Lessons I Learned

It’s exciting when people look past the bottom line of their own company and spend their time and resources to take action to improve the whole field in which they work.  Priscilla Macy of Global Sojourns is someone who does that on a regular basis.  Priscilla and her company offer a range of adventure travel options and she also runs “Giving Circle” trips where travelers have a chance to support and learn about development programs in Africa. Having worked in development for many years, Priscilla has strong reservations about having short-term and inexperienced volunteers get involved in any development projects, so “voluntourism” is something she has stayed away from.  She does though try to encourage people to support the projects they learn about on their travels and is always looking for the best ways to facilitate that.

As we have seen proven in Cambodia as well, Priscilla believes that there is a lot of learning which must happen on the part of travelers and novice donors in order to translate their good intentions into positive results for local programs.  As such, she has created and collected a wealth of resources with which to educate her guests and provide context for their travels.

Here are two of Global Sojourns’ reading packets for their Giving Circle Tours.  The “Ambassadors Booklet” has information about traveling and supporting development work in Africa.  It is an interactive PDF and it has a wealth of valuable resources which are useful for travelers looking to support programs in any country.

The “It’s More Complicated Than It Looks” reading packet includes a few short reflections (including one of my own) about Traveler’s Philanthropy gone bad – a sort of how not to do global giving handbook – which is intended to highlight the importance of long-term planning for travelers looking to support development programs.

Check these out and use them in your travelers!  If you love them (as we do), then please visit Global Sojourn’s website and tell Priscilla you’re impressed with her work!  We sure are!

When I first read this post by Alanna Shaikh, I was too busy to write, so I passed it on internally to all those at PEPY, because I know that so many of us would disagree with her. I can’t see the comments on the page, because maybe they have been hidden, but supposedly there are many others who felt the same way, including a post by Nicholas Negroponte.  I hope they will be republished soon, so that we can all see them.  (Oh!  I found the reply by NN – “Wait and see.”  Rock on Nicholas!)

I would have agreed with Alanna at some points a few years ago. Many of our current staff or visiting donors did, before they arrived here. The post is clearly written from someone who is looking at this idea “computers in the developing world” from a theorist standpoint, reading the media available to her written in her developed country of choice, and who has not had much (or any?) interactions with these computers in the areas where they were designed to be used.  In effect, she’s saying bananas don’t taste good and are of no use to humans when eating those she bought in her local 7-11, having never tried one off the vine in Honduras.

I understand where she is coming from, I have shared her opinions in the past, and still share her opinions when it comes to what appears to me to be wasted non-applicable technologies being introduced in a non-sustainable way.   I see where she is coming from, but I still think she is very wrong. Perhaps if she were here, her opinions would be different. She and I might agree that buying computers and solar is surely not “sustainable” for Cambodia, that teacher training or support to get increased government action to improve education would be better uses of money. We might agree that the computer is in its nascent stages and there is a lot to be improved. We might agree that a great TEACHER is the best way for kids to learn, and a green machine can’t replace that. But if she came her, she might change her opinion that these green things can’t, won’t and aren’t changing the world because indeed, they already have.

Here is a reply I wrote to this blog but since the replys don’t seem to be showing, I’m putting it here:

Note: For anyone using XOs out there: we had someone come in and do a research project on our XO program who helped to match the Cambodian curriculum with XO programs and come up with learning ideas. If you want to learn more about this, contact us at PEPY www.pepyride.org

I think this is a very myopic view on the potential for change OLPC has started. If you had looked at the Apple2e computer I used when I was a kid maybe you would have only seen the basic programs I was using and not see what is possible today. We use the OLPC laptops in Cambodia and when I look at them in use, I see my Apple2e. It’s very basic now in some ways, but that’s the point. It’s opensource. The people in the places that are using these can, will and are developing better and better programs for it.

I have been to the schools the Negropontes sponsor in Cambodia, which was our impetus to apply for laptops through the give-one-get-one program. Spend a day in one of their schools, and I guarantee you will change your mind, at least in terms of the potential for change, based on these tools.

If there was no word “laptop” in the name, they would have gotten a lot less press, but naming it a “learning tool” would have been a more correct choice and perhaps saved them a lot of criticism. It’s not a “laptop” meant to replace what you and I are working on. It is a tool for kids to guide them through their own learning – when their teachers don’t show up, when there is a huge differentiation between levels in one class, when there are too many students for one-on-one instruction.

I don’t agree with Nicholas Negroponte that any child can pick one up and know how to fix the inside. I do agree with Alanna that, for the best learning environment, you need a great teacher or ideally facilitator, but that is the same for anything you are learning. I have seen in our students and the other OLPC programs we work with in Cambodia, that these tools are inspiring children to lead themselves into areas of education that they are not given access to in their normal government classes.

The word “lesson plan” is evil in the constructivism world of Papert followers and the child-led learning model of OLPC. No “how-to” guide is not an accident but was planned. I agree with Alanna that for most people, who have been spoon-fed their knowledge all their lives, they are not capable of making the leap and learning on their own. In a place like Cambodia some of the most educated young people I know are used to that: they teach themselves all they want to learn via the internet. We have found those people make great facilitators for the program and we don’t follow all constructivist methodologies in our classroom, in fact we brought a researcher in to observe and analyze lessons our teachers had developed and to turn those into “lesson plans” (gasp!).

If you really believe “But it’s not going to change the world, or even affect it all that much.” you have not made all of the connections to all of the ways it already HAS changed the word. It has some of the newest technologies in environmentally friendly parts, screen visibility in bright light, battery life, mesh-technologies, etc etc… and all of those things are ALREADY changing the world as others take them and continue to improve upon them.

Here in Cambodia, there are groups of young Cambodians who meet regularly to translate OLPC programs into Khmer. The new versions we just got have Khmer script and we are now using Scratch in Khmer as well. Walk into a classroom where we work and see older students teaching younger students how to read Khmer via the animated Khmer testing program they designed themselves, and you will change your mind a bit. Talk to our computer teachers, young Cambodians who taught themselves how to use the XOs, and yes, they will tell you there is a lot they don’t understand, but they are effecting change. You can’t see that from your office, but I can see it here. It’s just the start! Each new version of the XO we get is better and better and will continue to be.

If you want to learn more about what we are doing with Scratch on the XOs or about the “lesson plans” our team developed to match the Khmer curriculum, contact us at PEPY www.pepyride.org

Here is an interview travelfish did on PEPY: http://www.travelfish.org/feature/161

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.

Click here to read the full article.

I enjoyed this post on the Working World blog which which discusses how:

in an effort to give unemployed graduates something to do, the British government is paying 500 people under 24 to travel abroad and take part in projects “such as building schools”

I can no longer get the BBC link to work, but you get the overview from Mark’s post as it is.  Many people now understand the negative effects of “dumping” when it comes to food supplies between countries, typically ones which have extreme discrepancies of wealth.  Dare I say, if programs like this continue to expand and if foreigners are paid by their own governments to do work for free which would otherwise cost money to hire a local person to do, would that then be human “dumping”?

In response to the Worldchanging article which highlighted a previous post I had written about my thoughts on Voluntourism, added these comments:

Tourism itself is causing a lot of the problems I see growing in Cambodia. Unfortunately putting the complete breaks on tourism would probably be similar to trying to stop a run away train (though the economy is surely grinding its wheels a bit)…. I get asked why, if I don’t think tourism is doing great things for Cambodia and I’m very critical of voluntourism I am then working in the industry itself. Good question. My answer: because it isn’t going to stop if I go home. Voluntourism is such a popular concept now, that poor attempts at traveler’s philanthropy programs are popping up everywhere. I would rather stay here and try to do it better, as I believe it can be done, than not provide a more responsible (in my opinion) option than what is currently being advertised in Cambodia.(At PEPY) we have done some post-tour surveys (a year+ after our tours) to see what effects our trips have had on everyday behaviors, and although the effects are not always huge and not everyone admits big changes in their lives, we have seen that our tours do indeed impact the ways people travel and live once they leave. I think that is indeed possible to change behaviors if tours are designed to do that, if the concept of taking these attitude shifts home is discussed thoroughly on the trip itself, if there is a community which the travelers can still be a part of once they return, and if there is follow up initiated by both the travel operator and the guests. No, it’s not better than not having camera-yielding paparazzi-like groups trek through rural villages in the first place, but if you don’t allow the cameras and you weave education into the framework of the trip, it is better than many alternatives, in my opinion.

I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this. I would also love to know if other organizations conduct post-voluntourism surveys at an attempt at measuring long-term behavior changes. If you do something like that, let me know, as we’d love to exchange ideas with others looking to track this information!

It’s nearly 3am. Our updated PEPY Tours website is about to go live and 4 of us are in the office trying to make that happen. We are feeling the pressure of the fact that supposedly all power will be cut in Siem Reap tomorrow or the next day for two days, so we wanted to get the site live before that happens.

The PEPY literacy camp aimed at training and inspiring 45 teachers from all 8 schools in the commune where we work is starting up again in a few hours. NGO work by day, voluntourism discussions by night, sleep when you’re dead I guess (though I’m sure we’ll all be sleeping a bit late tomorrow).

Let’s hope that by the time (a nicer way to say “if”) you read this, www.pepytours.com will have gone live with it’s new pretty pictures, cleaner format, and PEPY Tours Goals/Vision. Goodnight.

Enough stamping our feet about what isn’t working in voluntourism! This site was an idea for something we needed when we were searching for resources on how to improve our volunteer travel offerings at PEPY Tours. We knew that we couldn’t be  our own auditor and needed an outside resource or body to help us evaluate our tour offerings. We found lots of responsible tourism guidelines but nothing similar for volunteer travel so we decided to do the research and make one ourselves. This will soon go live on a page called Voluntourism101, but in the meantime it is here for all you voluntourism operators and critics to give input on.

Thanks to Karina Kloos who did the research for this project while volunteering with PEPY, to all of the PEPY staff who have edited, brainstormed, and requested a resource like this for quite some time, and special thanks to all of YOU, including tour operators, academics, and development workers who added thoughts and opinions. Extra thanks to VoluntourismGal and XOLA who added and thoughts and who are helping too promote these!

We would be happy if you put these on your site or share them with others. Please link to www.pepytours.com if you do as the document was created by PEPY volunteers.  Many thanks!

Click here to download the Voluntourism101 Self-Check Tool

* This document was researched and compiled by PEPY volunteers (www.pepytours.com)