VolunTourism: The “NEW” Travel Trend??
On 2 July 2010, Randy LeGrant, of Geovisions, offered up a post entitled “Ever Heard of Voluntourism? Stick A Thousand Needles In My Eye.” The post made me chuckle, on many levels, but I liked this bit most of all:
If anyone who types can go to their favorite search engine and type in “voluntourism” and get 182,000 results or “volunteer abroad” and instantly get 1,220,000 results, (read this slowly):
y o u
a r e
l a t e
t o
t h e
p a r t y.”
I don’t think that all of the major media outlets read Randy’s blog post, yet. As if on cue, CBSNews.com ran a post this week entitled, and I kid you not, “The New Travel Trend: Voluntourism.” Anyone from the world of public relations will tell you that any news is “good” news; but I wonder, are headlines like this misleading readers, especially would-be travelers?
This is a question that I am wrestling with.
No, voluntourism is not ‘new.’ However, for the vast majority of people across the planet, voluntourism is not only new, but it also challenges the traditional approaches to travel and voluntary service that have been well-grooved into our collective mindset.
Who, in their right mind that is, travels with the thought of being of service to her/his host destination – to the residents, to the environment, to the cultural heritage of that place?
Who, but someone who requires a session on the proverbial ‘couch,’ pays to volunteer?
What makes voluntourism ‘new’ is the fact that it poses a ‘real threat’ to those old habits and patterns of thinking and doing which have long dictated how we view and conduct travel and how we view and conduct volunteering. To paraphrase – “Tourism is tourism and volunteerism is volunteerism and ne’er the twain shall meet.”
The academic community supports the separation of ‘church and state’ by utilizing the term ‘volunteer tourism.’ Building on this, many NGOs still take great issue with the term ‘tourism.’ Is it at all surprising, then, that we are still getting headlines for articles and blog posts that tout the ‘new-ness’ of voluntourism?
This is not a hopeless situation. We have historical data that we can review regarding the adoption of ‘new’ ideas and ways of doing. Clearly, voluntourism is still in the early adoption phase. There are many who see these divergent streams of doing (tourism and volunteerism) as opposing forces, much like darkness and light. Fortunately, we can celebrate the fact that Western science is beginning to catch up with the Eastern ’science’ of metaphysics insofar as we are realizing that the brain is not fixed. Woeful still is our Western ‘technology’ in re-wiring the brain; the good news, however, is that there are some breakthrough ‘exercises’ for filling in some of those old grooves and replacing them with new ones and I’ll discuss some of these in the next issue of The VolunTourist Newsletter.
Until we come to a greater level of understanding that our future resides in our ability to embrace the merger between social benevolence and profit-generation, sans the current, outdated and virtually obsolete system to transition profit-generation into social benevolence, we, quite a few of us, including Randy, will probably walk around with ‘porcupine’ eyeballs for some time. Yes, it will be uncomfortable. Yes, it will make for prickly conversations. And, yes, it will give rise to a ‘new’ niche of opthalmology. But hey, we have something to celebrate; at least there have been no be-headings, nor stonings, nor lashings, nor burnings at-the-stake – not yet anyway.
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