When I was a 9 year old girl in Catholic school, once or twice a year we would be brought into the gymnasium as an entire school to learn about the work of our local missionaries. The presentation would be simple: a couple photos of skinny Ecuadorian children in rags and mud, a simplified discussion about world poverty distilled to a 3rd grader's understanding, and then an ask form to go home to our parents with a list of school supplies requested for donation. Carrying in boxes of crayons and notebooks, we'd all proudly give in a big Wal-Mart bag from our home and go upon our merry way, ensured of the better world we were helping to build, one pencil case at a time. Besides the occasional mention of PeaceCorps in movies growing up (I'm looking at you over in the corner, Baby), missionaries were just about the only people I ever heard about travelling to far off lands to help impoverished communities. This kind of work, in my mind, was only carried out by specific kinds of people in the world, dedicated servant leaders and social justice warriors. It wasn't something that someone like me could do - or at least it wasn't until now.
Voluntourism. It's yet another portmanteau, as if we hadn't smooshed together enough words to create new industry terms lately, and the definition is obvious. Voluntourism is a form of vacationing, where tourists focus on saving Pandas and building clean drinking wells, rather than sitting on a beach with a Pina Colada. According to a recent study by Wakefield Research, an astonishing 62% of Americans express interest in combining volunteerism with tourism on their next vacation. Most voluntourists are young females, aged 20-25, though high school students are increasingly participating, according to consulting group Tourism, Research, and Marketing. Giving back has become vital to so many young people, companies, many of which are in the tech industry, are increasingly offering paid time off for volunteering activities as a recruitment strategy, in addition to standard vacation and sick time policies. As a result, voluntourism has become one of the fastest growing areas of tourism in the travel industry. So, the question is simple - are these bright-eyed Millenials actually making a difference, or just getting some hardhitting snaps for their #wanderlust collection on Instagram?
The answer is a bit unclear and critics of voluntourism are widespread. While the concept of building a school for the underprivileged children of an African village may sound like a noble conquest, many critics point out that voluntourists often fail to possess the skills needed for the projects they sign up for. Often, myriad droves of liberal college freshmen head out to foreign lands with little to no understanding of native language, cultural norms and mores, or even the trade skills required for their tasks, such as carpentry or engineering skills to build the desperately needed school or educational or teaching experience to help instruct the children. As Pippa Biddle points out in her article "The Problem With Little White Girls, Boys and Voluntourism":
“Sadly, taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign. It’s detrimental. 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. ”
When popularity surges, so does competition. Voluntourism isn't cheap. In fact, in a recent study 42% of travellers cited cost as the reason for not yet taking a voluntourism trip. The number of tourism agencies offering voluntourism trips has exploded in the last decade, with reports of shady agencies abound. Many reports tell of new voluntourism-themed travel agencies popping up to offer volunteer trips with little to no volunteering activities or superficial activities with little to no economic or social impact for the communities involved. What's more, like Pippa Biddle pointed out above, many critics accuse voluntourism as a form of exploitation in developing nations, a means to bring self-satisfaction to young tourists in a vaguely veiled form of altruism. Philosophical debates aside, is voluntourism really worth it and who is actually benefitting?
Truth be told, voluntourism may be spreading to the mainstream and repackaged with a catchy name, but it isn't new. It's been almost 60 years since JFK first envisioned mobilizing college graduates to underprivileged nations in the PeaceCorps and each year, thousands of students continue to deploy their skills across the world to do better. Whether or not for-profit companies are tarnishing the world of voluntourism these days, PeaceCorps has been a longstanding tradition to American culture with a number of successful projects and programs over the years. Like engaging with any new non-profit, the bottomline here is to do your research. There's always bad apples in every bunch.
“Furthermore, while voluntourism may not be a fit for everyone’s budget or lifestyle, the lesson to non-profits is clear: Millenials give differently. Like crowdfunding campaigns, Millenials want to see, touch, and feel their results. In today’s non-profit economy, it is absolutely vital for non-profits to understand the uniqueness of this generation, and the need for generation-specific donor strategies.”
The final question: would I, a non-profit professional, ever become a voluntourist? Of course. I voluntour every time I drive to the rural American communities only 30 miles outside of my home and bring potable drinking water. You don't need to cross a country's borders to do good to those who need it.