A major part of being human is trying to discern meaning in our lives, and for a lot of young people that means changing the world and making a difference in order to create a greater purpose for themselves. Young Millenials, like myself, have hope and excitement towards the betterment of our world. We are becoming more and more aware of our impact everyday. We want to explore and understand every facet of our world. We want to help anyone and everyone we can and on the grandest scale possible. While these are all wonderful qualities for a generation to have they have led to an increase in “voluntourism,” which combines the words volunteer and tourism to describe how people have started to travel in a way that allows them to see the world and help local communities at the same time. It may appear great to have more people eager to help make the world a better place, but upon looking closer, it’s clear that voluntourism is really just an industry built around making first-world people feel good about themselves and not truly helping those in need. So here are some things to think about before you book that volunteer trip in Ghana, or India or Cambodia or wherever.

Why are you really doing this?

Most people going on voluntour trips do it because they want to see a new piece of the world without feeling like your average-Joe tourist. They want their time to be valuable and well spent by “doing good.” They want to help people, but it’s usually for the sake of making oneself feel good and not truly for the sake of the ones in need of help. I’m sure most voluntourists truly have good intentions, but these trips quickly turn into Instagram opportunities of photos with exotic scenery and locals you barely know and implications of “Look at the Good Samaritan I am everyone!” It’s used as a resume builder, or a cheaper way to travel. Are you doing this because you deeply believe you’re doing good in another persons life, or are you doing it because you want to feel important and noble.

Are you truly doing any good? Or worse, are you possibly even harming a community?

Voluntourists organizations know very well the desire people have to be “Good Samaritans” and they feed off of that to make money. Therefore, they center their organization on you – the voluntourist – and not the people that actually need help. One woman reflected on her voluntourism experience in Tanzania trying to build a library;

“Our mission while at the orphanage was to build a library. Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students 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 ou r failure.”

Her experience is a prime example of voluntourism being built for the voluntourist and really not helping the community at all. Arguably, even hurting the community because men then spent their nights working to fix it rather than getting any sleep themselves. Voluntourism can do a lot more harm than just losing a little sleep. Orphanages in Nepal have been created to cater to Voluntourists. In order to satisfy the demand for voluntourism, organizations have taken children from perfectly loving homes and placed them in dirty, overcrowded orphanages for first world people to “help.” Worse conditions for the children means more business for the organization because they get more pity. It’s really terrible.

How are you viewing these people in need?

Most organizations campaign by making you feel as much pity as possible for these “poor third world citizens.” Their marketing and advertisements completely exoticize the people they want to help. It’s degrading. It takes away these peoples’ dignity. You may live in a four-bedroom house with two bathrooms and not a small hut, but that doesn’t mean you’re qualified to help someone you really don’t know anything about. You’re not better than them; you’ve just had different opportunities. You’re not going to be able to go into these communities and “save them.” If you’re going, you need to let them tell you what they need, not what you think they need. You’re not their leader and most of the time you are not qualified to tell them what’s best for them.

This video does an amusing job of illustrating the belittling ways we treat people in third world countries. So before you go, ask yourself if you are going on a trip that will allow you to treat these people in need like equal humans? Or are you going in with a “saviorist” approach?

A lot of people sign up for these trips blindly and ignorant to the true impacts it may have. Voluntourism can be really fun and a great idea when done properly, so please please please do your research on any organization that you may want to go across the world with. Make sure you’re giving your true intentions thought and treating the people with dignity and respect. If you’ve done all that, then enjoy your trip!