Join the discussion on Social Edge about voluntourism and how to “do it right”. I argue, that “doing it right” means not coming into a place to “volunteer” in the first place, but to learn and to share mutually. “Learning service” rather than “service learning” is what we should teach our students to seek out [...]
I just read through and commented on this blog by Jane Reitsma about the local vs global volunteering debate. She wrote it in response to my post about ideas for how to add value in your volunteer placement. You can see in my comments on Jane’s piece that I recently had an experience where I [...]
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 [...]
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 written response from 16 year old Naya Herman who is considering volunteering abroad and so I decided to answer her two questions in two new blog [...]
UGH! 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 [...]
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 [...]
A week or so ago someone from CNN contacted us to ask about our opinions on voluntourism, and today we’re on the front page of cnn.com! Exciting that we get to share our message about our transition from traditional “voluntourism” to an education-focused approach. Full story here: http://edition.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/05/31/voluntourism.tips/index.html