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Why I stopped being a voluntourist

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Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#141

Post by jbooth »

pekru wrote: post #131
yummyfajitas wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is your assumption that every firm/organization in India follows nepotism and doesn't value true merit, it would be simply a wrong assumption... If you read my post, you'd clearly see that I don't believe every local firm does this: "...I mean both western companies and local companies like Reliance/Infosys..." My belief, based on my experiences living here, is that this is far more common than in the US, Canad…

> you'd clearly see that I don't believe every local firm does this Yes. I clearly see the original comment seems to infer that most of the (or almost every!?) local firms in India does that. > Do you claim I'm wrong on this point? To an extent, yes. India and Indian industry/economy is not just IT and not just big cities. There's a lot more to it. I would be most honored if I get a chance to show some of it first ha…

You're being really uncharitable towards yummyfajitas here. I think if you were to give him the benefit of the doubt rather than trying to take the worst possible interpretation of his words at every turn, you could have a more productive conversation. He didn't respond to you by accusing you of favoring the caste system -- why are you accusing him of, first, racism, then favoring only crony capitalism?

I have several Indian friends who've expressed approximately the sentiments that he did about the average Indian business, specifically very hierarchical management compared to American culture, which is indeed problematic in settings of knowledge workers -- you don't manage them the way you manage an assembly line. Heck, you shouldn't even manage an assembly line that way, the line workers know the equipment better than you do. You can disagree with him and them without accusing people of racism or blaming them for the East India Company.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#142

Post by Fuxy »

theorique wrote: post #110
VLM wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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" Perhaps you were going for humor but locally some (mostly religious) high schools have mandatory required volunteer (LOL) graduation requirements, and criminal court "community service" also means work at the same recycling center, so you end up with a weird and probably very unhealthy mixture of ex-c…

Well, the teens learn some discipline and following orders. The criminals learn not to do whatever it is that got them community service. Everyone wins.

You make it sound so black and white when in reality everything is gray.

I happen to know a few "criminals" and they're not bad people they just choose to do shady stuff. Although I've met a few that i instinctively distanced myself from because you can tell they're always out to trick you or get something from you it's usually not that simple.

Some of them were even punished way out of proportion to the severity of their crime.

I don't know if most kids have the skill to deal with these people and since the crafty ones come off as overly friendly they might even get lured in.

It's probably not idea to mix clueles teens with street smart criminals.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#143

Post by bostonpete »

Fuxy wrote: post #79
yardie wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People volunteer for all sorts of reasons that fit your description -- b/c they're required by a school/frat, b/c it's a requirement (or even an elective) to earn a badge in boy/girl scouts, b/c they feel pressured by others in their community (e.g. in a church), b/c their parents made them.

You may feel that some (maybe even most) people's motivations are less pure than others, but that doesn't make their actions "not volunteer work".

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#144

Post by TeMPOraL »

avalaunch wrote: post #23

The main point the article is making, that not all volunteers are providing a net positive, is an interesting one. I have a problem with her position, though. She ends the article with: "Be smart about traveling and strive to be informed and culturally aware. It’s only through an understanding of the problems communities are facing, and the continued development of skills within that community, that long-term solutio…

> The main point the article is making, that not all volunteers are providing a net positive, is an interesting one.

> "By volunteering I would be causing more harm than good, so the right thing to do is nothing."

The right thing to do, as she actually points out in passing in the first part of the article, would be to do what you're good at and send the money to a competent organization.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...

I remember the Red Cross writing something similar, that basically boiled down to "please stop sending us supply, give us money instead - by sending items you're making our logistics much, much more complicated and deprive the economy of people who need our aid from the money that we'd introduce if we bought stuff locally".

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#145

Post by bcoates »

VLM wrote: post #121
theorique wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the teens learn some discipline and following orders. The criminals learn not to do whatever it is that got them community service. Everyone wins.

I think the fear is the mixture. So you take impressionable youth and force them under legal obligation to spend more time with elders of their socioeconomic group who selected a life of crime often than time spent with their own parents. What could possibly go wrong? Optimistically they'll be scared straight, but ...

It's not like they're sending people sentenced to 40 years hard labor for robbing a bank to community service at the recycling center. They're probably mixing with people who got first-offense drunk driving or disturbing the peace charges.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#146

Post by zevyoura »

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.

I have the same feeling of unease, but what about when the alternative is poverty, which I think is often the case?

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#147

Post by dntrkv »

VLM wrote: post #101
Fuxy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"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" Perhaps you were going for humor but locally some (mostly religious) high schools have mandatory required volunteer (LOL) graduation requirements, and criminal court "community service" also means work at the same recycling center, so you end up with a weird and probably very unhealthy mixture of ex-c…

My friends and I got community service for trespassing a few years back. We were assigned to a building material recycling center. Some of the people sentenced to work there were doing the minimum work required to not be reported, but there were a bunch of people, including my friends and I, who genuinely saw it as an opportunity to help out. We worked hard and put in as much effort as we would if it was our normal job. Would I have rather been making money or doing something fun with my friends? Of course. But I committed a crime and this was my punishment. Except I could actually see how my punishment was benefitting society, unlike being jailed or fined. Plus, I actually learned a little bit about different types of wood, and that there is actually a building material recycling center where you can buy a bunch of cool house stuff for cheap.

In other words, I think community service works.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#148

Post by logfromblammo »

yequalsx wrote: post #54
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…

"You'll definitely have a positive effect on people by teaching them about western business practices." This is the most ethnocentric thing I've read in quite a long time. Much of the world would be better off, in my opinion, having never learned first hand about western business practices. Western business practices have caused a vast amount of destruction in the developing world.

In my anecdotal experience, western business practices have also caused a vast amount of destruction in the west.

Western government practices haven't been all that constructive, either.

About the only ideas I think the west should be exporting to the developing world are a general intolerance for corruption and graft, and its engineering standards for multi-story human-occupied buildings.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#149

Post by pekru »

jbooth wrote: post #141
pekru wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'd clearly see that I don't believe every local firm does this Yes. I clearly see the original comment seems to infer that most of the (or almost every!?) local firms in India does that. > Do you claim I'm wrong on this point? To an extent, yes. India and Indian industry/economy is not just IT and not just big cities. There's a lot more to it. I would be most honored if I get a chance to show some of it first ha…

You're being really uncharitable towards yummyfajitas here. I think if you were to give him the benefit of the doubt rather than trying to take the worst possible interpretation of his words at every turn, you could have a more productive conversation. He didn't respond to you by accusing you of favoring the caste system -- why are you accusing him of, first, racism, then favoring only crony capitalism? I have severa…

> accusing him of, first, racism, then favoring only crony capitalism

Well, am quite sure all of us here are quite reasonable folks who do not harbour racist feelings towards another fellow man. The very fact that Yummyfajitas chose to come here and run a company stands testament to the fact that he isn't racist at all and is a very reasonable person. And if I sounded like I was trying to load a bundle of (unreasonable) guilt onto yummyfajitas, I humbly beg for forgiveness.

The only question was about "modern business practices" and "oriental (right word!?)/third world business practices". Even before we discuss this, we might have to consider the concept of success from angles, 'modern' and otherwise. If the definition/concept/understanding of 'success' differs, then most certainly the guidelines to be followed to achieve 'success' would differ, don't they?

Modern economics states "free market", "profit", "shareholder value" and people who pursue these and achieve them are termed successful. These might work for the modern and fully developed societies where 'scarcity' takes a totally different meaning. But these same things will have a totally different impact in third world countries when adopted without changing them to suit the socio-economic needs locally.

Treating low skill commodity workers as human beings on the same social level as yourself is such a good practice.

Yes. Can we summarize this as "do not expect others to be obligated to be subservient to you, irrespective of their designation/background/abilities"? If so, can we extend the same to the context where a developed nation forces a developing nation to sign a treaty (and threatening sanctions if otherwise), expecting the developing nation to act subservient to the powerful one? If this is wrong, then the 'practice' is nothing but 'anything that suits us based on the situation'. (well, this would become a totally different post altogether, let me not digress too further)

> blaming them for the East India Company

Well, that is past. I would not hold accountable/accuse the present day westerners for the Raj and all of our present day miseries here. It would be incredibly foolish of me. At the same time, I would find it difficult to believe the idea that everything that's worked elsewhere will work here as well and bring upliftment and social development. That is all.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#150

Post by judk »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #144
avalaunch wrote: post #23

The main point the article is making, that not all volunteers are providing a net positive, is an interesting one. I have a problem with her position, though. She ends the article with: "Be smart about traveling and strive to be informed and culturally aware. It’s only through an understanding of the problems communities are facing, and the continued development of skills within that community, that long-term solutio…

> The main point the article is making, that not all volunteers are providing a net positive, is an interesting one. > "By volunteering I would be causing more harm than good, so the right thing to do is nothing." The right thing to do, as she actually points out in passing in the first part of the article, would be to do what you're good at and send the money to a competent organization. http://lesswrong.com/lw/65/m…

Where do competent organizations get their staff? Who is motivated to pursue the training for that career?
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