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Why I stopped being a voluntourist

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Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#71

Post by spacemanmatt »

kamaal wrote: post #38
Einstalbert wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates fights incredibly hard to try to prove that aid is incredibly effective and considers this a "myth" to be dispelled. What do you think about the concept?

Except that Bill Gates isn't going around building furniture himself. More like donating a small part of money for purposes like that, and a big part of money for science and technology which can help eradicate bigger problems(like disease and hunger).

Philanthropy he couldn't extend to market competitors, but which he can extend to the poorest of the world? Why, that's hypocritical!

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#72

Post by yummyfajitas »

anu_gupta wrote: post #68
yummyfajitas wrote: post #37

If you want to do voluntourism, I suggest something different: start a business or help set up an outsourcing center. You'll definitely have a positive effect on people by teaching them about western business practices. I'm told by my former coworkers that my standard US egalitarianism was quite unusual. By "egalitarianism", I simply mean "I'm CTO, you are a mechanical turk, we can go eat pancakes and you aren't obli…

Well done you, for bringing your values to your culturally inferior employees, and teaching them the ways of "western style management".

It wasn't on purpose. I didn't even realize it until a few weeks ago when I was explicitly told this. At the time, the only distinction I was making was between valley and wall st culture.

(Im from ny, and my partner was a banker, so from my perspective that was the important distinction.)

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#73

Post by icebraining »

gaius wrote: post #42
rdtsc wrote: post #21

I have seen, heard of and have been invited to participate in these trips. Some are NGOs, some are religious groups. Yeah, looking at it from the perspective she wrote, it seems ridiculous. It is an "industry", wrapped in a non-profit, save-the-world PR shroud, that caters to educated, Westerners who can afford to travel overseas. People feel good when they do good. Whether they other side perceives it as good, somet…

"Raising awareness" is such bullshit. It's a lie people tell themselves so they can feel good sitting in an air conditioned office earning a good wage running a "social media campaign" and never getting their hands dirty or having to meet any of the people they're "helping". http://metro.co.uk/2010/09/21/bono-under-fire-over-one-chari...

But not getting their hands dirty is exactly what the author is recommending.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#74

Post by icebraining »

saraid216 wrote: post #51
tim333 wrote: post #39

Regarding the OP's >"Sadly, taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign. It’s detrimental." I'm not sure that's true as you will still generally be bringing money to the country either in donations to the good cause or in the way that all tourists do by spending at local bars, souvenir shops and the like.

I'm not sure I'm morally okay with economies driven primarily by tourism. Nothing I can back up with reasoning or data, but whenever I think about it, I get the same gut reaction I do when I see a code smell.

Well, if the theories that some very poor economies just require a "push start" to get out of the poverty trap are right, then maybe tourism can do the job.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#75

Post by 1stop »

gnerd wrote: post #66
yummyfajitas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treating low skill commodity workers as human beings on the same social level as yourself is such a destructive western practice. So is hiring a stranger with a great github rather than your brother in law, hiring a woman if she is the most qualified, etc. Or there is that destructive western practice of managing by output - the boss is working until 8pm but you can go home as soon as you hit your quota. Blaming west…

China is the second largest single country economy on earth and growing. They will be completely covered with healthcare in the next 10 years. They are the largest holders of gold on earth, hold the largest amount of debt from the US. They are developing, but as a nation, they are not poor. > Blaming westernized companies (by which I mean both western companies and local companies like Reliance/Infosys that try to ru…

Are you seriously using the most westernised Asian country as an example of non western business practices?

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#78

Post by adwn »

gnerd wrote: post #66
yummyfajitas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Treating low skill commodity workers as human beings on the same social level as yourself is such a destructive western practice. So is hiring a stranger with a great github rather than your brother in law, hiring a woman if she is the most qualified, etc. Or there is that destructive western practice of managing by output - the boss is working until 8pm but you can go home as soon as you hit your quota. Blaming west…

China is the second largest single country economy on earth and growing. They will be completely covered with healthcare in the next 10 years. They are the largest holders of gold on earth, hold the largest amount of debt from the US. They are developing, but as a nation, they are not poor. > Blaming westernized companies (by which I mean both western companies and local companies like Reliance/Infosys that try to ru…

> China is the second largest single country economy on earth and growing. Having the second largest GDP doesn't mean much if you have more than 10x as many people as number three on the list.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#79

Post by Fuxy »

yardie wrote: post #69
spiritplumber wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much this. Go to Habitat for Humanity and if you live in a city they'll generally be doing something local.

H4H was virtually packed when I volunteered. They had a waiting list for every college and university in the area. Apparently all those frats and sororities need a certain number of volunteer hours. Summertime, when building projects are usually in full swing, they didn't have nearly enough volunteers as the students typically were home or interning.

It's not volunteer work if the school, fraternity or sorority requires it of you.

It's not voluntary if it's a requirement to get into the school/frat.

It's more like free forced labor that most of the time is not even needed by the non-profit but hey the kids need certain hours so let's make the move garbage from one trash can to the other all day and if they finish early make them move it back.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#80

Post by pekk »

herbig wrote: post #20
abat wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've met people who did Peace Corps, and my opinion was much better after meeting them. First they actually became fluent in the local language. Second their focus was often more on enabling locals than on trying to do stuff themselves. For example, they would work with locals on how to push through applications for grant money from developed countries. Dealing with American foreign aid bureaucracy was actually a ski…

Personal development is fine and yes, the Peace Corps is incredible for that, but only one thing you mentioned is beneficial to the host country: money. If pushing through grant money is the volunteer's primary talent, they can just as easily do so without spending all that useful money on plane tickets and training. The other issue is that money by itself doesn't solve problems. You have to use it to solve real issu…

There are multiple decent reasons for Peace Corps not to fund formal research into what the issues are. There is no general recipe to make such research actually useful, especially without local knowledge. The function is already being done by development agencies or NGOs in their own flawed ways, and Peace Corps doesn't have funds for it. Peace Corps doesn't fund big infrastructure projects like building new libraries either. Its capability and mandate really only extends as far as placing and training requested volunteers. Volunteers are limited to the missions requested by the host government and local hosts. If those hosts want help applying for grants, volunteers might help them with that. It's unlikely we know better than locals how we should be helping them. It's actually impossible to determine and carry out locally meaningful interventions entirely from offices in the US, still less if nobody has any training. Even just applying for grants (for what, to be used by whom?)

Peace Corps isn't saving the world, but it does a little in a lot of places and it costs peanuts. If you can do better local work in the same places with the same resources, that's great, do it.

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