Oh how I wish that I had heard Ivan Illich give this speech in 1968. I imagine myself as one of the students about to be sent off to Mexico to “volunteer”, eager to “help the poor people”, smiling proudly as I shine in my own self-worth. And then I imagine hearing him start out [...]
Whenever a group of people visit me in Cambodia and want to learn about responsible development, we usually go visit RDIC, an organization working with a variety of rural applicable technologies in the areas of water, health, agriculture, and more. Whenever we’re there, I’m always struck when one of the managers, John, says one of [...]
Ahh, bednets. NGOs sell the idea of giving things away by equating each thing we give away to “the poor”, like a bednet, as equal to “saving a life”. If only it were that easy…. This week a fascinating group of visiting students told us about a campaign that had happened in their school to [...]
Over the course of the last five years we have jotted down many rules and given presentations internally at PEPY about our writing guidelines. I spent the better part of the day today locating them and compiling them, and they have a lot of the same themes. Here are a selection of the Do’s and [...]
We want to know that our money went to “the right place”. We have been taught to be fearful that our donations might aid corruption or not be used in the way we had intended. As such, it’s easier for us to build buildings than invest time in people through things like trainings & education [...]
Last week I wrote a blog post complaining about volunteer sending organizations trying to “sell” their 17 year old volunteers to NGO organizations. I then got a very well thought out response from 16 year old Naya Herman who is considering volunteering abroad and so I decided to answer her two questions in two new [...]
I recently wrote a piece about PEPY Tours on World Nomad’s website. I am reposting it below as it relates to a lot of the themes of this blog: Responsible Giving, voluntourism, Cambodia, etc Fast Five Profile: PEPY Tours One of the PEPY riders on her bike for Cambodian based PEPY Tours 1. Who are [...]