"Voluntourism" - a cause for concern?

Volunteering, or touring for fun? The trend of volunteering overseas is now a hot, new holiday option. With NY's upcoming OSLE to Chiang Mai, Wu Xiaoyu considers the issue of "voluntourism".

I have a classmate who is going for the Overseas Service Learning Expedition (OSLE) this coming break. He has been very busy running about organizing little fund raisers aimed at helping out the less privileged in Chiang Rai, Thailand. But hearing him talk about it, I have to wonder about the motivation some people have towards taking such overseas volunteering opportunities.

I am not alone in my amazement at how these groups of "voluntourists" go about their business. The Straits Times and TIME have both written on this matter: of rich people going to poor places to "do good". This refreshed my memory of a similar overseas service trip my Secondary school organized a few years back. In fact, the Nanyang OSLE group is going to the same place -- Chiang Rai.

With the growing popularity of such activities (popular travel website -- http://www.travelocity.com/ reported that there will be two times the people going for such trips this year compared to 2006), I have to question whether they are just another fragment of our pop-culture psyche, like eating at MacDonald's or sporting huge messenger sling bags without actually being a bike messenger. Just how effective such trips are is anyone's guess.

I wonder whether we gain more from them as compared to them gaining from us. Think about it, after such a trip, we have a bit of a morale uplift though accomplishing a task -- for example building a toilet or a mud hut. We also have albums and albums of photos of us cuddling cute little skinny kids, all smiling and cheerful. Then there are the inevitable mentions of such an experience during future job interviews or university entrance resumes. Some people go on such a trip and in between slaving with hoes in their hands and blisters on their feet; they find God and thus reaffirm their beliefs in their faiths. At the end, we can also boast of having had a "wonderful cultural experience".

That's what we get. How about those we are supposed to help? Let's be objective here and consider their net possible gain.

For starters, the ones going for such trips often engage in tough menial labor or some task we think is "meaningful", "educational" or somehow "empowering". I introduced my Secondary school's OCIP team at the start of this article. Some of them built a bit of road and others taught the locals basic English, among other things. A quick check on Google will tell you that the time, technical expertise and financial muscle needed to pull such lofty goals off at an appreciable and sustainable scale are considerable factors to think about.

Let's look at my Secondary school's OCIP:

How long did the guys have?

About a week, including one entire day spent getting new togs for their wardrobes and souvenirs for friends.

What about money?

The meager bit of cash they raised, if spent on raw materials for the road building project, could not buy enough of anything to even get scale discounts.

Skills and expertise?

The team consisted of a bunch of teenagers still struggling with their own English who were nevertheless teaching the language to others. In the time they spent, the guys built just enough road to get from our school's basketball court to the tennis court.

When I asked an old friend who went for the trip how she felt about teaching the kids English, she replied that she thought she had really made a difference to them.

But could "voluntourists" really change anything? When I pressed for whether she objectively knew of the situation of the aid-recipients before they went there (via extended relationships with residents of the village, not hear-say) and of the situation after they left (via close monitoring of their well-being by frequent correspondence), she was at a loss for words.

And it's not like she's an uncaring person. I have known her for years and can vouch that she's a really considerate and intelligent young woman who deeply cares about the people around her. But it's the short-term nature of "voluntourism" that her involvement has been so temporal.

No before, no after,no comparison. Even an ad for a slimming pill is more objective in this respect. So has anything changed? We can only believe so. But objectively, we can never tell.

From my observations, we can learn several things. If we set the tasks too challenging, volunteers regardless of motivation will have a hard time doing a good job, because they simply do not have the skills. If we set them too easy, then what is the point of sending them over when the locals can gain much greater economic benefits by doing it themselves? And the "changes" we make are mostly just nice little delusions we create for ourselves as some kind of moral justification for the time and money spent on our holiday in the slums.

Why not do charity at a local level instead? Why not support reputable international charity organizations with generous donations instead? Why do we have to generate so much waste of resources when our world is facing a climate crisis which we can help remedy by volunteering at home? Yes, in Singapore. No 4-digit cost margins, no long haul budget flights, no time wasted on shopping sprees after we are done "helping people".

Why should we subject ourselves to the hypocrisy of the rich -- thinking that just because we are richer, more developed and better endowed than somebody else means that we have something to teach them?

Please do not mistake my cynicism of "voluntourism" for a lack of sympathy for other people. I am not criticizing the sacrifices genuine volunteers have made in doing good.

I was a volunteer before, in the Boys' Brigade in my secondary school days. This uniformed youth group does a lot of good work filling up the tremendous volunteer deficit here in Singapore. I have learnt over the years the value of volunteering and helping out in the community.

I value those volunteers who have consistently shown that they have a concern for the community around them. I have a marked respect for people with specific technical skills including doctors and nurses and psychologists who contribute in disaster relief operations. I feel small when I hear of people who have sacrificed their entire futures for the sake of being able to help the less fortunate. Such behavior is proof of the positive side of our humanity.

Only thing is, this group of people does not include "voluntourists" like the troop of OCIP participants from my past.

Don't be a "voluntourist"! If we are genuine in our desire to help others, there are concrete things we can do:

- Volunteers must have the ability to really contribute to the host community, hence we must have objective prerequisite qualifications; teachers should have certification from a recognized institution; builders should have actually built something before.

- We must have the welfare of the people in mind, hence we should not engage in frills such as day-long shopping trips before departure, as the time and money could be better spent improving the lives of the aid-receipients.

- There must be objective measurements of improvement; hence a valid, comparison must be made showing the contrast between "before" and "after" scenarios.

- Volunteers should always bear in mind that they are in it for the long run.

Volunteers who see only the superficial and subjective, who do not understand the realities of the world, just indulge their delusions of doing good while possibly causing harm instead. If we truly wish to help, we have to be strict with ourselves and beware of just filling up our egos. If we behave like a typical "voluntourist", then the true spirit of volunteering and helping a fellow human being has been lost in selfish intent disguised as altruism.

That is not very nice, is it?

By Wu Xiaoyu