The PEPY Tours team put together a short animated video about the history of PEPY Tours and the ways our work has changed over the years.  Check it out!

Video by the @PEPYTours team with illustrations by the fabulous Wei Peng!

I was recently on a radio show on CBC radio in Canada called “Q with Jian Ghomeshi” in a segment titled “Do gap year volunteer programs do more harm than good?”.

You can listen to it here if you’d like. I agree with the comment regarding animal and conservation projects (trail clean-ups etc) as being examples of volunteer programs which have the potential to add a lot of value. And I agree that it’s not black and white. My main point in speaking on this issue is that we need to consider our impact – collectively and individuals – when we engage in programs claiming social impact as a main purpose. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

When I first saw “Changing the World on Vacation“, I had to cover my eyes for half of the film. Did I REALLY say that, do that, THINK that? Ugh….

Watching the first year of our work at PEPY is like watching someone act out the exact opposite of what I now believe in terms of responsible tourism, development work, and “volunteering”. It’s PAINFUL to watch…

But, it’s a good reminder that my opinions and beliefs were formed, and that I too acted in the ways I am trying to see changed. It makes me hopeful that others can change too, and that ideally they can learn from my mistakes rather than repeating them themselves.

I just recently got to see some footage Daniela Kon, the film maker, had taken in late 2008 or early 2009 when she returned to Cambodia. It is great to see the progress of my own learning, and interesting to note that it took me three years to realize that “orphanage tourism was wrong” but I still hadn’t realized that some orphanages are not only exploiting children through forced dance shows, but through so much more including taking them from parents and corruption so deep that it involves bribing police to be allowed to drag “orphans” through the streets to advertise “free orphanage tours” to tourists. (I had written some of my reactions here.)

I went from naive to enraged with a rest stop at shocked along the way.  Here is a look at my reaction to the film from nearly three years ago:

Daniela Papi INTERVIEW (2009) from DEEDA PRODUCTIONS on Vimeo.

This past week, Alexia Nestora of the blog Voluntourism Gal, hosted a voluntourism conference. I did a presentation about “Learning Service”, rather than “Service Learning”, and was specifically vocal about my disdain for Orphanage Tourism. I was afraid I would get tomatoes thrown at me…. but instead a lot of people agreed with the experiences and opinions I shared, which I was grateful for! Here is a video Alexia compiled from the event.

This week I offered a class with my friends Kit & Matt through the new group/learning platform SkillShare. It’s a phenomenal concept: anyone can be a teacher and offer up a skill they have and any of us can be student and pay for a class on topics as varied as Knitting for Beginners and How to Bootstrap your Startup.

Kit, Matt, and I offered a class on traveling around the world responsibly. Kit and Matt presented about the 6 month round-the-world trips they both took and answered questions on how to book your travels, reintegration on return, the most important things they wish they had brought (and what they wished they had left behind), etc.  I followed up with this presentation below about how to have a positive impact when you travel.

I edited the slide deck a bit to make it stand alone without a presenter, but it is the bulk of what I spoke about.  I have realized through 5+ years of living in Cambodia that even though not everyone is looking to “give back” when they travel during the planning stages of their trip, many times once they land in a place, they get interested in trying to “help”. In other words, it’s not just important to share the lessons of responsible traveler’s philanthropy and volunteering (and the dangers of orphanage tourism) with those people looking to engage in those things, but also to share these concepts with your average traveler and it is often times not until they get to their guesthouse and see a flier about volunteering that they decide to try it out. We had a great group out at the beautiful Studiomates office for this class (and many thanks to Wanderfly for their support, for their awesome trip planning platform, and for joining in the event as well!) Take a look at the slides if you are interested.

The best part about the class was that it was a chance for like-minded people to get together to talk about a common interest. It’s a way to meet interesting people and have an instant connection with them – so I would highly recommend a Skillshare class to anyone!  While learning the basics of photoshop or learning how to be better at reading people, you also get the added benefit of meeting other interested and interesting people in your city.  Check it out!

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 by proclaiming his “increasing opposition to the presence of any and all North American “dogooders” in Latin America” and wondering why this guy was raining on my parade. I might start to wonder why he was invited to speak, and then he says “you might have invited me here hoping that you would be able to agree with most of what I say, and then go ahead in good faith and work this summer in Mexican villages. This last possibility is only open to those who do not listen, or who cannot understand me.”

I’d start to get angry!  BUT I WANT TO HELP, my brain would yell, and he would respond back in his speech, “I did not come here to argue. I am here to tell you, if possible to convince you, and hopefully, to stop you, from pretentiously imposing yourselves on Mexicans.”

But I’m DIFFERENT, I would think. I WILL be able to help…. yet his speech would respond saying “All you will do in a Mexican village is create disorder.”

He’d go on to say “You start on your task without any training. Even the Peace Corps spends around $10,000 on each corps member to help him adapt to his new environment and to guard him against culture shock. How odd that nobody ever thought about spending money to educate poor Mexicans in order to prevent them from the culture shock of meeting you?“

But I will LEARN from this experience, I would want to tell him. And his speech would respond “The damage which volunteers do willy-nilly is too high a price for the belated insight that they shouldn’t have been volunteers in the first place.”

But… but…I’m so PRIVILEGED, I’d say. I want to give back!  And he would respond with “I am here to suggest that you voluntarily renounce exercising the power which being an American gives you. I am here to entreat you to freely, consciously and humbly give up the legal right you have to impose your benevolence on Mexico. I am here to challenge you to recognize your inability, your powerlessness and your incapacity to do the “good” which you intended to do.”

My heart would break a little.

And then he would conclude with, “I am here to entreat you to use your money, your status and your education to travel in Latin America. Come to look, come to climb our mountains, to enjoy our flowers. Come to study. But do not come to help.“

And maybe then, just then, after I had heard this Illich speech in person, and listened to his passion for these words, would I have been able to walk away, having learned these lessons without living them.

And I’d re-hear a part of his speech: “Perhaps there is also something to the argument that young men should be promiscuous for awhile in order to find out that sexual love is most beautiful in a monogamous relationship. Or that the best way to leave LSD alone is to try it for awhile -or even that the best way of understanding that your help in the ghetto is neither needed nor wanted is to try, and fail. I do not agree with this argument.”

And I’d realized that someone should have told me this earlier, but I couldn’t have absorbed it unless I lived it myself, OR heard someone as knowledgeable on this subject speak so directly – so honestly – without caring about hurting my feelings or sugar coating his words to avoid making me feel bad because he knew my intentions were good. I would have maybe then realized I should walk away, because he told me directly, and I realized that he was right: “The damage which volunteers do willy-nilly is too high a price for the belated insight that they shouldn’t have been volunteers in the first place.”

Read the full Illich speech here: http://bit.ly/hkJN17

It seems that nearly every GAP year program, international school curriculum, and business incentivizing “volunteer leave” is now harping on the concept of “service learning”. They are no longer calling it “volunteering”, as the learning is being emphasized, but what I think we need is a further revolution of this concept. I no longer believe in “service learning” as the best thing to promote to travelers visiting a new place. I now believe in and want to promote the concept of:

Learning Service

or

Learning to Serve

By prioritizing learning, we are able to live the mantra I now try to repeat and remember: we have to learn before we can help. By noting that learning comes before serving, we are reminded of participatory development theories, about researching before we act, about how doing good isn’t something we can take for granted – it takes work. Learning Service means we are learning HOW to be of service: learning about development issues and how we might help or hinder progress through our interventions, about how to vet responsible partners for our money or our time, and about who the players are in the areas we are passionate about and where our skills might add the most value.

Businesses, let your staff members have that same “volunteer leave”, or even more of it, if they decide to learn before they help. Invest in their learning service options so they can become better world citizens and they, your company, and our society will be better for it.

Schools and parents, incentivize your students to learn before they help. Don’t send them out telling them to solve problems they don’t yet know about. Remind them that, just like writing a great paper, we need to do our research first. Show them how that is done by modeling learning service in your school programs.

If any of you reading this are interested in writing a short paper with me on this topic at some point, let me know as I’d love to send this concept out to schools and CSR programs as a challenge to them to incentivize more responsible service by prioritizing learning first.

What are your thoughts on this? Is there a better way to do or to describe whatever you believe to be the most responsible way to travel to a new place?