I am SO fed up with these “pay to volunteer” organizations making money and taking in young gap-year kids and then “offering” them to us as employees where we “only need to cover their living expenses.”  REALLY?  You want me to take your unskilled 17 year-old, play babysitter for a few months as they struggle to add value to our organization while being tempted away by the likes of “Bar Street” and expat adventures, and you want me to PAY them to have his “life changing experience” while branding it “volunteering”?  NO… thanks anyway.  I wrote a comment like this back to an inquiry a few months ago, and the response was “Yes, well their living expenses do not need to be very high and we can negotiate those,” in which case I realized that even their email-responders must also be 17 years old.

I am being a hypocrite -  I know this.  I have done trips in the past where I was able to fundraise for my trip and I certainly have volunteered my time in ways where I was clearly not qualified to be “helping”.  Having done those things though, I think I am still, if not better, able to state clearly: this should not be common practice.  Additionally, PAYING a 17 year old kid to work in an organization is taking this even a step further which makes me half want to yell into the email when I get this kind of request and half laugh at the audacity and ludicrous idea overall.

There are all these volunteer placement organizations based in Siem Reap which send volunteers to teach English at orphanages, but I have already written a lot about my strong feelings against orphanage visits after having learned from making many of these same mistakes myself.  Those groups sometimes call us to see if we will take their volunteers, and to the group that emailed today asking if we would take their 17 year olds as they were in a “dire situation as their other placement canceled”, offering that I would once again only have to cover their living expense, I wrote this reply:

Hello Name-Removed Lady–

I assume my response from a few months ago when another member of your team contacted us about taking your volunteers was not passed on.  I rejected the “offer” then as I will now because I do not believe in this type of program.  These are 17 year old kids, many of whom have little to no experience other than having been privileged enough to go to good high schools.  I am fine with them wanting to come help, but I am not at all fine with:

a) their being allowed to “fundraise” for their flights, as if their time would be more valuable than using that money to directly support these causes.  The experience they will get and the lessons they will learn in Cambodia are indeed worth paying for, and I assume many of them come from families that could indeed afford this.

b) the fact that your organization has them fundraise over $5000 and they then still expects the NGOs on the ground to cover costs. Once again, if they want to “volunteer” – they should volunteer – and at minimum cover their own expenses on the ground.

c) their placements being working with kids.  There is too much scrambling to find volunteer placements with kids in Cambodia – we often get calls about this for our education programs.  Kids should not be treated as a commodity to be sold by international agencies as a way to keep their volunteer programs going.

We do indeed take volunteers, but they have to have the skills to fit our needs, are unpaid, and work in our offices, not with kids in our programs.

I hope you understand that my strong feelings on this matter come from five years of watching young “volunteers” get drunk and run around scantily dressed on bar street here in Siem Reap as they get paid a “living wage” which is over double the local salaries of people much more qualified than they are.

I am sorry that we are not able to help you at this time and I hope the tone of this message reflects that my attitude towards this situation is not particular to you or to your organization, but this growing trend in general.

- Daniela

Now I can just link people here next time they ask if I will pay for their gap year students to work with us!

Fast Five Profile: PEPY Tours

One of the PEPY riders on her bike for Cambodian based PEPY Tours

1. Who are you?  Brief description of trips you offer

Daniela Papi, Director, PEPY and PEPY Tours.

PEPY Tours offers educational tours where travelers have the chance to learn about development issues and support programs committed to making change even long after the travelers leave.  Our tours of Cambodia and neighboring areas range from bicycle trips and high-end educational adventures to service-learning programs for school groups. The required donation portion of our tour fee supports the ongoing educational programs of our partner non-profit organizations.

2.  How do you define Responsible Travel?

Responsible Travel is a conscious and educated approach to tourism which incorporates learning about and supporting local initiatives and goals in the areas we visit. If we have limited knowledge about an area, it is very difficult to make the most responsible decisions, so the most important aspects of responsible travel are the research stage and the monitoring/follow up sections.  If we want to be responsible, we need to understand the true impacts of the choices we are making.

3.  What does your company do to make sure it travels responsibly?

We are willing to change, transparent about our mistakes and the lessons we are learning, open to suggestions and new ideas, and we work to educate travelers on ways they can improve all aspects of their future travel. Our tours bring travelers to meet with the people and organizations making changes in Cambodia and helps them develop a framework for which to better analyze and understand the issues facing Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and community groups. Our goal is that travelers with PEPY Tours will change the way they give, travel, and live as a result of their trip with us.

4.    Tell us about a successful initiative.  And an unsuccessful one – what did you learn?

We used to bring people to visit a variety of programs in Cambodia, including model orphanages. Our trips were supporting these orphanages through on-going funding, so we felt that the chance to visit the place where their money was going would be a great way to connect travelers to their local impact. This view was too traveler focused, as even if it would increase fundraising potential, the cost of bringing groups of foreigners into a home which is supposed to be a safe-haven for children is not a responsible practice and should be replaced by less voyeuristic fundraising initiatives.  We did not have any direct incidents as a result of bringing travelers to these orphanages, but we felt that we were contributing to a growing trend of orphanage tourism which we believe is, overall, very harmful to both the children and to efforts to reduce corruption in Cambodia.  If donor dollars can be linked to orphanage tourism, then more and more fake orphanages will continue to be created as business, as we see here in Cambodia.

In the first few years of offering tours, we used to indulge the travelers and our own desire to “give back” on our tours through tangible ways.  Most people feel more connected to a project if they can physically “help” – paint something, build something, “see results”.  The problem with this mindset is that most of the actions travelers are contributing involve giving things away to people or building items, not building people.  We have learned that what Cambodia needs most is capacity building among leaders who are looking to improve their own lives and that things like teacher training and skill building will do more to improve education than building schools.  If we continue to only offer travelers ways to give back physically, we will teach them that improvements are equated to developing infrastructure but not a nation of people.

For the last few years we have taken the time to expose our travelers to these ideas and concepts through reading materials, educational activities, and sharing our previously incorrect assumptions and mistakes.  Travelers now leave our trips better able to support sustainable on-going projects designed to leave Cambodia and Cambodians better equipped to improve their own country rather than fostering a continued dependency on outside support.

5.   What’s some advice you can offer to travelers wanting to travel responsibly?

Read up before you travel. Do NOT give money to any organization you do not know and have not researched. To do your research, speak with people working in a similar sector in a nearby area as they will have more honest feedback about a groups work than their own website will offer.

As one of our NGO partners said, “You have to earn the right to leave your money in this country.”  If we all recognize that we, as individuals, DO NOT HAVE THE POWER TO FIX THE PLACES WE VISIT by giving money away, we will have less negative impacts of funding corrupt and ill-planned programs. Sustainable changes take long-term efforts and need to last much longer than a short visit to a new place on vacation.  By finding the people and programs committed to finding ways to make long term change, your money will go much further than giving it to a child-beggar on the street. In fact, perhaps that child would not be begging in the tourist area you are visiting if it was not profitable to do so. By cutting off that funding stream to the “pimp” who possibly rents that child out per day as a beggar and redirecting it to on-going programs supporting the needs of children living on the street, you will likely have a much better impact on the places you visit.

Our focus is really on encouraging travelers to be socially responsible. The media and public relations campaigns from large tourism corporations are full of green travel tips, such as conserving water and energy, recycling, using refillable water bottles, and making sure your hotel is doing everything they can to conserve. These are certainly important things to work on. At that level, though, the entire social aspect of sustainability is just missing.

If you are looking to volunteer abroad, ask a lot of questions about how they choose their partners, monitor their impact, and what mistakes they have made. The most responsible groups will offer you transparent and honest answers to those questions.  Ask about how your specific program was designed.  I have asked English teaching volunteer programs which travelers pay a significant fee for why they have chosen to offer English teaching as their volunteer opportunity when they seem to always be scrapping to find NGO partners as the response has been “That is what travelers are looking to do.”  Do we want our impact to be designed for YOU, or designed to fit actual needs? If we want to fit actual needs, then sometimes we need to be willing to do the less glamorous jobs, have less opportunities to visit orphanages and pet children, and be satisfied that we are indeed doing good rather than “getting a rewarding experience.”  It shouldn’t be about us.  If you want to be comfortable, have fun, and get to play with kids, go to an amusement park.

If you want to know more, visit the PEPY Tours website.

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As my comment was not  a review of the area, it was not approved, so I am posting it here.

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I am writing in response to a post stating that one way to give back to Siem Reap is by visiting orphanages.

I beg to strongly disagree.

Having lived in Cambodia for over four years, my opinion on visiting orphanages has gone from encouraging it to abhorring it.  Recent research has shown that the number of orphanages in Cambodia has tripled in recent years with the majority of those “serving” kids who are not orphans at all.  There are some groups standing up this movement to encourage support for whole families rather than removing children from their parents, but in many of the worst cases, the poor practices are not from lack of foresight but instead from fraudulent intentions to start.

Orphanages that keep kids in squalor and can attract tourists on a daily basis are able to bring in far more funding than they choose to use to support their “orphans”.  The practice of keeping kids looking needy to bring in more income is highly linked with donor visits to orphanages and with increasing travelers’ philanthropy in the area.  Sometimes “doing  good” can cause harm, and the practice of visiting orphanages which you have not properly vetted, and which have not properly vetted you, can be a harmful practice.

People have asked me “What is a good orphanage I can go visit today?”  And my answer is always: “Any orphanage where they will LET you visit today, un-planned, is likely NOT a good orphanage.”

Keep these things in mind when visiting Siem Reap, or any developing country.  There is so much to see and so many great projects to support which, can provide more direct benefit than funding the often corrupt orphanage network in Cambodia.  Overall, if you want to see temples, learn about history and culture, are looking for an adventure, and want to meet people who are working hard to improve the future for their next generation, Cambodia is the place to do it.  Just don’t trust all orphanages to be the best choice of your additional support.

For those who don’t have time to read the whole post, here are the five key areas I would consider when choosing  philanthropic travel provider:

1. Is the travel company transparent about how much of your tour fee is going to the programs you are supporting?  Is there marketing consistent with the itinerary they are offering?  (As with the above, I don’t think length of time nor percentage of funding going to a project is a determinant of if the project is good or not. A tour company can be very responsible if none of your funding is going to support projects, if that is clear from the start, as long as the program is design responsibly.)

2. What interaction with children is included in your itinerary?  Is the interaction described like a visit to the zoo?  Are there child protection policies in place?  If it was YOUR child, would you be ok with the type of itinerary an interaction being offered?

3. How does the travel company choose the programs they support?  Ask questions about how your time and any additional support offered by the company itself is designed and what monitoring they do on the impact of these programs.  How is the community or NGO partner involved in designing the programs?

4. Are you giving things away (school supplies, food, wells, etc) on your tour?  How are the recipients chosen?  Is the program designed to help empower people to be able to improve their own lives, or a small bandaid to a larger problem?  If the item is something that will need repair in the future, how is that being dealt with?  Is there community ownership built into the project plan?

5. What about the REST of the trip?  There is so much focus on volunteer interactions and donations as a key to improving the impact of tourism, but perhaps the best way we can improve the impact of tourism is in the “everything else” category.  How does the travel operator choose their hotel partners/travel operators and how do they work to both support the local economy and improve the overall impact of their tours?

Hopefully thinking about these things will make us all better prepared to pick the best partners for our future travel. To read the complete checklist please, visit Voluntourism101 website.

That night I sent out an email to friends who work in Siem Reap and others who I thought would agree that this issue was an important one, asking for help to come up with a plan for how to curb this behavior.  My initial suggestion was a very abrasive and probably too condescending cartoon aimed at asking tourists to reconsider the effects of their “good” behaviors. A lot of us who work in Cambodia feel the same way about exploitative orphanage tourism, so we have gotten together a few times to try to discuss how we can help educate the traveling population who feed these irresponsible and often fake orphanages.  It’s clear that, for most of these travelers, their hearts are in their right places, and they want to do good by what they see as these “poor helpless looking kids” they think they are helping.  What’s not clear is how to slap them upside the head with a dose of reality that let’s them know they are supporting a movement towards harmful child rights violations, without making then too afraid to trust anyone in the future.  We have a few ideas we are working on.  (Something to note: Go to the police or start a “responsible orphanage practices” training course, are not viable solutions.  Corruption and a clear understanding of the child rights violations being committed by those using children to make money for themselves are two of the reasons why.)

In the meantime, I had been meaning to write about this, but I hadn’t found the time to get these thoughts on “paper”.  Saundra’s  Good Intentions Are Not Enough blog on “Hug-an-orphan vacations” inspired me to write some of this down.  Below is what I wrote on her post.

I would love to hear other people’s experiences in regards to this issue.  Those who have joined our discussions, please add additional thoughts which you think should be shared in the comments section or pass this on.

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Thank you for putting this up, Saundra. I think another thing to note is that “orphanages” might not actually have “orphans”! Of all of the orphanages I have come across in Cambodia, there is only one that I know of which exclusively only takes in orphans (as in, children with no parents). Others still use the name orphanage, but act more like a boarding school for underprivileged children or a safe haven for children whose parents have been deemed unfit to raise them. The worst ones, and this is unfortunately more common than people would like to think, RENT kids from their parents. Yes, indeed, it is sick but true.

I have often commented that I would not want to be reincarnated as a cute Cambodian kid. If I was reincarnated as an ugly one, I might have a chance to go to school, but a cute one living near a tourist area might not have the chance to go to school as they would be the most successful beggars. They might be rented by some entrepreneurial person who sees how much money visiting foreigners give to orphanages, so they would be kept looking as poor as possible to attract more funds. The orphanage might outright buy the kids from their family or pay the family a small fee per month to keep their child there as a tourist attraction and fundraising tool.

To so many people, this sounds too inhumane to be true, but often times those are the same people funding these issues. Some of these “orphanages” parade their children around the outdoor bar areas in Siem Reap at night, playing music and handing out fliers asking people to visit their orphanage. It’s 11pm at night, and this “orphanage” is traipsing their children, who they are meant to be looking after, around on a street full of drunk foreigners. Doesn’t this just seem wrong, period? Well us foreigners seem to forget our wits at home when we travel, thinking what would be wrong for our kids might be ok for others, and there are countless travelers clapping for the little performers, handing $20 bills to their “caretakers” and promising to visit their orphanage during the week.

A note to travelers: THINK AGAIN before you give money to “poor” looking orphanages or before you go visit one which allows any old foreigner in off the street to pet their kids. Would you want this for your kid? If you want to know if a place is legit, ask other people in the community and others working in the education or child-protection fields in the area. They will be able to tell you which places are legitimate.

As a note: any orphanage where all of the employees are from the same family, especially ones which have only men working there, is a place you might want to reconsider. At least in the Cambodia context, this usually means there is very little outside oversight and the family can then run the place like a family business. Support the protection of children by NOT supporting these places.

For more information about protecting children, I recommend visiting http://www.childsafe-international.org/

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Go here for Saundra’s full post on “Hug-an-orphan vacations“.

Here are some of the key points I want to highlight regarding this issue:

A) OPERATORS need to educated themselves on effective ways to support development work and then they need to choose to USE that education and act responsibly (not just by the market’s demand). Randy, I agree with you that “It is NOT the volunteers responsibility to make certain what he does is sustainable.” It is the OPERATORS responsibility to research, plan, and monitor their programs responsibly and ensure that they are not causing harm. I hope some day we get a majority heading in this direction. On the part of the traveler, I think it is like the Hippocratic oath: if they are well educated on the issues of international development, capacity building, and responsible travel, then they should start asking the right questions of their operators and I hope they would be better prepared to choose a responsible volunteer organization.

A team of us (including Alexia at voluntourismgal) have contributed to this self-check tool to help operators consider their impact: www.voluntourism101.com/guide Volunteer placement agencies and tour operators getting into traveler’s philanthropy should read these questions (and add more of their own!) as they design their trips as they include lessons and reflections from volunteer placement groups and voluntourism organizations looking to share their most effective practices.  (Operators, please add stories and reflections in the comments section before we officially launch the site if you like!)

In regards to A&K, it’s great that they want to support good work, but bad things can happen if they don’t do step A: find a responsible partner and make choices which put the community or program needs first.  Even when we do find partners, we might not know how to find the right ones or how to speak properly about our work.  For me, one of the red lights I saw on the A&K website was the fact that they equated “providing wells” with “providing clean water”.  As many people working in Cambodia (the place where this A&K program is listed) will tell you, “wells” provide access to water, but they do not necessarily provide clean water as this post seems to claim.  Actually, in Cambodia, most pumps emit water which should then be filtered and some vacuum producing pumps themselves can cause natural arsenic to be leached from the bedrock. (Read about how UNICEF was blamed for causing arsenic poisoning through untested wells in Bangledesh, and this is a big problem in Cambodia still today.) Some studies have shown that, in certain areas, a clean water source at a pump has little to no effect on a community’s water born illness rate.  Why?  Because if people are still putting that water in unclean and contaminated buckets, if that water is sitting at their home uncovered in said bucket, and it is then being poured into an unclean glass, who cares about the waters cleanliness to begin with?  Home water filters combined with EDUCATION have proven much more effective.  Minerals, bacteria, viruses, arsenic…. So much to know about!  How is a tour operator, whose number one goal is to take people on fabulous trips, who probably spends little time in the areas they are looking to support, supposed to know all of these things? And how are they supposed to have the time to do it right?  The way they can do it best, is by finding the best groups who DO know these things, and working with them.

B) Length of stay doesn’t matter if the trips are not responsible in the first place! I also agree with Randy that it is absolutely RIDICULOUS that so many critics of voluntourism deem length of stay as a determinant of positive impact.  Sadly, the LONG-term volunteers working “in the field” that I have seen in Cambodia are usually the ones doing the most harm!  They would only do a little bit of harm if they stayed for a day, but instead they aid corruption, fund irresponsible programs, and displace the potential for local labor development for 60 days rather than one because their agent or operator was trying to sell them the experience they were demanding, and perhaps make more money off of the exchange.  If that operator followed step A) and provided a responsible travel option to begin with, then yes, their 10 day trip might have been 10 times more valuable than a 1 day one, but sadly, most operators do not.  (Here is an article in WorldChanging which highlights a lot of my thoughts on this topic.)

C) Plus, who are we to say that people who would have just gone to the beach for the week because they needed a vacation from their busy lives are bad because they only gave one day of their trip instead of all to some project?! I think that is a backwards way to look at things – we want people to IMPROVE their tourism impact – and if trips are designed well then who cares how long it is for!  It is the trips that are NOT designed well which should be avoided – be they one hour or one year.  Now, if the 10 day $6,000 trip with 1 hour of service work is being sold as “volunteering”, if people are getting a tax write off, or if people think the tour fee is going to support these causes when little to none of it is, then I of course disagree with it – but once again, this is the OPERATOR being unethical, and the travelers being uneducated.

D) Funding IS important. Show me a place where an unskilled volunteer can add value to an organization, outside of their funding, and more often then not I’ll show you an office based filing/research/emailing job which is NOT what is typically being sold in international volunteer travel. Sometimes we give ourselves and those clients we place as volunteers way too much credit, thinking we are helping with our limited skills when we are often a drain on management and staff time to fill our long list of needs.  I think it is fine if people visit a new place and have a bit of cultural interaction with people who have invited them, do a little something (join a class or teach a class, “paint something”, help out with a building project which was already going on, “volunteer” to help with whatever project is going on etc), but that experience should NOT be sold as something that is the solution to the community’s problems. Which aids education more: thirty foreigners painting a school poorly using $150 worth of paint or a $150 teacher training course taught by a skilled local educator?  Which helps the overall system of a community having the ability to teach and learn new languages: a foreign volunteer coming in for a month, then a new one, then a new one, then a new one until the volunteer tour company decides to move to a prettier location, or funding to support the training of a local community member to be a teacher themselves?  So why cut out the funding part, if that, if applied in the right ways, IS what can help cause a more long-term change?  Back to part A) if we choose the right partners, we should WANT to fund them and their work, as we should have picked them for their responsible decisions in the first place. Plus,  having us there, skilled or not, does take their time and resources.  (Note: Tour operators or volunteer placement services who have decided to act like development agents rather than choose responsible community or NGO partners and who don’t have the time to research and follow up on their programs, should of course avoid giving money away…. but I would argue that they shouldn’t be sending volunteers to those places then either!)

I like Roberts point, that many of “the world’s elite” already think they can buy anything they want: fame, love, anything… and he doesn’t want them to think they can “buy” clean consciousness or a chance to change the world (I hear you Robert, don’t even get me started on ‘carbon offsetting’.)  But this attitude is once again focused on the travelers, not the projects.  We are worried that the “travelers” will get the wrong idea – thinking they can write a check and walk away and save the world.  I agree, that is not an idea we want to foster, but we need to change our mindset and put the PROGRAMS we are looking to support in mind first.  What do they need? Is the problem of clean water going to be solved by an A&K group coming through to build a well, or will a check for an organization building wells, selling filters, and providing education about clean water do more to support the cause?  I argue, it’s the latter.  And I once again argue – PICK THE RIGHT PARTERS!  I got into a discussion once with one of the heads of one of your big short-term volunteer placement companies who said to me “but we don’t give funds to these groups!  That could aid corruption!”  PLEEEEEEEEASE people, recognize that you are aiding corruption PERIOD if you send your guests to places you haven’t vetted, who are not doing responsible work, and who are not putting community needs first!  Your guests will give money, even if you don’t, and once again, I blame the operator for that poor choice.  If you pick the right projects, then you should WANT to fund their work. “But is that sustainable?” Read my next post soon on sustainability when I transcribe it from my brain to this computer, but for now, I just want to remind you that because something costs $ does NOT make something “not sustainable”.  Where and how that money is used is what makes that distinction.  Once again, refer to point A) – pick the right partner and design your program well, and then you wont have to worry about these things.

E) We need to know what we are selling: volunteer and voluntourism operators – we need to be aware and admit that we are NOT SOLVING THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS. We are selling learning and exchange experiences and we are supporting the people and systems which are making those changes. There is nothing wrong with that. Those helping to solve the world’s problems are doing it in more than a short-term stay, but we can help them – with our time AND with our money – different ways to help different projects and people.  (Don’t get me wrong, I think there is WAY too much money going to the wrong places, and I think if money stopped getting handed out by travelers and travel companies period, we might be better off overall…. But I don’t think that’s the BEST option. The best option, if we want to support development work, is to fund the RIGHT things, so start asking these questions below.

F) We can educate our travelers about how their money does not magically save the world. (and at the same time, we can support good projects). The way I voice the same concerns Robert has is by telling travelers “You can’t write a check, walk away, and think you are saving the world. You, like a responsible development NGO or tour operator looking for a partner, must do research, ask good questions, be educated yourself on what to look for, and then FOLLOW UP!  If you don’t know, then make friends with people who do!  Ask others who work in that field or in that city what they think of the NGO you have chosen to donate to.  Ask them to be HONEST with you – because you don’t want to be adding to the harm of the development sector!  LEARN, ask questions, follow up, and then CHANGE if you find out that you were donating based on false assumptions or a misunderstanding about the project.  A programs website is typically not going to tell you all you need to know to make the right decisions, but what you can find out is, WHO do they seem more concerned about?  You, or the communities they are meant to be serving?”

G) Tour operators should not be development agents, because it takes the right people, skills, and time to learn how to do it right – and these are different skills than those needed to run a good tour company. Supporting a development project via a tourism initiative is one thing. You can visit a project, learn about their work, give your time or funding, and go home, and that development project you visited, if it is a well-run one (as it should be if you follow step A!), will continue on doing great work once you leave. They will have started before you got there, they will continue once you leave, and they will make decisions and implement programs with the projects best interest in mind, because that is what they are there to do.  Having support from tourists is just a bonus side note.  When tour operators start to think they need to implement projects on their own, for whatever reason from wanting to “brand” it to being too lazy to find a partner, to thinking “development is easy – anyone can do it!”, that is when there are problems.

H) Community input and empowerment is important in development work. This is something I strongly believe.  If a tour operator is trying to identify community needs and implement programs on their own, why would they want to admit that they are doing something wrong and change it when they find out that they have, if they are selling their trips 6 months or one year out? Everyone will make mistakes in this field, like in any other, and the group with the power to change the development plan must be incentivized to change their actions when they realize they are causing harm.  Tour operators have less incentive to do that than development agents, though responsible people, no matter where they work, take this into consideration.

I) If operators design their trips simply by what is ‘in demand’ we will continue to have a problem unless we 1) change how operators act and think or b) educate travelers to demand responsible interactions on their tours. I wish we could say “All operators and agents need to be ethical and responsible, spend a year working in international development (or read at least one book on development best practices), have a monitoring and evaluation plan for any projects they support, and promise to really put the communities and programs who are supposed to be the ‘benificiaries’ first, before they can get into traveler’s philanthropy or volunteer placement work.” Unfortunately, we all know that there will always be people looking to make money who don’t care about doing something right and as such, in order for this to change, it has to come from both ends: travelers need to stop demanding things like orphanage visits, as Sarah pointed out, and operators and agents need to get their heads out of their bank accounts and wake up to the fact that if they are not designing their programs well they are causing more harm in the world than good. I think the CEO of every one of these expensive long-term volunteer placement groups should have to be required to sit around in a town like Siem Reap Cambodia and watch as their countless unskilled volunteers are ushered into English Teaching programs, often times in corrupt or irresponsible programs, for a few months followed by an intense course on development best practices before they wake up a bit.  They just don’t GET IT because what you see on a one day or one week “visit” is not the reality of what is happening in volunteer-filled towns.  Here there are indeed many “real” (dare I say that?) volunteers, the ones who applied to companies or organizations, had to be interviewed to match their skills to a job, who are placed in positions where their is a need for their work not just in positions paid to have created for them, whose work is typically in an office, doing something “boring” on a computer, and is not out “in the field” playing hero.  I would put those people under the category of the now-evilized “V” word (volunteer) simply because they are not paid. Outside of that, they are doing a JOB, that is needed, where they can add value with their time and skills, and are not filling a role that was created for them simply to make money off of them.

Unfortunately, the demand for what people are willing to pay for is not usually in line with what is needed to support development work.

Overall, my thoughts are that:

Volunteer program operators need to be better educated on development best practices.

Operators need to act on that education, not just in line with consumer demands.

Consumers need to be educated about effective development practices.

Potential volunteers need to start asking the right questions and demanding responsible volunteer opportunities.

If this happens, the paradigm will shift, demand will decrease as travelers stop looking for things like “pet the children” orphanage visits (which Sarah was complaining about), the less responsible projects which were used to getting volunteers like the fake orphanages I see here in Cambodia will cease to exists as the profit-seeking owners will have moved onto other more lucrative endeavors, and the groups looking to offer support to the development sector will have found a better way to do so.

One of the questions they asked was about the changes I would love to see in tourism in Cambodia.  Here are my answers:

3) You say on your website that “PEPY Tours aims to catalyse a large-scale, transformational change in tourism.” What do you think is the single most important change required in Cambodia?
In Cambodia, there are roughly two million tourists a year who come to Siem Reap. Among tourists in particular, there is a strong tendency and urge to “give”. People come to Cambodia, fall in love with the place and the people, and want to “help”. With little understanding of how to do that more effectively or who to trust, travelers can sometimes unknowingly support short-term solutions, undermine government projects, encourage more dependency, or contribute to corruption through ill-researched donations. Some might choose to not support a project at all because they don’t know the best ways to do so.

In an ideal world, Cambodian tourism would be environmentally sustainable, low-impact, and community-led, generating funding which goes back to local projects. It would lead to better understanding between peoples, a higher standard of living for Cambodians, and a significant learning experience for travelers. It could empower, not foster dependency.

To get closer to this goal, the four main changes we would like to see in tourism in Cambodia today are:

a) No more orphanage tourism. In some cases, donations for “poor” orphanages are keeping kids looking poor and orphanage owners very rich. In addition, unrestricted visits by foreigners to visit and play with children can lead to negative outcomes. This tourism trend will continue to cause harm until travelers are better educated about the rights of children and ways to support them. Child-Safe International is a great resource to learn about some of these issues.

b) More money staying in Cambodia. Most visitors don’t realize it, but they are usually staying in foreign-owned hotels, eating in foreign-owned restaurants, buying imported fruit and foods that came over from Thailand, and little of their money is staying in Cambodia. PEPY’s Responsible Tourism Statement highlights our efforts to try to increase the positive impact of our tours in Cambodia and might spark ideas and questions for others planning their travel in the area.

c) Tourism that adds to the community. With so many good intentions out there, it’s disappointing to see how often “voluntourism” or traveler’s philanthropy ends up doing more harm than good. In an effort to improve our own work and to share the lessons we have learned with others, we have conducted research to develop a Voluntourism Self-Check tool full of questions, which should help voluntourism operators and travelers better analyze the impact of volunteer travel offerings.

d) An end to both child, and adult, sex-tourism. Enough said. It’s horrific. To this end, we should still work on the first point above as sometimes unrestricted access to children’s facilities that have no child protection policies can add to this.

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