The problem with voluntourism | Hannah Ward | TEDxYouth… — Transcript

When I was first approached to talk at this event, I wondered what I could realistically offer.

I'm not an exceptional person and I haven't achieved a great deal in my short life yet.

But I think that these types of talks aren't about being the most exceptional or inspiring person in the room, they're about shedding light on different perspectives and maybe offering an alternative discourse on a particular subject or just highlighting an existing one.

I'm here tonight to talk to you about ethics and privilege in volunteering, it's an area that I've been fortunate enough to have a fair bit of experience with.

I suppose my journey, if that's what I can call it, started when I was reasonably young, I can remember being told about how the world was full of terrible injustice and I felt a strong moral sense that I had to be somewhat involved in fixing that.

I've always felt that volunteering was one way in which I could do my bit to make my patch of the world a little bit better, but it's important to remember that there are lots of good things in the world and it isn't all terrible, it could just be significantly better.

Volunteering is a significant part of my life and I really value the opportunities I have to give back to my community, I've also volunteered internationally and an experience I will discuss in more depth later in my talk.

I think that volunteering is fantastic and I genuinely believe that everybody should volunteer in their communities and give back where possible, however, volunteering is not without its constraints.

I'm also very aware of the fact that there is privilege associated with volunteering and I know that the personal benefits and individual gains from volunteering are not widely available for everyone.

Truth be told, I would not have had the job opportunities I've had without the skills I developed through volunteering, additionally, as a general rule of thumb, it looks pretty good on your CV and I have definitely benefited from the volunteer work I've undertaken.

I also think it's important to note that I would not have been able to volunteer at all, had I not had the support of my family or the financial means to do so, I'm from an upper middle class background and I've not had to worry about supporting my family or providing child care so that my parents could work.

Being able to volunteer means that you can afford to freely give your time in the first place and this is something that some people simply can't do, there's also a cost to volunteering, for example, transport costs and these can create a barrier.

Some people may want to volunteer but they just can't afford it and if they can't afford any costs associated with volunteering, then it's unlikely to be a priority for them at all, and these are the financial realities of volunteering.

There is another, maybe more difficult area that we need to address when we talk about privilege and volunteering.

Race, I have noticed that there are many Pākehā volunteers, but not as many Māori and Pasifika volunteers, and I think this may stem from the overrepresentation of Māori and Pasifika volunteers and people in negative statistics such as poverty and domestic violence, which means that they may not be in a position to prioritize volunteering.

It is important to note that the situations that contribute to these statistics are the same ones that make volunteering inaccessible, I think that volunteers can be great role models for younger people in their communities, so providing a space where we are elevating people who are underrepresented to be role models is incredibly important.

While I can preach about my experiences to people and tell them that they should be volunteering, that becomes meaningless if the people I'm speaking to do not see me as someone they can relate to, my privilege means I have a responsibility to use it wisely to elevate the status of others and recognize that I am not someone who every New Zealander can relate to.

When you are volunteering, check your privilege, check the privilege that accompanies the color of your skin and your appearance, we need to make sure that volunteering is accessible.

And we need to make sure that organizations are working to address these issues by engaging with marginalized communities, the opportunity to volunteer should be available to all communities, regardless of race or financial privilege.

We definitely place a lot of value on volunteering as validation that you're a good person, but I think it's important to remember that you don't need to volunteer to be a good person, and people who can't afford the time or money it takes to volunteer are not bad people, while I'm a strong advocate for volunteering, I think there are barriers that prevent people from being able to volunteer, even if they want to, and these need to be addressed in some way.

The second sort of aspect of this talk is the idea of ethics and volunteering, earlier this year I traveled to Zambia with an organization to teach for six weeks.

I was placed in a school where many of the children had been diagnosed with HIV and it was a community school, although Zambia has free primary schooling, there is an expectation that students and their families pay for their own uniforms and textbooks, something that most of the families in the community I was teaching in were unable to do.

Community schools were set up to fill the gaps and to support the students who cannot afford to go to government funded schools, I had some experience teaching from my role as a youth leader and as a tutor.

But I was not prepared to teach a class of 50 students with varying learning needs and levels, my class was halved so that it was more manageable to teach them and so that they could get more individualized support, I did the best I could, but it was incredibly challenging.

I went over to Zambia with the idea that I would be supporting teachers to do their work and that I would be able to help them by providing some new resources, the reality I found there was starkly different to what I had imagined, Zambia needs commitment to long-term projects that build capacity for the local population, I went over there with a strong idea that I was there to support, not to take over, they didn't need me to dictate westernized ideals of development to them.

During my time there and once I was back in New Zealand, I reflected significantly on the experience I'd had, I had people telling me, 'Oh, at least you've done your bit,' but I really felt that I hadn't achieved anything, realizing that you weren't able to make the difference you wanted to is incredibly confronting, but it has empowered me to challenge and question the companies that are running these types of trips.

I would be lying if I said I didn't have an amazing time in Zambia, I met the most amazing people from all over the world who do have the best intentions, and there are definitely programs that do support the local community in terms of capacity building and just providing an extra pair of hands.

But, and it's a big but, there are so many problems with volunteering overseas in the form of voluntourism, and although it is incredibly easy to feel that you are doing the right thing by signing up to go and help for a couple of months, you need to stop and ask yourself, is this really going to benefit the community I'm going to?

If you don't have any skills you can offer that are practical and will have a real impact, it is unlikely that you'll be able to offer much to the communities that you're visiting, some of the opportunities offered by organizations to volunteer with vulnerable children in orphanages, um, do much more harm than they do good, there is significant research to suggest that it is damaging to have volunteers revolving through orphanages and that often these children do have a living parent and are not in need of care from an orphanage type home, psychological damage is the most prominent issue in their childhood development, it is not natural for children to run towards strangers demanding affection, it is a sign that there is something seriously wrong.

Poverty is not a commodity or something that should be profited off, it is a serious issue that needs long-term initiatives to fix, you will not change the lives of the people you volunteer with by doing a short-term trip, so, what's next?

At a domestic level, I think we need to be looking at how we can provide individuals with opportunities to create change in their communities, but we also need to look at how we can engage young people with the idea of volunteering in general, you can do so much in your own community and there are so many organizations across New Zealand that are in desperate need of more volunteers of all ages.

Even just lending a few hours of your time each week can be really valuable to organizations that are doing good work, you could volunteer to soup kitchen one night a week or you could help out at a beach cleanup on a weekend, there are so many opportunities for young people to engage and to create a real difference in people's lives, when I was about 13, I used to go to a rest home once a week to provide companionship for people whose families were unable to visit, although I was young and I didn't really have many skills to offer, I was still able to help out in a small way, however big or small, there are always ways for young people to help out.

But as much as we need more young people who want to volunteer, we also need to ensure that organizations recognize the value of having young volunteers, young volunteers bring fresh perspectives and new ideas, and they are increasingly being recognized as being valuable additions to volunteering teams, when young people put their hands up and say that they want to help, organizations start to more actively seek out young volunteers to provide them with support.

At an international level, I think this is a more complex issue, I genuinely think that most of the individuals who go overseas on the premise of volunteering want to do good and they want to help, they absolutely have the best intentions, I think we need to question the legitimacy of organizations offering and facilitating voluntourism trips, we need to question why these organizations charge thousands of dollars for these types of trips and where that money actually goes, we need to be looking at what ethical volunteering and ethical tourism looks like, I think organizations like Good Travel and VSA do really amazing work in this space.

If you have a skill you can take overseas and provide for free, that's great, but make sure that it isn't taking away jobs from locals and make sure you're doing it through a legitimate, transparent organization, to be frank though, if you have a skill and you want to donate your time, you should seriously be considering doing so in New Zealand within a development context that you actually understand, developing countries do not need a revolving door of young volunteers from overseas coming in for short periods of time providing limited skills.

Skilled volunteers who can support the work they are already doing and help them in that sense are much more valuable, there are NGOs on the ground who genuinely do exceptional work and we can do good by supporting them to do good.

Young people also need to be educated about what ethical tourism looks like and how they can have a really great OE without engaging in practices that are detrimental to the communities they're visiting, doing your research before you travel is a great way of ensuring you can have an amazing adventure without causing harm, I am a real advocate for volunteering, as I'm sure you can probably tell, but I'm also an advocate for making sure that volunteering is ethical and that it doesn't damage the communities it seeks to help, I don't have all the answers to how we can solve these types of issues, but I know that there are definitely steps we can take that will point us in the right direction.

Leave knowing that you do have the opportunity to create change in your communities, as cliché as it sounds, if you want to see a difference in your communities, be that difference, regardless of the skill set you have, you can learn and develop so much from helping out, volunteering is about looking around you, recognizing the change needed and then making that change, thank you.