The Volunteer Logue recently featured a guest piece on the downside of voluntourism; on the whole, I think author Steve Jackson makes a number of valuable points – many of which I agree with. It is a topic, however, that I have a lot of thoughts on and in short, I don’t believe that there is an answer which can be put in black and white terms. Note that I don’t intend to frame my “disagreement” here as with Steve – who was kind enough to write three posts on this topic for the site – himself, or his post, but rather at the idea that “voluntourism” or volunteer vacations or short term volunteering is clearly a bad thing.

To start with, I think a variety of situations can be considered voluntourism, and reality is just complicated. Are mission trips different in an important way from volunteer vacations? Is a profit-making company that has a local partner and provides some financial support “better than” a non-profit that organizes its own projects utilizing local knowledge? What about a local organization that has a small monthly fee for short-term volunteers? I think most people can agree that some projects are clearly ineffective, or have obviously negative consequences, but there isn’t a simple way to categorize these things, and to some extent, speaking in general terms implies there is.

Paying an organization for travel services and to participate in some kind of “volunteer project” does not necessarily mean having a negative impact. Staying a long time and teaching someone else to do what you do does not necessarily mean the work will be effective. This may be the case sometimes, maybe even often, but I think a lot of situations fall somewhere in between the two extremes. It is not always clear cut.

It’s also my experience that those who think critically about these issues tend to be people who have actually been involved in the field of volunteering somehow, and, to be frank, not those who stay home and write checks. Money is often helpful, but people’s overall knowledge and critical thinking about this kind of work is integral to getting that money to where it can do good.

The sustainability of volunteer work also came up, and this is not a small point, but whether work is sustainable or even effective at all is a question for aid work in general, and is hardly limited to short-term volunteers. Many with a professional interest and advanced qualifications in the field of development meaningfully apply that question to the work of well-respected international organizations. I don’t mean to minimize the importance of a sustainable solution, but I think there are a number of level at which impact can be assessed and interpreted, and I don’t know that volunteer vacations merit the harshest criticism on this level.

Sometimes a solution that addresses the root problem doesn’t incorporate foreign volunteers at all, which brings up another issue in my mind… (That’s right, there’s more.)