Unsustainable Tourism

Arrive at the SFO Departures terminal on any given day, and what you’ll see are hundreds of eager passengers that have been awaiting this day for months. While some may simply be setting out on business trips or run-of-the-mill family visits, some travelers are about to embark on the trip of their lifetime, and the excitement and adrenaline throughout the terminal is palpable. So, to say that these eager tourists about to set out to Africa or Asia or any other far-off land are leaving with negative intentions seems unfair and simply untrue. If anything, in recent years, the desire to travel with an emphasis on “giving back” or lending a humanitarian hand has spiked. In 2015 alone, over $2 billion was poured into the volunteer-tourism industry, where tourists pay to spend their time volunteering in locations and situations such as in orphanages, teaching English or math in schools, construction, and hospital/nursing care, just to name a few.

At the surface level, this sounds ideal: what’s better than traveling the world, than traveling and leaving a positive impact? When most people consider going abroad or talk about their past travels, they tend to emphasize their moments of humanitarian service, whether that means volunteering in an orphanage for a week, or helping paint a classroom in a dilapidated school, or attempting to teach English with no prior teaching experience or training, or visiting a poverty-stricken area — such as the slums of Mumbai or Nairobi — for the sake of putting money into the pockets of people who seem to need it. These traveelrs come home with their Facebooks full of photos of themselves hugging small children wearing tattered clothes, along with tales of the hardships they witnessed and the long-lasting change they enacted while on their vacation. And there are, in fact, benefits to this type of travel. Young middle-class Americans who otherwise would be spending their summers drinking beers on a beach can see what life is like for the majority of people around the globe. They can begin to understand their privilege, and the potential to grow with a more well-rounded, international perspective.

However, the benefits seem to end there, and they hardly — if at all — spill over into the communities that these bright-eyed volunteers set out to change.

Voluntourism — the word coined for volunteer travel — has been harshly criticized and debated after its quick rise to popularity. The fact of the matter is that volunteers are often unskilled and lacking the necessary training to do what they’ve been told to do (such as the case when a group of 16-year-olds building a school in the Dominican Republic was so poorly constructed that it had to be taken down and rebuilt by locals in the middle of the night). These volunteers also pour thousands of dollars into airfare and the umbrella volunteer organization which could instead be given to the community directly.

Not to mention the evidence that there is little lasting effect or change from these service trips. The construction of a school doesn‘t mean teachers, students, and supplies will come on their own. The construction of a house doesn’t give those who live in it the means to afford living there. However, perhaps the $4,000 a volunteer paid for themselves to go build that house maybe would’ve helped more if put into the local economy or programs to educate and hire locals, which thus helps build a sustainable system in these communities. Following this, bringing in outsiders to do jobs such a teaching and construction work robs jobs from locals who desperately need the work. When volunteers come and go, there is no structure or stimulation in the local community’s economy or job market, which only makes the problem worse. There is also the debated argument of whether or not these massive voluntourism companies promote acceptance of culture enough, which often leads foreigners to leave their volunteer experiences with White Savior mentalities, which promotes a type of soft colonialism.

But there has to be some good, right? It’s a complicated issue and is difficult yet important to unpack. However, it’s even more difficult for those of us who have done volunteer travel — or who plan on doing it in the future — to address, because so many volunteers— literally millions of them around the globe — have set out with such remarkably selfless, good-hearted intentions. So many the issue isn’t so right or wrong, but instead, what can we do better? What are the real intentions of these massive volunteer corporations?

And mostly, who is really benefitting?