I’ve had this post in my queue for some time now, but have continually neglected it—partly because as the pace of things slowed down here in DC during August, the pace of my posts followed suit, but also because I began to rethink what I wanted to say. The post was prompted by an article from several weeks ago from the BBC: in an effort to give unemployed graduates something to do, the British government is paying 500 people under 24 to travel abroad and take part in projects “such as building schools”:
It comes as graduates face an increasingly tough job market. Forty-eight graduates are chasing every job on offer this year, according to a study by the Association of Graduate Recruiters.
The 10-week expeditions – to Borneo, India, Costa Rica and Nicaragua – will enable graduates to work on community and environmental volunteering projects in remote communities.
Reflecting on this story, here’s what I initially wrote, again, several weeks ago:
“It’s no surprise that I agree with one sentiment behind this initiative—that abroad experience is good prep for our careers, international and otherwise. But my main query to the organizers of said British government program would be: how well have you thought this through? Harkening back to our various debates of the merits of international volunteering, I think it’s fair to ask what the benefits of this program will be, beyond giving graduates in a rough economy something (worthwhile) to do. That is, how will the program benefit the communities in which these graduates will serve? Have the programs been fully fleshed out? Or will these 500 folks just be plopped into their host countries and given a hammer, with little consideration as to the local workers they may be displacing and the learning curve inherent in any development project that may make their efforts, while well-intentioned, potentially fruitless? The following comment from Wes Streeting, the National Union of Students president, doesn’t give me hope that much of this has been considered:
Funding opportunities for skills development is surely better than the soul destroying experience of sitting at home, watching Jeremy Kyle, on the dole.
While I have no idea who Jeremy Kyle is and am only moderately sure I know what ‘on the dole’ means, the sentiment that we might as well plop our youth down in poor places since they’ve got nothing better to do seems a bit ill conceived. Gaining valuable skills and career preparation by working/living abroad? Very nice. Giving no thought to the community you will be working in while gaining that experience? Not as much.”
For some reason, though, I was hesitant to push the publish button. I realized this was because I wasn’t sure I agreed with what I was saying. I thought back to my own volunteer experience in China, an experience I decided to plop myself down into, yes, partly because I wanted to learn Chinese and add another abroad experience to my resume and help a community, but also, I can admit, because it sounded a lot better than the alternative (which for me, at that time, was the soul destroying experience of working as a real estate sales associate for a grocery store corporate office). So how could I condemn people for doing what I had in fact done?
So: On the one hand, I do generally think it’s a bad idea for volunteers to be blindly plopped down where they may not end up accomplishing the good they hope to accomplish, or even end up harming locals by taking away jobs, etc. On the other hand, though, getting plopped down in a spot that you know very little about and being asked to do work of which you have very little experience can be incredibly rewarding, for both the volunteer and those in the local community. This belief comes from my personal experience: I showed up in the Yanbian region of China to teach English with zero knowledge regarding Yanbian, China, or how to teach English. Yet my struggles with language, regional culture, and how to be an effective teacher were an indelible learning experience and have benefited me enormously, personally and professionally. And I believe I ended up being an effective teacher (and even a role model) for my students, despite my initial struggles (I still keep in touch with several of them and they have commented how I was their first foreign teacher and our classes for them were formative in their study of English—I take great pride in comments like these).
The particular nature of the volunteer assignment, as well as the length of time spent in a place, can affect all of this, of course. Some assignments can be learned through on-the-job training and experience, especially given enough time (say, a year, as in my case: a TESOL-certified teacher may have been “better” out of the gate, but I think I eventually morphed into a quality teacher). Others require more specific training and skill and couldn’t be learned on the fly no matter how long you keep at it (if I tried to volunteer with one of the international environmental evaluation projects my friend Derek works on, I’d be horribly lost and would probably do more harm than good).
The conclusion is, per usual, that there’s no cut and dry answer. And while I tend to agree that good intentions aren’t always enough when it comes to a volunteer project, especially an international development one, I still heartily believe that arriving in place with everything to learn can be a formative experience for all involved.
Thank you for this post. These are ideas and questions I too often struggle with. I also share the feelings that:
- volunteering abroad can be a fabulous learning experience for the traveler, can inspire (some) people to step up and fill the challenging role they have been left to fill, and, for those who were exposed to bad models for development, can often inspire those people to eventually go out and learn how to help to do it better
- when, often times, volunteers are placed in the wrong place, in the wrong role, or with the wrong skills, they can displace local labor, be largely ineffective at aiding anyone besides themselves, and in the worst cases, cause more harm than good
I also agree with your last sentence: “And while I tend to agree that good intentions aren’t always enough when it comes to a volunteer project, especially an international development one, I still heartily believe that arriving in a place with everything to learn can be a formative experience for all involved.” but I would ask, is it the volunteers fault that the position or match was wrong or potentially harmful, or the person “selling” or marketing the volunteer position?
Both, of course, but I would put more of the onus for successful project development on the volunteer operator, NGO, or travel agent selling the experience (even if it is indeed a “volunteer” one), to the traveler who, to be honest, probably doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know.
The more we can educate individual travelers to stop demanding harmful trips (tours to orphanages, support for corrupt organizations, labor displacements, etc), then the more we can decrease the overall demand for such trips and hopefully improve what is being offered. But, to be honest, what young British person would turn down a chance to be paid by their government to go on an international learning adventure if they are not able to find another job and likely believe that they can “do good” where they are going? As such, I hope that the British government has indeed chosen their volunteer placements well (although I am just ask skeptical as you are based on the comments you quoted).
From going over and over these same thoughts and discussions countless time, the team here at PEPY (www.pepytours.com), led by one of our own volunteers Karina Kloos, set out to develop a Voluntourism Self-Check tool for operators in the industry or those looking to get involved in voluntourism, asking questions one might ask to consider the impact of the offering. Volunteer positions and voluntourism share a lot of overlap with these questions, so it might be something you are interested in looking at or sharing with others.
http://lessonsilearned.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/Self-CheckToolVoluntourism101.pdf
I appreciated how you opened the article by questioning whether it was fair to send 500 people out into the world to help with aid projects simply because it was better for them than sitting at home watching TV and taking handouts. I also appreciated how you asked whose best interest was really served by this program.
However, I strongly disagree with your assumption that plopping people down somewhere they don’t know and asking them to do something they don’t know how to do can be incredibly rewarding to them and the aid recipients. While I agree that is may be rewarding for them, I question how often it is really rewarding for the aid recipients. What statistics or research are you using to back up this theory? All you offer in the column is your own personal experience. Anecdotally, I know of several sites that received either Peace Corps or VSO (Volunteer Service Overseas) volunteers that have decided not to accept future volunteers.
While I’m glad you were able to muddle through and figure out how to be an effective teacher, your case may well be the exception and not the rule. English teachers often had the best experience out of all Peace Corps volunteers. Even though they may not have had formal training they were already fluent in English – a rare skill in many places, their goal was to make people understand their own language and culture – not to have to be successful in developing a grassroots project in another culture, and they had at least 12 years of experience as a student in the educational system they were modeling.
Other development projects had much more mixed results. Imagine someone showing up in your home town, not knowing the language or culture and trying to start a livelihoods program even though they had never run a small business before and their only real experience was being a customer. Or what about foreigners showing up to open an orphanage with no actual training or experience in social services and their only experience in child development was baby sitting as a teenager. Foreigners show up and do this all the time. Would you, as the recipient, feel that this was a rewarding and enriching experience? Or would you feel that you had to spend all your time helping the foreigner keep from really screwing things up and causing more harm than good. Granted, through these struggles you may personally develop a life long friendship with the foreigner, but was it really the best thing for your community.
I appreciate Daniela’s work in trying to develop a self-check tool to help evaluate these types of projects and propose guidelines as to how they could best work. Setting some professional standards is critical to ensuring that these programs are well designed and in the best interest of those we are trying to help. I urge you to be careful in what you recommend, just because something is a meaningful and formative experience for the volunteer does not mean it was the same for the people the volunteer was “helping”.
Good Intentions are Not Enough: http://informationincontext.typepad.com
Once again, the topics of international volunteering and voluntourism have elicited passionate responses! (Start at http://workingworldcareers.com/2009/05/24/intl-development-volunteering-dispelling-the-rosy-view-ctd/ and http://workingworldcareers.com/2009/07/13/beyond-good-intentions-more-on-international-volunteering/ for previous passionate discussions.)
Thanks to you both, Daniela and Saundra, for your thoughtful comments and takes on this subject. The question that I struggle with, especially with regard to this blog focusing on international career development, is: if someone wishes to volunteer for the purpose of both gaining experience for their international career and doing good in a community, how can they best find a program or opportunity that will benefit them in these ways, as well as benefit the community they are serving? How can they find a balance between “consummate development professional who knows exactly how to make a difference in X community or country” and “clueless, well-intentioned volunteer who ends up doing more harm than good”? I’m sure versions of both of these people exist somewhere, but it seems more likely that the majority of those doing development work abroad (whether paid or volunteer) fall somewhere in between—they’re neither absolutely certain of how to make a difference, nor are they constantly wreaking havoc with their general cluelessness. Thus my search for the middle ground…
I agree with Saundra that it seems as if Daniela’s self-check tool can aid in finding this middle ground, but other suggestions and ideas for potential international career seekers and volunteers would be much appreciated.
Thanks again for the great discussion,
Mark