturally inferior employees, and teaching them the ways of "western style management".

yummyfajitas6• 12 years ago

It wasn't on purpose. I didn't even realize it until a few weeks ago when I was explicitly told this. At the time, the only distinction I was making was between valley and wall st culture.

(Im from ny, and my partner was a banker, so from my perspective that was the important distinction.)

pekru8• 12 years ago

A part of my mind says this comment is sarcastic. If that is the case, well, I guess us culturally inferior workers should be thankful that someone took the burden of teaching us the ways of western style management and enlightening us.

pekru8• 12 years ago

If you want to do voluntourism, I suggest something different: start a business ... You'll definitely have a positive effect on people by teaching them about western business practices.

Yeah right. Unfortunately, it might have been too much of positivity for this kid from Bhopal (http://media2.intoday.in/indiatoday/images/Photo_gallery/060...) to handle.

tim333• 12 years ago

Regarding the OP's >"Sadly, taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign. It’s detrimental." I'm not sure that's true as you will still generally be bringing money to the country either in donations to the good cause or in the way that all tourists do by spending at local bars, souvenir shops and the like.

saraid2165• 12 years ago

I'm not sure I'm morally okay with economies driven primarily by tourism. Nothing I can back up with reasoning or data, but whenever I think about it, I get the same gut reaction I do when I see a code smell.

icebraining2• 12 years ago

Well, if the theories that some very poor economies just require a "push start" to get out of the poverty trap are right, then maybe tourism can do the job.

yardie3• 12 years ago

A lot of cities rely on tourism because it is so cheap to invest verses the amount of money it brings in. If you have good weather and beaches it might be the only natural resource you can exploit.

pbhjpbhj5• 12 years ago

I'm not sure I'm morally okay with economies driven primarily by tourism. //

Is that just in places where the tourists are far richer than the indigenous population or is that as a general rule?

zevyoura• 12 years ago

I have the same feeling of unease, but what about when the alternative is poverty, which I think is often the case?

kumarski2• 12 years ago

The absolute worst thing is when the voluntourists don't speak the native language and stick out visually like a black man in Sweden.

draugadrotten• 12 years ago

stick out visually like a black man in Sweden

You haven't been to Sweden lately. Demographics have changed. A snapshot from Sergels square, Stockholm : http://thegambia.nu/files/2012/06/IMG_0514.jpg

kumarski2• 12 years ago

The number one way to help people in the 3rd world is find hungry competent entrepreneurs in the country and ask them about their problems.

gnerd7• 12 years ago

This sounds like a great approach to the problem but how would one go about finding those people? Were you thinking SME level or street vendor level?

ctdonath6• 12 years ago

Sounds like step one: solve the meta-problem. Be the one who finds those people, so you can inform others who want to find them.

I appreciate the issue. Having found a source of cubic meters of free fresh bread weekly, finding a charity willing & able to take it proved a significant problem. Just cataloging available/interested charities & entrepreneurs, and advertising the list, would be very helpful.

khc2• 12 years ago

I don't remember where I read it, but someone famous once said "for most people the best way to do good is to make a lot of money and then give it away" (or something to that effect). I couldn't agree more.

pekk2• 12 years ago

If by "do good" you mean "give money to whoever has their hand stuck out the furthest."

Those aren't necessarily people in need who will use the money for some good purpose, often they are in a special parasitic class of professional beggars and con artists.

Hopefully the point is to do more than show off that you are rich and generous.

lemming• 12 years ago

I assume he means donating to worthy charities rather than actually putting money in people's hands.

vitaminj• 12 years ago

A few years ago, I volunteered in SE Asia for 18 months using my electrical engineering skills to help rural villages get access to electricity. At the time, I'd been working professionally for around 7 years and was just becoming competent at working independently. Although I'd gotten my PE status a year earlier, I can't say that I was at a senior engineering / consultant level.

So it was a surprise for me to find that I was one of the most experienced and skilled engineers in my organization (and in many other energy-related organizations for that matter). I concur with the OP and have met quite a few western volunteers that were well-intentioned, but generally had no technical skills.

Of those who had qualifications, they were usually in the social sciences, development studies, media / communications, public relations, etc. Useful skills no doubt, but I felt that the country could have benefited more with direct assistance from the hard sciences and engineering, e.g. hydrology, agriculture, civil engineers, etc - those skills were always in demand. In the end, there's a reason why development is often done so badly - they practically let anyone do it.

aaron695• 12 years ago

It's pretty simple stuff where locals work for $10 per day, your labour contribution is only $10 per day for unskilled labour. IE helping orphans, cute animals, quick bouts of teaching etc

As a libertarian I'm big on spending heaps of money on localised products(With low resource costs) while visiting these countries instead, I make an effort to do stuff that normally I might be stingy on. I figure the money trickles through the economy while encouraging local business.

I also donate because it also has relevance, but if you want to help a community while having a great experience, just pay for it.

User8712• 12 years ago

Agreed, your biggest advantage is your western salary. Why visit a village in a developing country and work like a local, contributing $3/day worth of labor? That's $1,000 for a year of work. Why not stay home, earn $50,000, and donate $10,000 to the village? They can spend that money to employ 10 local residents.

You just made 10x the difference by staying home, and you could probably contribute a few thousand dollars to your personal savings as well.

iopq• 12 years ago

I expected a treatise on Voluntaryism and I have to say that I got really far into the article before realizing I read the title wrong.

72deluxe• 12 years ago

I read it as "Why I stopped being a voyeurist" and thought it would be an article on finding morals.

It was radically different.

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

Good article but why did she have to bring race into it? This had absolutely nothing to do with race. The problem was that unskilled people were volunteering to do skilled work. They should be volunteering to do work they have the skills for.

arohann• 12 years ago

Articles and blog posts like this disappoint and annoy me. They lack logic and intellectual depth.

I sincerely hope young Americans/westerners don't get discouraged by reading such nonsense.

The problem described here is a combination of naivety and misallocation of skills and resources. It has nothing to do with being white and yet this lady can't seem to get away from that.

I'm South Asian and I would have faced the exact same problems this lady faced had I volunteered in the places and organizations she did. However being older and perhaps wiser, I wouldn't have made the error of volunteering to do things I have no skill in. Thats the only mistake she made and the problems she mentioned are easily fixed with a little common sense. Yet somehow she can't see that

I wonder where this silliness comes from - could it be the result of the modern American education system ?

Before closing I should mention I would likely never have been born had it not been for a bunch of young European women who saved my orphaned grandmother from certain starvation and neglect when she was a toddler. They gave her a home, an excellent education and looked afer her till she was a young woman. Their actions helped my grandmother get the skills she later used to pull her family out of poverty (resulting from the Partition of India) into the upper middle class.

Thank heavens for those dedicated, young, white voluntourists.

ctdonath6• 12 years ago

Thank heavens for those dedicated, young, white voluntarists.

The point is they were not "voluntourists", they really did sacrifice to help your grandmother - as opposed to showing up, getting in the way while doing a few trivial things for a week or so, playing much of the time, and otherwise squandering money which would have been better just sent to the orphanage outright.

berrypicker• 12 years ago

It slows down positive growth

If we ignore race, this model of 'aid' (at this particular stage of development) seems to hinder growth and can not lead to self-sustained communities. Think about this: I could teach somebody how to plant seeds and provide for a whole village, which will eventually lead to a better economy, or I could just buy everybody lunch for a week and wait for somebody else to do the same after me. The latter (which happens in a lot of these programs) is simply interfering with their progress by taking away jobs from the community, which would made progress had you not interfered.

The better solution is guiding and teaching nations how to improve and there are plenty of organizations that do this and have a much more positive effect. Why can't these nations develop like other nations (in similar climates) have done in the past? Nothing wrong with a helping hand but charity like this isn't a long-term solution.

crusso• 12 years ago

1. Race had nothing to do with the point of her story. She threw it in there to sound edgy.

2. These programs are as much if not more about affecting the life of the volunteer. Her realization that she thought way too much of her value wouldn't have happened without going there and having the experiences.

3. I know people who are extremely effective in what they do in underdeveloped countries. Her pride brought her to the wrong conclusion about where she was at the beginning of the experience. It's unfortunate that her pride is still in effect, misleading her about the capabilities of others.

joshvm• 12 years ago

This is the reason why groups like Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontiéres) exist. If you want to help sick people, do it with MSF.

There's also Engineers without Borders, but I recently discovered it's not actually about helping with construction work, more like teaching about engineering logistics/principles. Still, point is it's done by engineering students who should know what they're talking about.

In fact there are a whole load of 'Without Borders' groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Without_Borders

theorique2• 12 years ago

I thought there would surely be reference to this Onion article:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/6day-visit-to-rural-african...

yaix• 12 years ago

THE PROBLEM WITH LITTLE WHITE GIRLS

After a year in East Africa, that was one of the things I noticed here: they always come in pairs of 20-year-old white girls. Except for South East Asia, many more young men there.

$3000 bought us a week at an orphanage

That can actually cause children being obducted or "borrowed" to staff orphanages for white Voluntourists.

Our mission while at the orphanage was to build a library.

And another 10 African carpenters who lost a job to those white Santa-Clauses.

have a camp run and executed by Dominicans

Good luck. I have never seen any organization actually run locally. Sure, it often looks like it is, but if you digg a little deeper, you always find at least one Westener (or local who lived half their life in the West) making sure that people actually do things and not just spend the money and idle. But there maybe one such organization, somewhere, I just haven't found it yet.

rtkwe• 12 years ago

Read further on they didn't lose their jobs, their hours just got shifted temporarily.

Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure.

See? It all comes out in a wash in the end.

htns• 12 years ago

Something which everyone so far has failed to mention is corruption. Tanzania is hardly the model of democracy. Putting some foreigners into the mix brings some extra certainty on how the money gets spent, even if the foreigners have their own perverse incentives.

raheemm• 12 years ago

Even though voluntourist may not be the most useful addition to a team, I imagine the money that is spent to travel and spend time in the volunteer country also helps the local economy a great deal. An unintended benefit but nevertheless helpful.

wcummings2• 12 years ago

Yeah, seriously, go to a local food pantry, they'll be glad for the help

TeMPOraL5• 12 years ago

Or maybe rather do equivalent amount of overtime at work and use the additional money to hire a bunch of highschoolers to help.

ctdonath6• 12 years ago

Suggestion: Panera Bread gives away (to charity) all the bread they have at the end of each day (their "Dough-Nation" program). Find a food pantry, find out when they're open, tell a Panera store you want to take their leftovers there. Both groups will appreciate you for it, especially if you're reliable: Panera doesn't want to throw hundreds of $$$ of good food away, and the pantry can probably use as much as they can get. Be reliable to both. Just transporting otherwise-discarded food from store A to charity B can make a big difference; takes about an hour a week, easy to do, is a needed activity few know is available.

I'm sure other stores will do something similar.

wcummings2• 12 years ago

A lot of place literally just need to man-power to lift boxes around and help distribute food to clients.

gone35• 12 years ago

I am good at raising money, training volunteers, collecting items, coordinating programs, and telling stories. I am flexible, creative, and able to think on my feet. On paper I am, by most people's standards, highly qualified to do international aid.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't think it immediately follows the author is "highly qualified to do international aid" at all from that description alone. Shouldn't one require a profession of some sorts to be "highly qualified" in anything, perhaps? I would assume she is college educated: shouldn't a university education have qualified her as a professional in some field already?

cpr• 12 years ago

Ivan Illich had some good words to say on this topic:

http://www.swaraj.org/illich_hell.htm

gabriel34• 12 years ago

Voluntary work is not amateur work

I can't stress this enough, if you want to earn money you find something you are good at and society thinks is worth something. If you want to help someone you find something you are good at and people need. Maximize your impact by specializing in what you are good at and outsourcing that in which you are not.

skywhopper• 12 years ago

Wanna help some poor people? Give them money. In most cases, that's what they need, not your good will, not your clumsy efforts. Unless you have a very particular and highly-developed skill that's in high demand, just give money.

MovingWorlds• 12 years ago

I loved this article. Really hits at the problem we're trying to solve. We find these 6 questions helpful to ask if you should (or shouldn't) volunteer your skills overseas: blog.movingworlds.org/6-questions-to-ask-yourself-before-volunteering-overseas/

Why I stopped being a voluntourist

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