Flipping Voluntourism
I previously returned from an Alternative Service Break trip to San Juan La Laguna, Guatemala, where I served as the staff advisor. The community we worked with is a rural community that sits on Lake Atitlan, a popular tourist destination in the highlands of Guatemala. The trip encompassed a variety of activities including service projects, immersive cultural exploration, tourism, and education. I have been reflecting on the odd blending of voluntourism and alternative breaks in this trip. It has provided me new perspectives on how to address the power dynamics of international service while providing a meaningful experience to students and develop genuine service relationships with the community.
Difference between Voluntourism and Alternative Breaks
Voluntourism
This growing travel trend encourages people going abroad to travel and explore while also engaging in various short-term service projects in various communities. This new activity has resulted in skepticism from community service-learning professionals as to what the impacts are of these volunteers and what sort of harm is being caused. These trips are especially popular among college students who travel to participate in medical clinics or orphanages with varying levels of prior skills. Further, as Carrie Kahn wrote in this NPR Article, some are asking questions such as “are they [host communities] simply a means to an end to a student’s learning objective, to someone’s desire to have fun on vacation and learn something?” These are questions we need to address.
A popular Onion parody titled 6-Day Visit to Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman’s Facebook Profile Picture hangs in my office, mocking these experiences. However, a simple search of Huffington Post brings up all too serious articles such as: Extreme Voluntourism: A Transatlantic Challenge with a Cause, How to Save Lives when you Travel, and New Social Impact Cruise aims to do Voluntourism Right. Spoiler Alert: Voluntourism is not done right, lives are not really saved, and the cause is generally simple charity rather than social change work.
Alternative Breaks
Alternative Breaks on the other hand are developed, specifically, with reciprocal service in mind. A movement since 1991, Alternative Breaks are designed with direct service as a cornerstone of the student’s experience. Break Away’s 8 Components of a Quality Alternative Break highlight key components to make a successful Alternative Break trip, a stark contrast to the model of voluntourism that does not emphasize skill training, education, direct service, or reflection of experiences
However, as someone who is critical, I cannot say that these intentional trips are always more beneficial than voluntourism. Major power dynamics are present, where a group from the US represents power, money, and resources to impoverished developing countries. Otherizing, or the process of looking at community members as different, are ever present in these trips. One woman writes about her experience doing voluntourism in #InstagrammingAfrica where she articulates issues of voluntourism and social media impact. This article could just as easily been written about any international alternative break experience. This articulates that voluntourism is ultimately about the fulfillment of the volunteers themselves, not necessarily what they bring to the communities they visit.
Flipping the Model
The average volunteer may not be critical of their service, and educators are often too cynical and critical about our approaches to working with the community. If we pause for a moment and recognize the good intentions in voluntourism and that while alternative breaks can fall short, they are designed in an intentional manner, we can begin to identify ways of flipping both models to develop intentional and less harmful trips.
Voluntourism with quality service or Alternative Breaks with responsible tourism
The typical voluntourism vacation lacks the critical service elements needed to make it a quality experience. However, if a tourist were to take on quality service elements, the trip would look much different. If groups understood the community before venturing to unknown countries, avoided alcohol and intrusive behaviors, asked the community meaningful questions addressing the history of their community and nature of the service, and were intentional on understanding the root social issues and neocolonialism often present, the experience would look much different.
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Similarly, Alternative Break trips often implement a fixing mentality, offering services without true expertise behind their actions. Further, trips employ their own belief structures of eating and spending habits that inadvertently may result in lack of income for a community. While tourism can be negative, these trips could engage participants in responsible tourism where participants can engage with the community in a positive way such as embracing cultural norms, asking permission to engage in activities, and not using a group of people for personal publicity.
Move from otherizing to cultural exchanges
Otherizing is the act of looking at a group of people as different. However, recognizing differences is still important, as our student groups will never be the same as the communities they are visiting internationally. Viewing the experience as a cultural exchange instead of otherizing allows students to recognize differences while respecting culture. It allows all parties to ask questions and share experiences and thoughts.
Use tourism as a financial mechanism
The biggest integration of voluntourism and service trips can be through using tourism as a legit financial mechanism. Often service trips focus on saving costs, but fail to recognize that some communities rely on tourism for financial support. Paying a van driver for a week provides financial security to someone. Even more “lavish” expenses like paying for a cook, may seem counter-intuitive to a service trip, but can provide work for two individuals during the week.
Unfortunately, while student participants are willing to pay $200 for a week of nice food, they may feel differently about paying $200 to fund a project. Further, this provides money to the individuals and families to use as their personal income, rather than an American ideal of how to best use money. The arrogance of our service projects can be negated through funneling money through people in the community instead of declaring what projects are of upmost priority.
Start with the objectives and work backwards
If groups identify the true objectives of a trip and then create a trip that meets those objectives, the trip would become more authentic. The problem of doing a social-issue centered trip is that it emphasizes a power or expertise of the trip organizers. Two parties, the community partner and the trip organizers, should discuss what both want out of the experience. A community partner admitting they want cash-flow while trip organizers conceding they want to see a new place is authentic. From that basic conversation, long-term goals can be developed that address the deeper social issues that are mutually agreed upon by the community partner and trip organizers.
Further, the community is already going to be looking to address the social issues present in the area. Rather than students flying around the world to solve issues, they can become one week of a yearly community plan to address those issues. It is not simply an American ideal to create nonprofits that address our community problems. Nonprofits may not exist in many countries, but community members are still organizing in the same manner.
Lingering Questions: The “messy” side of service
What unintended consequences exist of our presence at all? We need to evaluate if our presence could cause more harm than good in a situation. Tourism can create dependencies for example.
Is pure charity a better model than tourism/charity? If we support an economy through tourism, would it be better to simply give more money to the people we are serving with? Charity has the most direct impact, while service is inherently more indirect.
At what level of skill expertise should volunteers offer services? Sending unskilled people to communities to do service can be difficult. However, at what point is the skill actually beneficial? Sometimes manual labor can help communities in ways that are merely not their top priorities.
Is it possible to remove the power dynamics completely? We will always have the financial power when traveling internationally to poorer communities. There is no way to mask, hide, or remove that power.
How do we know the community doesn’t feel obligated to say yes to our tourism desires? Even if we work with an established community member who facilitates our travel and service, have we removed the power dynamics enough for that person to say no to us? Does our monetary power make it impossible for communities to say no?
International service is complex. Nothing that we do abroad should be without critical thought, careful implementation, and evaluation of power dynamics.
