Lessons I Learned

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)

I put up my thoughts on voluntourism on the World Pulse site and had received some thoughts and feedback.  One of the questions came from someone struggling with how to give back with her skills when her skills lay in math and physics. I interpreted her question as saying something like “If there are people in need of food, does it make sense to try to give back through physics skills?”

You can see what I wrote on the link above or here below. I would love to read your thoughts as well.

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There is a program I really respect in Nepal called “READ Global”. They “build libraries” – but it’s much more than that. The process they use is what makes them exceptional. When a community approaches them to build a library, they must also provide an idea for an income generating project that fills a need in the community. For some places it might be to rent the under-library area as stalls for a market and for others it might be converting a tuk-tuk into an ambulance and charging a small fee for the service of a ride to the hospital.  READ helps them start the income generating project and once it is running on it’s own and making income, they build the library, buy the books and train the teacher.  Then it is up to the community based organization (CBO) to manage the income generating project well and continue to bring enough revenue in to fund the librarian.  In this way, the project can Continue Reading

I just read this post “9 Reasons Not To Give Things Away” and I agree with it. It relates back to my earlier post discussing how a group working in the same area as us in Cambodia subsidized water filters and thereby destroyed the market for the product (and negatively effected water filter use/health).

I would argue for, as much as possible, charging the market value for the product. (I do realize there are many cases where the discrepancy between the ability to pay an the actual costs are irreconcilable, but in many cases one of these strategies can be used.)

“But what about the really poor people who can’t afford to pay the market value?” some ask.

1) Even in the poorest areas there are wealth discrepancies (even though from a distant overview those changes are slight). In Cambodia at least, when Continue Reading

In the last post,  I wrote about how voluntourism can be ineffective if the right match between traveler and program is not found. I suggested placing volunteers in a role they are a natural fit for: as tourists.  Here is how this example fits into our work at PEPY in Cambodia. I would be interested to hear from other operators if they think this type of model would work in their areas as well.

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In Cambodia, and many other developing areas, a significant portion of tourism dollars never hit the local pockets.  Travelers come for their average stay of less than 3 days, eat imported food, stay in foreign-owned guesthouses paying foreign managers, and only leave a few of their tourism dollars in the country.  Our responsible tourism statement states how we try to counter these issues at PEPY.

We make it clear on our trips Continue Reading