Visiting somewhere outside of your home, all while helping someone sounds like the perfect trip doesn't it? Imagine how many Instagram likes and comments you can get with your photos of you and a "poor" child that you are saving. All of your friends and family swooning over what a selfless person you are, and you are the hero of this story. This is a common phenomenon as to why people choose to go on service trips. Trips can often be advertised as a way to make yourself feel good about the work you have chosen to do, but not without the perfect view.
Often times these types of trips will hurt the community it is supposed to be helping. Many organizations do not communicate with the community at all but thrust some shiny new building in the center of their homes. These buildings are either poorly made or taking away business from locals who are struggling to find jobs in the first place. Handing out things like this teaches the people to be beggars, not workers, because this is how they are getting by.
Voluntourism creates a cycle in which people depend on foreigners dropping shoes off in their village to get by, but the problems with these types of donations make them so counteractive. Handouts provide competition for local businesses. Instead help to fund local entrepreneurs or employ them, so they don't go out of business and go back into the vicious cycle of poverty. Also, when unskilled workers are led by other unskilled workers in building walls, they will likely fall down. This wastes resources that could have been donated to responsible organizations.
Community involvement is the key to contributing in making a better standard of living for others. Employ community members and provide them with less expensive necessities, so the breadwinners will not feel insufficient because they can't afford to provide for their families. Providing more affordable goods provides people with pride in buying their own goods.
The most important statement I would like to make is that we are not the heroes in this story. We are sidekicks. We are not saving them; we are going to provide opportunity, and the rest is up to them. Volunteers can only provide a pathway to a safer life, but we cannot guide them there. Doing something outside of yourself does not make you better, it makes you human.
I highly encourage service trips and volunteer work, but we need to remember why this is important. We need to recognize things that many say with good intentions, but are counter productive. Saying, "they are poor, but so happy" implies that money is the only happiness, and that they are poor. Our standards of poor are so much different than others. Saying "these are my adopted children" implies that their parents are doing a poor job, and these children are just materials for your own good. Volunteer work is the most amazing thing to get involved in, but I encourage all of you to educate yourselves before you take that Instagram photo.
