Ethical Travel And Volunteering: Tourism Concern

No Comments | August 18th, 2007 | Trackback

If you’re a traveler with a conscience, you’ve probable wondered about the impact of your holiday or volunteer trip.

Tourism Concern - a UK-based organization with a mission to “ensure that tourism always benefits local communities”- is a good place to start. Its campaigns address issues relevant to those with an interest in volunteering abroad and include fair trade, community-based tourism, and tourism and human rights (for example, campaigns concerning travel to Burma). Most practical tips seem to be available via books that you order.

They maintain an ethical tour operators group; members acknowledge that while most tourist organizations – potentially including themselves – do not meet all of Tourism Concern’s standards for fair trade and sustainability, they at least have a high-level commitment to TC’s goals and can demonstrate measurable results in the communities they operate in.

In the area of voluntourism there is a section on international volunteering which will be of particular interest. They say:

“International volunteering can be a wonderful way to explore another country, meet new people, learn new things and have new adventures….Tourism Concern’s partners, particularly those in overseas destinations, have stated that development aid should focus on the needs of local people rather than those of the tourists. Problems arise when volunteer tourism tries to be a form of short-term development.”

They also recently hosted a debate on the topic “Are gap years the new colonialism?” While this of course sounds quite extreme, the argument is that “volunteer tourism markets itself to young people using negative stereotypes of the global south which perpetuates colonialism.”

In a recent Time article, Tourism Concern mentioned that they are coming up with a code of ethical conduct for tour operators, which could well prove to be a good thing. It makes sense to me to distinguish voluntourism from development or aid; I also think serious critical though about voluntourism is the best way to improve it. But – sometimes this argument raises more questions than it answers.

Would voluntourism be acceptable if it did not attempt to address development goals? Or is it just not an effective form of aid? I find it hard to blanance “it shouldn’t be confused with development” and “it should take into account the needs of the local community.” And as I mentioned at Voluntourism.org, I wonder how real aid projects measure up by these standards – do they in fact address local needs and the long-term well-being of the community appropriately, and if not, does that change the way we look at voluntourism? What if the general way aid is approached is faulty, and voluntourism gives people a chance to see that? Could the net effect of voluntourism be positive once the full picture is taken into account?

While I think it’s more than obvious that two week volunteer trip cannot and should not replace real aid or development projects, I think there is very often an assumption that good, easy solutions exist and would somehow happen otherwise – and this assumption is worth examining.