VolunTourism – “Who Does It Best?”
I recently received a set of queries regarding voluntourism that I thought would be of interest to readers. The questions are straightforward:
- Who does it?
- Who does it best?
- How successful is it in meeting its intended purpose?
Who Does It?
I will interpret the “who” in this question to mean those entities that are implementing voluntourism. We know that the stakeholders who have been, or are beginning to, become involved in voluntourism represent a broad spectrum across multiple sectors. Tour operators, nonprofit organizations/NGOs, grassroots organizations, hoteliers, public institutions – and the list goes on.
The motivations are equally as broad. In the case of nonprofits, for example, it may be to generate income from a social enterprise venture. For tour operators, voluntourism may serve as a step toward more sustainable business operations or a means to preserve the natural environment that provides the backdrop for their adventure or ecotourism-related business operations. The list of participating entities continues to expand, and with good reason.
Who Does It Best?
The answer is – No One. In the world of voluntourism there is no “best” – sorry to burst your bubble.
Sure, you will read the words “best practices” or peruse websites that discuss the various steps they have taken to ensure transparency in the communities, etc. And, very likely, such descriptors will continue to be expressed in the marketplace. But just because an operation utilizes the term “best” to describe anything it does, this is always being measured against some criteria – either criteria the entity itself has created or criteria that has been taken from somewhere else. How truly reliable can that be since it is based upon the idea of ‘reaching a finish line’?
The “best” operations are the ones that quietly go about their business day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. They improve themselves, not based on some external criteria, but upon the criteria of where they were five years ago, last year at the same time, or three months ago. What have they learned from their experiences? What have they gained through input from voluntourists? What have the community residents shared with them about their overall operations?
These groups probably won’t show up on the front page of a search engine. They will not be seen in the annual awards for travel magazines. They will not be receiving recognition from responsible, sustainable, or other such websites. Why? Because they are too busy working with their constituents to make their programs BETTER. These are the types of entities you want to discover; in order to do so, you will have to dig – dig through websites, make phone calls, email folks, etc. It may seem like a chore, yet the reward far outmeasures any effort you will put into the discovery process.
How Successful Is It In Meeting Its Intended Purpose?
Each operation will have a distinct purpose, or set of purposes, as to why a voluntourism initiative has been put into place. The interesting twist on this is that there are two camps – those operations that did not have voluntourism in mind when they began their operations and those that did. For example, there is an adventure voluntourism outfit in the Minneapolis/St. Paul greater metropolitan area that got its start within the last couple of years. The Founder clearly had voluntourism in mind when she established the operation. The experience is meant to combine the elements of travel & tourism, from an adventure perspective, with voluntary service.
In Mexico, on the other hand, there is an outfit that has been in existence for many years and did not have voluntourism in mind when it started operating. Its function was community development. What the entity discovered over time was that when groups would come down for site visits, the participants began to express interest in not only learning about the programs but also actively engaging in service to support the programs within the communities. As more groups came, they requested opportunities to see local attractions, meet people of the region, etc. The purpose of voluntourism was identified well after the operation was fully functional. Voluntourism, in this example, served, and continues to serve, as a revenue generator for the entity.
In both instances, to my knowledge, voluntourism is successfully meeting its intended purpose – albeit that the purpose may not have been the original purpose of establishing the operation, as was the case in the second example above.
Purpose, as it relates to this question, could also be defined on a case-by-case basis, or it could be defined based upon who is determining the purpose – perhaps the traveler or someone other than the operating entity. Under such scenarios, it is clear that not every program successfully achieves its intended purpose. Look at articles such as the one by J.B. MacKinnon – “The Dark Side of Volunteer Tourism,” or one that recently appeared in the UK Times Online entitled “Real Gap Not Quite The Do Gooder It Claims To Be.” The intended purpose was not met, on some level.
Trying to identify a “percentage of success” is impossible. Suffice it to say that some achieve their intended purpose and some do not.
Concluding Thought
MacKinnon does a good job of putting everything in perspective with his three points:
The closest I’ve come to conclusions can be reduced to three. First, nothing is likely to stop the increase in person-to-person contact between people of the richer nations and people of the poorer. Second, there is much to be gained on both sides from this exchange. Third, those gains will be made through a series of small, personal, humbling errors.”
If your seeking “the best” or your ”purpose” is NOT to make a mistake, then voluntourism is not something you want to become involved in; let me save you the trouble right now. If you are willing to make errors, understand that communities appreciate your errors – whether you believe it or not, and that everyone benefits more so when you are flexible in measuring outcomes, you will succeed. Edison made an error on the light bulb more than 10,000 times. Was he successful? Did he do it best?
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