Writing about the negatives of voluntourism is not original. A wealth of online articles tackles the subject, like this one from the VERVE collective that details the harm it causes, this Quartz piece introducing an anti-white-savior checklist, and even a scientific paper analyzing how social media propagates voluntourism. This site tries not to tread ground that others have already covered, but voluntourism is so against the Chasing the Real World principles that it feels necessary to share the ideas here.
I’ll also try to take a more nuanced approach than usual, into why this happens, why it is quite harmful, and what you can do instead. The bottom line is: don’t do it, don’t let your friends and loved ones do it. Don’t spend time and money, and feed into a bad system, ultimately to learn a depressing lesson about the way the world works. Learn that lesson by reading this. Here we go.
What voluntourism is and where it comes from
Not all volunteering is voluntourism. To me, voluntourism means the volunteer (1) is paying for the experience, (2) has no training or skill in the activity they are doing, (3) stays for a short time, (4) comes from a richer country/community and goes to a poorer country/community. Also, the structure of the volunteering is highly organized and commodified. You know it when you see it; and it is still more common than you probably think.
Voluntourism is deeply rooted in colonialism. That phrase has achieved meaningless buzzword status by now, but let’s get specific. The whole purpose of colonialism was and is extraction, of resources, human bodies, human talent, the entire potential of nations. Colonizers also have a kind of love for those they colonize, bringing religion, medicine, education, and infrastructure. Colonizers give these “gifts” in their own image and worldview and convenience. The religion is force-fed; the medicine woefully under-funded; the education focused on the colonizers’ history and economy; and the infrastructure built to get resources out of the country. The colonizers’ kind of love is deeply condescending, like the way a person loves their dog, and racism is obviously a huge part of it.
Voluntourism flows logically from this condescending love. People in richer countries worry about people in poorer countries, and want to help. Those who decided to help through voluntourism never consider that they might not be able to help just by showing up, though. They believe that their privileges have made them such great people that they can make a positive impact just by being themselves. They also simply get tricked by social media and scammed by the people who set up the voluntourism trips.
I don’t think voluntourism is an evil plot to shame and wound the Global South. It comes from good but ignorant intentions, and the awful history and inequality that underpin the world order. I would argue some evil, though, in the people who makes these trips happen and profit from them, on both ends.
Why voluntourism actively hurts the world
Let’s take an example. An agency goes to US high schools and advertises a Kenya volunteering trip. They sign up a bunch of wealthy American 17-year-olds whose families can afford a $2000 trip. The agency chooses Kenya because it has direct flights from New York, great tourist sites, plenty of English speakers, and a thriving voluntourism industry.
The group heads to some village not far from Nairobi and begins their two volunteering activities: building a school and supporting at a local orphanage. None of the high-schoolers know how to build buildings or provide nuanced support to orphaned children. Local workers fix their construction work each night to avoid compounded mistakes. They spend two weeks there, taking organized sightseeing trips on the weekends.
When the Americans leave with great fanfare and giving of thanks, the tally of winners looks like this:
- The American organizing agency, which made a profit
- A few local power brokers in the village who got a good cut of the profits to provide access
- The agency’s point of contact in Nairobi, who made money
And now the losers:
- The orphaned children, who may have been happier for a few weeks but now have to deal with abandonment
- Local workers in the village who made less money on the school’s construction than they would have otherwise, because the voluntourism funneled the profit to a few local power brokers
- The American students, who used the experience to get into college and get social media likes, but eventually realized the error of their ways and now have to live with that; or didn’t realize, and now have a deeply skewed worldview and white savior complex
Wait! There are more losers. This is only one example trip, but voluntourism is a deeply commodified industry with trips running constantly. The industry itself is the only winner long-term. Imagine this happening again and again, building cycles that feed themselves. When we consider the whole industry, we add on to the losers:
- The orphaned kids, who now have to deal with repeated cycles of abandonment
- The village, whose leaders now realize they can make more money by hosting voluntourists than anything else, so neglect sustainably running the village; and whose construction workers now make less
- Poor people in Kenya, who need support from effective charities that can’t get enough funding because all the money goes to voluntourism
- The entire nation of Kenya, which has to suffer this collective condescension repeatedly
- The entire nation of America, which is wasting massive amounts of well-intentioned money that could go to an actually helpful cause; and also privileging voluntourism on social media, college admissions, dating, etc. in a way that feeds the cycle; and probably getting more racist as a result
In summary, the only people who gain from voluntourism are already rich and powerful. The people the voluntourists want to help, and the voluntourists themselves, and broader society, lose.
What you and your friends can do instead
This is terrible, right? If we do not become voluntourists, how can we help poor people in the Global South? How can we learn the lessons that we could learn by voluntouring- about charity, cross-cultural connection, and positive attitudes in the face of hardship? And how can we go have an awesome tourist trip in Kenya that will also get us into college?
The good news is that you can achieve the same goals by taking different actions. This list is short because it is simple. You just do not need to be a voluntourist to get these feelings and experience. Here’s a rundown:
- Helping improve the lives of poor people and feeling satisfaction: Donate to charities that are proven to effectively make the most positive change for the least money. GiveWell is the best place to learn about these. Or, study and train a useful skill for a long time, then go volunteer providing that skill (but watch out for agencies, tricks, and scammers)! Volunteer locally.
- Learning firsthand lessons about the world: This is what intense, all-in independent travel is all about. Read Chasing the Real World for more information.
- Having an awesome tourist trip that also gets you into college/gets you dates/gets you social media points: Just go be a tourist, but do it intentionally, meaningfully, and intensely. You might realize that this still doesn’t get you dates, and the likes are meaningless, but those are good lessons. As for the college part, volunteering locally in a less fraught context should work just as well.
I do not think there are any good voluntourism opportunities. Unfortunately, the world is too complicated and too real for this kind of naïve jetting-in to be helpful. And there is no shortage of untrained people to do basic work. That doesn’t mean you can’t contribute to a better world. Just be smart about it.