(advised Annotation)-Should a short-term volunteers being trained or own skills before they help the locals?

In an article appearing in the November 14, 2010, website of The Obeserver, Ian Birrell states that "Voluntourism", an industry booming fast in developing countries in recent year, which westerners spare part of their travel time to help local children, might bring damages to locals. He states, this face-growing industry affects developing areas a lot in not only their environment but also their local industrial structure and culture. To give us this point, Birrel shows an incendiary report conducted by South African and British academics, which focuses on “Aids orphan tourism” in southern Africa. It reveals that as more and more volunteers or voluntourists spend money and lots of effort helping locals, local workers may end up giving away much-needed job and waiting for foreigners’ help, which will, gradually become a dependency culture. Moreover, due to the departure of short-term volunteers, children who have been helped and already have attachment with them might go through trauma of being abandoned.

In this case, Birrell mentions a similar situation: slum tourism. It’s an industry that tourists pay money to get a glimpse of how life is in slum. They take pictures, giving them food and cloths, treating those impoverished families like animals in zoo. In Africa, same problem conceals in every time a group of volunteers come to giving out their sympathies.

   Birrell continues to point out abnormal growing orphanages in developing areas. The investigation reveals that most of children lived in orphanages are not “real orphans” and only a few orphanages are licensed. These unqualified orphanages may lead to unsaying problem that volunteers who shows their kind to children may become helpers fostering the whole deteriorating situation.

   “Unfortunately, they are led by their hearts and not their heads and unknowingly support environment that may be abusive to children,” said Mark Turgesen, international co-ordinator of ChildSafe Network, Birrell quoted. Becoming a volunteer is definitely laudable, Birrel concludes, however we need to think and treat carefully before we head off. We should exam the consequences first and what skills and sources locals really need. 

   Here the weird situation: a group of strangers just walk in your house and start to take care of your children. You may can believe the organization of these volunteers is authentic, yet when you try to talk to them, telling them your real situation, you find that a language barrier destroys all the communications. Then, the question comes out: how can these people (most are college students) showing out for merely two months and leave nothing but a short period of enjoyment really help to resolve the locals’ problem? (hunger, disease, severe environment, education, poverty, etc.) What are the practical aids they have given so as to make progressing improvement? What the real purpose of being a volunteer? From this annotation, I would like to focus on the following question: Should international volunteers being trained before they contact to local people? What should they required? What the affect short-term volunteers have brought to the local? How do volunteer organizations work to help volunteers to adjust intercultural environment? 

Source:

Ian Birrell (2010). Before you pay to volunteer abroad, think of the harm you might do . Retrieved from 

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/14/orphans-cambodia-aids-holidays-madonna