Congratulations! If you are a part of missions this summer, you have been blessed with an incredible opportunity to serve others abroad, even if it is just a few weeks. You will meet wonderful people and travel to new places, all while making an impact on the people that you are serving.
I recently came across a term that I was unfamiliar with—voluntourism. To summarize, voluntourism is the rising trend of spending short amounts of time abroad where you do volunteer your time, but the time is also spent as a way to travel.
Some people are skeptical of the overall effectiveness of this type of volunteering. I read a recent article about how these short trips take away jobs from locals, how they are used only to gain college credits or to boost resumes—in short, they exploit locals. These trips sponsor corporations rather than impoverished communities and they commercialize missions and promote a selfish attitude in volunteers by means of social media.
However, if done correctly, these missions are still an effective means of volunteering your time. Both women and men who served for short periods of time would probably disagree with the assumption that they did more harm than good.
Work still needs to be done. Third world countries need to know that they are not forgotten—to know that they are worth people traveling vast distances just to spend a week with them. Love has no time limit, but to be more specific, the love of Christ knows no time limit. His love can work just as strong in a one-week trip as it could in a one-year expedition.
With this in mind, I hope that your motivations are in the right place—that this trip is not just for attention, a resume boost or to impress people with your volunteering spirit.
Don’t use this time to look down on people less fortunate than you or even to use people as a reassurance on how blessed your life is. It is not a time to perpetuate western ideals of different cultures on social media. That's not to say, don’t post pictures at all, but rather, don’t take all your pictures just to see if you can get a good one to post.
Don’t use this opportunity to boost your social life, rather let this opportunity use you to make a difference in another person’s life. Understand that your presence on this trip is not the end-all-be-all. When you leave, most of the conditions will stay the same. However, use that knowledge to stay connected and make donations, or to commit more of your time in the future.
Even short trips have the ability to change a person’s life. Open your mind as you travel and interact with people so that you may also learn.
