By Sana Agarwal
This summer I volunteered in Makuyu, a small village in Kenya for two months. Living in a new country just by myself, teaching children from disadvantaged backgrounds and helping with the administration of vaccines. I also met locals and volunteers like me from all around the world. My trip overall was an insane experience that I cherish. While my trip was fully funded, it did make me think about voluntourism and the industry in general.
The word voluntourism comes from a mixture of ‘volunteering’ and ‘tourism’. Voluntourism is a 2 billion dollar industry and is growing at a rapid rate with key customers being students. The industry breeds by advertising trips as a fairy tale mix of leisure and altruism, when in reality it centres around exploitation and egoism. It is harmful to both parties at play, the volunteers themselves who most likely have kind intentions of serving society but even more so, the community or charity itself. They do so by capitalising on their impoverished conditions hidden under the facade of being ‘charitable’.
During my time in Kenya, it often struck me that I was potentially snatching away employment opportunities from the locals. Even though, as a student at a top-class university, bring certain skills to the table, I highly doubt that someone else couldn’t have taught basic Mathematics and English to 3-7 year-old kids. And I think that stands true all across the board. Economically, voluntourism does more harm than good. When volunteers come in to work many times it leads – perhaps inadvertently – to the unemployment of the locals. Companies and charities, instead of hiring local labour and paying them for their work, decide to capitalise on their hardship instead. After all, what’s better than having people pay you for their labour?
Another challenge I faced in Kenya was the language barrier. It is hard to help someone when you can barely understand them, let alone teach them or provide healthcare facilities. Even though I had Swahili lessons every day, it wasn’t until the end of my trip I started having a command of the language. I am sure a Kenyan teacher, or even a regular Swahili speaker, could have done a far better job than I did, this would also save hours of Swahili lessons and the resources put into it.
Most volunteers only go abroad for a short period thus, engaging in low-skilled work: therefore the ability of the volunteer to make a long-term impact in dismantling poverty or even just making significant gains for a community is very limited. The same goes for construction volunteering; it has been reported that when a group finishes building bathrooms at a local school they are stripped down for the next group to come. The utter waste of both resources and labour speaks to the exploitation of such an industry and highlights its only aim – profit.
However, there is a far more alarming and dangerous by-product of voluntourism – white saviourism, the idea that people in the global south must depend on white people to ‘save’ themselves from their misery. It puts the communities at risk of feeling inferior and, incompetent giving the volunteer just the perfect saviour complex to feed into their ego, deeming it a perfect trip for their social media and CVs. The danger of such a sentiment is way deeper than the consumers realise. What starts as a charitable initiative can take the dangerous turn of neo-colonialism. It strips the volunteer of their altruistic intentions and can be deeply degrading to the community, causing damage to both parties involved.
Once I was back from my trip I decided to read more about voluntourism, and what was revealed was beyond unsettling. The industry has been tipping the line of unethical and deeply exploitative in ways that are unimaginable to most of its consumers. There have been several reports by big newspapers like The Guardian as well as local newspapers about ‘orphanage voluntourism’ in Nepal, Haiti, Cambodia and Uganda. That refers to the practice of institutionalising children and recruiting them into orphanages even though they have parents.
Moreover, donating the hundreds or sometimes even thousands of dollars spent on a trip instead would be far more impactful. More often than not, these charities or communities need financial support; they don’t need an engineer to cook them food, they can do so themselves. It has been reported that every year around 2 billion dollars are spent on voluntourism, which is more than the GNI (gross national income) of the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo combined.
The intentions of companies promoting voluntourism opportunities are often perfectly camouflaged, and that is the very reason it is very dangerous. It is this very banner of altruism that has become a money magnet targeting students. These companies sell themselves for the experience of providing a world view and being a helping hand along the way. Unfortunately, many people fall into this trap every year despite their intentions being fundamentally kind. For others, it is a filler for their gap year, a tick off their bucket list or an achievement on their CV.
It is important to ask ourselves what we would want to gain from our participation in voluntourism. Do you want to escape your monotonous life and take on an adventure? Enhance your prospects of getting that UN job? Get some cool pictures for socials? Or do you really want to serve others? If your answer is the latter it is clear what your actions should be. Either donate the money you would spend on your trip or start where you are. As one often says, charity begins at home. So the next time you book your flight to a far-off destination, all geared up to save the world, think to yourself. Are your actions selfless or sabotaging?
