Why I stopped being a voluntourist

I sincerely hope young Americans/westerners don't get discouraged by reading such nonsense.

The problem described here is a combination of naivety and misallocation of skills and resources. It has nothing to do with being white and yet this lady can't seem to get away from that.

I'm South Asian and I would have faced the exact same problems this lady faced had I volunteered in the places and organizations she did. However being older and perhaps wiser, I wouldn't have made the error of volunteering to do things I have no skill in. Thats the only mistake she made and the problems she mentioned are easily fixed with a little common sense. Yet somehow she can't see that

I wonder where this silliness comes from - could it be the result of the modern American education system ?

Before closing I should mention I would likely never have been born had it not been for a bunch of young European women who saved my orphaned grandmother from certain starvation and neglect when she was a toddler. They gave her a home, an excellent education and looked afer her till she was a young woman. Their actions helped my grandmother get the skills she later used to pull her family out of poverty (resulting from the Partition of India) into the upper middle class.

Thank heavens for those dedicated, young, white voluntourists.

While none of them were bad people, in reality, it was a holiday for the majority of them. They were too young to have any real life skills or lessons to share or communicate. Those that did were simply not around for long enough to have any real impact. They all spent more time and money on sight-seeing, partying and South Africa's beaches than anything else.

This was an acceptable relationship for the organisations concerned because they were receiving money, but nobody had any illusions about whether there was meant to be a more productive relationship. The reality is, in these cases, it would have been more productive to just donate the money for the plane ticket, bars and sight-seeing directly to the organisation - but why would somebody do that when they can get a story to tell, and make themselves sound like mini-Mother Theresas? Let's face it, it's harder trying to get people to give you money if you give them nothing in return.

As I see it, the author of the article appears to be challenging people to ask themselves if they fit in the category you fall into (somebody with something to really offer), or the category I've described (somebody who naively thinks they can help; or somebody effectively going on holiday to an impoverished area in such a way that makes them feels less guilty about being rich while giving them a moral-superiority card to play when they're back home) - because there is a real social cost to this latter sort of self-serving volunteering.

Western business culture is primarily "profit is the end that justifies the means" - exploit any person, resource or environment to their|it's detriment as longer as you make more profit for the owners/shareholders.

Many times I've seen on HN "the purpose of a business is to make profit; stat".

Equality, helping those in poverty, cultural benefit, elimination of crime - none of these are Western business ideals; they're cultural constraints placed on businesses that they do their best to avoid losing profit to.

Now not all businesses are so immoral - but I'd say immorality is indicative of "Western business practices"; they only appear better because of cultural constraint, when those businesses get to exploit people and environments that aren't being monitored and aren't subject to legal protection that's when the abuses of the business ethic rear their head.

2. These programs are as much if not more about affecting the life of the volunteer. Her realization that she thought way too much of her value wouldn't have happened without going there and having the experiences.

3. I know people who are extremely effective in what they do in underdeveloped countries. Her pride brought her to the wrong conclusion about where she was at the beginning of the experience. It's unfortunate that her pride is still in effect, misleading her about the capabilities of others.

You're wrong on that one. Talking about volunteering every weekend in East Palo Alto will get you a lot further on a law school application than your essay on a week in Africa. Admissions staff aren't stupid. Strong commitment to local activism is valued much more than paying large sums of money to travel halfway around the world on a glorified vacatiion.