Voluntourism

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TheGrinchSR
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Re: Voluntourism

Post by TheGrinchSR »

Volunteering can be a good thing. I spent 3 years volunteering in a retail operation for a national charity before I was old enough to get a "real" job (holidays and weekends), it was great experience when I went looking for work through college and uni. I also spent a year volunteering for a special needs school in the UK after college - it taught me that I definitely never, ever wanted to work in a school - the kids were awesome but I have serious admiration for anyone who can summon up the energy needed to handle a class of 30 kids of around the physical age of 12 and the mental age of 5... it's not me that's for sure. I also did some volunteer door-to-door sales work for a charitable magazine.

Nowadays I prefer to donate cash rather than my time. Mainly because my time is lucrative when spent on projects for clients and it enables a charitable organization to decide what they'd like to do without having to be constrained by my skillset (which is of approximately zero value to most developing nation's NGOs).
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Jamie_Lambo
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Re: Voluntourism

Post by Jamie_Lambo »

rick_o'shea wrote:Online tefls mean nothing. Do a course where you teach real students.

I'd like a bit more than $100 for 5 days in Sihanoukville, tbh.
of coarse, but thats what this Tefl internship offers regards the actual TEFL

and also thats what they are providing, a room for 5 days and lunch for 5 days...
$15 x 5 = $75 (for room for 5 days)
$3 x 5 = $15 (for lunch for 5 days)

thats still less than $100, i was going off from what the money you give them would provide

me i'd spend $100 just on alcohol in a night lol
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CEOCambodiaNews
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Re: Voluntourism

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

The business of voluntourism: do western do-gooders actually do harm?
A holiday helping out in an orphanage can be a rewarding experience. But voluntourism supports a system that is breaking up families
13 September 2018
by Tina Rosenberg

Voluntourism may be fuelled by noble feelings, but it is built on perverse economics. Many organisations offer volunteers the chance to dig wells, build schools and do other construction projects in poor villages. It’s easy to understand why it’s done this way: if a charity hired locals for its unskilled work, it would be spending money. If it uses volunteers who pay to be there, it’s raising money.

But the last thing a Guatemalan highland village needs is imported unskilled labour. People are desperate for jobs. Public works serve the community better and last longer when locals do them. Besides, long-term change happens when people can solve their own problems, rather than having things done for them.

“There are few things more cringeworthy than watching 20 British schoolgirls trying to build a well under the scalding Nepalese heat,” one Durham University student wrote about her trip to an orphanage. Villagers, wary of offending their visitors, say nothing. An American volunteer in Tanzania recalled: “We … were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure.”
Long read: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/s ... ly-do-harm
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Anchor Moy
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Re: Voluntourism

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NatashaRussell
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Re: Voluntourism

Post by NatashaRussell »

Hello all,

I am a final year Geography student from Ulster University in Northern Ireland.
I am currently writing my dissertation on voluntourism and why people take part in this type of travel and looking into their opinions and experiences. If you know anyone who has taken part in a voluntourism project, or you yourself have done so, would you mind contacting me and simply answering a few questions to help me out.
Please contact me via my email address, [email protected]

Thank you for your time, Natasha
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newkidontheblock
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Re: Voluntourism

Post by newkidontheblock »

NatashaRussell wrote:I am a final year Geography student from Ulster University in Northern Ireland.
What’s a geography student? Is that some kind of major? What kind of future job requires a geography major?

Not wanting to be rude, but I really don’t know.

When I went to University, there was no geography student.

Of course I’m not a millennial and behind the times.
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Duncan
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Re: Voluntourism

Post by Duncan »

newkidontheblock wrote: Wed Jan 23, 2019 5:35 pm
NatashaRussell wrote:I am a final year Geography student from Ulster University in Northern Ireland.
What’s a geography student? Is that some kind of major? What kind of future job requires a geography major?

Not wanting to be rude, but I really don’t know.

When I went to University, there was no geography student.

Of course I’m not a millennial and behind the times.

I also dont want to be rude, but if you had studied geography you would now be in China where you were meant to be.
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RatanakBat
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Re: Voluntourism

Post by RatanakBat »

vladimir wrote: Thu Jul 02, 2015 4:47 pm I personally think the furthest anyone should go with it is paying one's own way.

Like Ellis?
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atst
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Re: Voluntourism

Post by atst »

Are Sexpats good tourist as 100% of the money they spend on girls goes to the local community unlike the money given to NGO etc after administration cost
Just a thought
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Re: Voluntourism

Post by CEOCambodiaNews »

Cambodia's Orphan Business: The Dark Side of 'Voluntourism'
Tourists volunteering in Cambodian orphanages may be unwittingly fuelling an industry that exploits children for profit.
15 Sep 2019
After emerging from more than two decades of war in the 1990s, Cambodia has relied heavily on tourism to rebuild its economy.

It is one of the top destinations for young travellers, many of whom sign up with global volunteering companies.

'Voluntourists', however, may be unwittingly fuelling the exploitation of children in poorly regulated orphanages.

Reports of child neglect and appalling living conditions, as well as stories of orphanage directors embezzling donor money, have emerged.
Companies that organise volunteers are also accused of exploiting tourists and children for profit.

In 2012, reporter Juliana Ruhfus travelled to Phnom Penh to investigate. She spoke to children, volunteers and orphanage staff, as well as activists working to stem child abuse in the country. She also went undercover as a volunteer to understand just how little protection children had in a failing orphanage.

Seven years on, Ruhfus reflects on what she discovered there, beginning with why so many children end up in orphanages in the first place.

"The vast majority of the children in these so-called 'orphanages' actually do have parents," she says. "There are people who go around and who effectively recruit these children. They say to the parents that the children are going to get a great education, that they'll be in touch with lots of Westerners, and the parents allow these recruiters to take the children and then they get put into these 'orphanages', and ... some of these orphanages are a money-making machine."

She says that many of the children who grow up away from family, looked after by caregivers and volunteers who come and go, can be traumatised.

"A lot of the children are really damaged. They are damaged firstly because they are being taken away from their parents, and then secondly a lot of them ... have what is called an attachment disorder. So that they continuously get attached to a new person; a new volunteer plays with them, showers them with affection, and then leaves very quickly."

For Ruhfus, posing as a volunteer and requesting to have a day out with some of the children was the most difficult part of covering the story. Without any vetting process, she and her team were allowed to pick any children they wanted and walk out with them. While Ruhfus had a social worker with her for her and the children's protection, she was shocked by how little oversight they had.

"It was extraordinary because actually, Cambodia is a country that has a well-known problem with child abuse, especially with paedophilia," she says. "So the idea that we could take these children out without any supervision was quite astounding, and that is really the thing that hit me. I was so focused on 'Will this happen, can we take the kids out' that when we finally sat with these kids in the car it was actually quite emotional, because we had this sense, we were driving off with them in a car, and we could have done absolutely anything to these kids."
https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/re ... 00225.html
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