How can volunteering abroad really be useful

A look at a government-funded programme and a chat on voluntourism

It has been just over 3 years since I returned home from Bangladesh. I spent 3 months volunteering through UK charity VSO on their International Citizenship Service (ICS) just after finishing university. ICS is a volunteering programme that allows young UK volunteers to spend 12 weeks in a developing country working to affect positive change. Volunteers raise £800 and all other costs are covered. The premise is that volunteers spend time working to tackle social issues in the host country while they themselves develop their skill-set and gain a better understanding of international development.

The programme seemingly ticks all the boxes for young people wanting to go out and see the world and also provide relief and assistance to those in developing countries. I had a relatively good time in Bangladesh. I met some incredible people both from Bangladesh and from the UK and I experienced an entirely different way of life and way of thinking. However, personally I don’t believe the programme really took on a full appreciation for how to support any real sustainable development and seemed a little misguided which then draws into question the massive expense of the programme and highlights possible detrimental effects in the host countries.In short, it seemed to a be a brief cultural exchange trip where I benefited ten-fold over communities that we were working with.

As I’ve said, the programme isn’t just about sustainable development; the volunteer’s personal benefit is at the core of its aims too. Funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), the programme is meant to achieve the following:
1. Poverty reduction and sustainable development in the host country
2. Support volunteers personal and social development
3. Build volunteers skills to better understand international development

These 3 aims seem to be equally weighted and are all assessed through evaluations of the programme.

Our programme was interesting and focused on issues I genuinely cared about. We organised some community events to stimulate discussion around child marriage, a hugely persistent problem across the country where often girls as young as 10 are forced to stop school and are married off by their families. Also, we organised a social event between a local school and a school for children with learning disabilities to reduce stigma and increase visibility of those with a disability, a significantly marginalised group in Bangladesh. We had also begun organising tailoring training for local women and young people to increase employability- although this training never took place. I know of other groups who organised a vaccination event for cattle and another who organised an event for school children to learn about oral hygiene. The reasoning behind these events was sound but the potential for any lasting change wasn’t so clear. In fairness, a best case scenario was that local viewpoints on important issues may have been challenged or changed which is a significant first stepping stone in making progress.

As a full disclosure and leaving out the hairier details, our project in Bangladesh came to a terminal halt about 8 weeks into the programme. Due to security issues in the country at the time and a less that receptive local police force, we were forced to abandon our work and return to Dhaka for the remaining few weeks of our project. Volunteer presence in those communities was reduced from a planned 1 year to just 2 short months.
From what now must sound like a pretty biased viewpoint on this, I’ll share a bit about the funding of the programme and its evaluation.

I can only comment on my own experience and take into account the conclusions from the evaluation report; perhaps in other areas the programme runs very successfully. But I think it’s clear that this is a vast amount of money being funneled into this programme and it raises the question whether the money could be better sent overseas in a different way. Additionally, programmes which only benefit the ‘volunteer’ are essentially voluntourism programmes.

Talking about voluntourism is important. It is a new trend and term coined in the last decade or so where ‘volunteers’ travel to under-developed countries to give back while gaining an opportunity to travel, see a new country and usually spend some time as more of a holiday-maker. While usually well-intended, such volunteers rarely do much good at all due to their lack of understanding of social, political and economic issues and no means to do anything about it anyway. Often, these volunteers come with the mentality that coming from a developed country means they know better how things should be done but it goes without saying that resolving ingrained issues in a country is never as simple as it seems because if it were, national people would have solved those problems long ago.* Issues lie in how these volunteers are often involved only for a short period of time and when they are in the host country they carry out trivial tasks like teaching English or assisting in an orphanage.

You can see how providing 20 hours hands-on volunteering time in an orphanage is not giving any long-term benefit, but perhaps providing the means for the orphanage to support itself, for instance, through owning a chicken coop, and thereby providing food and a resource to be sold, would. These volunteers seem to miss the mark on what people living in poverty really need to progress and bring themselves forward. Moreover, such superficial involvement can fuel prejudices associated with the West and spur on the notion that volunteers can’t be truly relied on.

I am part of another organisation working in Zambia and have visited Lusaka 3 times with them. I have seen how long it has taken to build trust and a strong relationship with our partners there and also noted the poor reflection on good organisations that voluntourism has left. Moreover, I gained a better understanding of how meaningful change can be brought about, which is what you should come away knowing after volunteering. Year-on-year of returning to Zambia, I was able to physically see where our money was going or how our projects were benefiting local people. Real benefit is meeting the several hundred children attending a school we have been funding. Real benefit is meeting a former street child who grew up within one of our projects who just graduated as a teacher. Real benefit is seeing an orphanage move toward self-sufficiency through income-generating projects such as a fish farm, vegetable patch, chicken coop and water tower. The importance of developing strong working relationships with national people who know the ins and outs of local issues can not be overstated and allowing those people to direct local development and change in-line with the countries own culture and practices forms the backbone of successful international development.

While I have used VSO as an example here, the charity itself has, and continues to do, some amazing work all over the world. If you want to volunteer overseas, it is so important that you do your research and think about why you want to do it. It seems that ICS provides an opportunity to visit a new country, work with non-governmental organisations, experience a different culture and gain some insight into international development which are valuable personal gains. However, when undertaking something like this is it important to be able to see what the people in the host country are gaining from your involvement. I am by no means saying to disregard this programme but to look into it for yourself and consider other options. Further, if you’re set on volunteering abroad you should also look to involve yourself in some projects closer to home and work to tackle social issues in your own society.

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