I am the Sarah Richardson quoted in your blog.

I do agree with your key items listed especially “transparency” as my time in Ghana was not ‘repugnant’ but more upsetting as the money invested was not used by the villagers that needed it most.

The friendship that I formed with the people who I was working with was the most rewarding thing I gained from my experience. I still keep in contact with many of them (particularly when Australia played Ghana in the World Cup recently!!). This was the loveliest aspect of the voluntourism project and something that I would never have experienced if I had just been on a normal holiday.

All in all, I’m not sure if there is a place for voluntourism… I found from my experience that community development needs to start from the ground up rather than voluntourists parking themselves in a community for a couple of weeks working on projects that the locals probably see as a lower priority than others. If you called the Assembly Man from the village I stayed in and asked him if you could come and help out his community, he’d probably say that they needed to learn how to use a computer and he needs some advice on how to run his business because he’s making a loss… not build one squat loo per household because the Ghanaian government had mandated it.

Cheers,
Ms. Sarah