Voluntourism Today: What's the Problem?

Having understood the phenomenon of voluntourism, its motivations and benefits to host communities. We can now explore its limitations and threat to sustainable development.

It must be prefaced by saying if you analyse anything we do in society, it is going to be flawed, and that everything is deemed unsustainable by a change of narrative, perspective, or extent. However, the industry of voluntourism has raised many ethical concerns in the media and within academia over recent years. So, it is important to highlight the main issues that sometimes occur in this practice.

Firstly, one of the most harmful aspects of volunteering is the short-term nature of placements, and it brings with it many social and historical issues. For example, voluntourism can reinforce paternalism, expecting hosting communities to be passive and grateful “recipients” (Sullivan, 2018), with many likening extreme cases to neo-colonialism. Thus, actually causing social tension rather than fostering social change. Furthermore, many volunteers can exacerbate current issues such as that of socio-cultural by simply being there. As, research conducted by Noelle Sullivan in Tanzania shows that many unqualified volunteers have actively displaced Tanzanian health professionals. High schoolers and undergraduates deliver babies or participate in surgeries. Many foreign volunteers presume, despite lacking qualifications, that they can “do it better” than local health professionals, jeopardizing quality of patient care. Environmentally, these communities can also take a toll, as an influx of volunteers can apply greater strain upon local infrastructure such as medical care and natural resources (Sullivan, 2018).

(Salvo, 2022)

Economically, aside from the professional displacement, within practical roles, local communities can lose out on a stable economy. This is because the simplest reason why organizations use overseas volunteers is that if a charity employs local workers for the labour, it would cost them. But if they use volunteers who pay to do the work, they are making money. (Patrick, 2020). So, although from a business model this is economically viable for the organisation providing the voluntourism service, it is hugely unethical as it isn’t an economically sustainable opportunity for the host community.

A famous controversy of practice in the voluntourism industry is that of the international NGO Mercy Ships. Mercy Ships operates the largest non-governmental hospital ships in the world, providing humanitarian aid like free health care, community development projects, community health education, mental health programs, agriculture projects, and palliative care for terminally ill patients. The organisation has visited more than 55 developing nations and 18 developed nations around the world, with a focus on the countries of Africa for the past 30 years (Fadley, 2002).

(Mercy Ships, 2022)

Although the efforts of Mercy Ships saving millions of lives should never be dismissed or undermined, the organisation unknowingly caused an equally great negative impact across their voyages. This is because Mercy Ships have previously had large inequality between the volunteers on the ship and the locals. There were a couple of reasons for this; the volunteers would ‘serve the poor’ by helping during the day in the villages but went back to their life of luxury on the ships and would not experience the direct consequences. Locals were also not allowed on the ship without special invitations and reasons to be on it (Patrick, 2020). Additionally, further economic benefits were lost to the communities as the volunteers wouldn’t depart the ship for recreation thus, refraining from spending to support the local economies in which they were anchored.

To conclude, a previous volunteer aboard Mercy Ships, Dr McLennan claims that “most of the dramatic conditions treated by Mercy Ships could have been prevented by a properly resourced, functioning health system.” (McLennan, 2017). So, supporting and encouraging sustainable development within these communities would have a greater overall positive impact in a long-term setting.

Ultimately, we have explored many themes of perceived malpractice and unsustainable practice perpetrated throughout the volunteer tourism industry. So, moving forward it is important to keep these factors in mind when attempting to overwrite these negative impacts with a sustainable approach.