VolunTourism Controversy & Insights From Australia
GiveNow.com.au pulled out all the stops this past week with two very insightful articles. The first that I will mention includes the recounting of a voluntourism experience by two sisters – Lindy and Sarah Richardson. I do not think that either of them was pleased with the trip they took, yet for Sarah the engagement appears to have been more repugnant based upon the one-sidedly-negative slant of her commentary. From “Voluntourism: Lindy and Sarah’s Experience” comes this gem via Sarah:
Fancy investing $1500 to build squat loos in a remote village in Ghana? This was my contribution to our six-week project. There were 17 other people working alongside me in the village, each presumably spending $1500 on the experience – a total budget of $27,000. That’s an amazing pool of money given that the average villager in the palm oil factory in this village earns $5 a month.
So imagine how I felt when I discovered that our accommodation was not paid for, the utilities were not paid for, the builder’s time was unpaid, and the only thing the budget seemed to be used for was to purchase a couple of effluent pipes. We lived on spaghetti with tomato paste for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. So, what happened to the $27,000? You tell me… Welcome to voluntourism!”
Just an excellent, excellent description of how she truly felt about the experience. And, in so doing, she reminds us of some of the key items that voluntourists, in general, are seeking:
- Transparency – Where does the money go and what is it being used for?
- Creature Comforts – Not everyone, of course, is seeking creature comforts, but most people expect a certain level of comfort – whether it be the accommodations, the food, access to services, or standard levels of hospitality
- Meaningful & sustainable – Projects must be meaningful and be seen to have a lasting value, as sustainable as possible, for the community being served
- Rooted in the community – The goals & objectives of the community must be the driving force behind all projects
So thanks to Sarah for taking the time, and having the courage no less, to spell out her points. Clearly, her expectations were not met and you see the resulting expression of the frustration that accompanies this. One final question: “Could her experience have been avoided/prevented?”
Giving Doctor: Voluntourism
Moving on to article number two, “Giving Doctor: Voluntourism,” one of the key features of this piece is the ‘Perspectives from the travel industry‘ segment that appears towards the end. Here is one item I thought was significant:
INTREPID TRAVEL is winding back its voluntourism itineraries. According to Eliza Anderson of Intrepid Travel, a high level of interest in the two to four-week volunteer programs on offer has not translated into commitment by travellers. Most of their customers prefer to spend two to three days at the end of their trip doing volunteer work, but this is not a sustainable option for the communities they hope to support.”
Note the part about people wanting to commit only ‘two to three days at the end of their trip‘ to participate in voluntary service. This is an important distinction for travel companies to pay very close attention to – you are, first and foremost, catering to travelers not volunteers. Second, if you are to engage individuals in ’sustainable’ projects, said projects can be reconfigured to meet the demands of both stakeholder groups – community residents and voluntourists.
Final Thoughts
Whether you are a traveler, a provider, or a community, take the time to bookmark these articles and review them periodically. See how each stakeholder contributed to an overall experience that did not work – not because it could not have worked, but because on many levels it was doomed from the start – at least where Ms. Sarah was concerned. Someone, somewhere along the line, forgot to take into consideration Sarah’s needs. Customer relationship management could have likely forestalled this outcome, especially with some rigor in the application process.
I may return to these articles in Decade 2.0 to discuss their relevance to the research we are doing with the Voluntourism Surveys. There is so much grist here for diving deeper into the idea that community development – thanks to globalization and the rhetoric around global climate change – is no longer relegated to a single community. Through voluntourism, community development is becoming a shared experience for a generation of citizens that see the world, not as a mass of nation-states, but as their one, unified homeland.
So, get ready to toss out that lingo regarding ‘developing countries,’ ‘least developing countries,’ ‘developed countries,’ etc, and prepare yourself to receive a group of voluntourists who are coming into the world with a very disruptive, for the status quo that is, case of Nation Blindness!
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Comments
Hi David,
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
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