I was recently scrolling through the BBC news homepage when a suggested article came up that grabbed my attention. Titled ‘is gap-year volunteering a luxury for the rich?’ it is unsurprising that it immediately interested me as someone who has spent the last five months interning for an NGO in Peru. Though not technically volunteering, the experience has been unpaid so, arguably something I may not have been able to do without an economically stable family background to support me. In saying that, I have tried to avoid receiving financial help from my parents to fund this trip. My flight was reimbursed by the organisation I am working for and the accommodation is also covered. The money I have been living off has been a mixture of money I earned before moving, student loan and a grant from my university. However, the article does have a point. One of the main reasons I was able to take this job was because I knew that if I ran out of money, my parents would be there to help me out. I imagine that in reality, the majority of people who are able to take up opportunities like this come from financially stable families.
However, though unfortunate that these volunteering programs may be somewhat elitist, working against people from poorer family backgrounds, the really important point of this article should not have been who is partaking in these trips but what type of trip they are partaking in. The article, written by Vikram Barhat, stated that an often disputed point about these volunteer programs “is the effectiveness of their efforts to make a sustainable difference to poor societies they claim to serve, with some research even suggesting they can be damaging.” It is for this reason that I wanted to draw attention to this article. Too often, people are going on these trips predominantly just to get “a profile picture of themselves with orphans in Africa”. As a middle class student working for an NGO in an impoverished country, it has been hard to avoid this stereotype. However, for the organisation I am working for (MEDLIFE), this idea could not be further from the truth.
Unlike a medical mission, MEDLIFE does not just set up clinics with rich western students for a week and then leave after prescribing a few pills. We work with the same communities and the same patients all year round. Clinic season takes place over christmas and during the summer and this is when students, more often than not with an interest in medicine, come to volunteer for a week. However, after they fly home the patients they worked with don’t get forgotten. Patients are put into the follow up system and are visited by nurses, taken to hospital and supported with medical expenses until we are satisfied we have done everything we can for them. Often, after visiting a community several times to see a patient, we will also begin a project such as a staircase or community centre there, all the time working with the community to make sure we are giving them what they need and not just what we think they need.
The good thing about this model is that though there are volunteers who only come to work abroad for a week, their work far outlasts that period. Students with MEDLIFE chapters at their university can continue to raise money for people they have met after their trip and our native and foreign staff can continue to work with the patients and communities we met at clinics.
For me, this seems a very viable model for the future of non governmental organisations. I know that MEDLIFE is far from the only organisation that is structured in this way but what is worrying is the number of NGOs that are still around that don’t stick to this model. The best way to ensure that the future of NGOs goes is a positive direction is to make sure volunteers are doing their research before flying out anywhere to ‘help the poor.’ There are two important things to check for when volunteering. Firstly, an organisation that is sustainable in the way that it builds a relationship with the people it works with. This can be through having staff native to the country who work all year round on the mission and having a system whereby it can be assured that the organisation is following up with the communities it works with. The second important point is that it guarantees 100% of its profits go back into its charitable work. This will show that the organisation is not just taking advantage of ‘voluntourism’ but is actually seeking to make a difference.
Though there are many class issues with these volunteering programs and in reality the nature of this work does favour those from higher income backgrounds, this doesn’t have to affect the benefits these organisations can have for poor communities. To say that a year out volunteering is “a luxury” seems to bring negative connotations to the position, suggesting it is something done only to benefit the volunteer. In reality, these programs can do a lot to lessen poverty in communities and improve the lives of many of the most impoverished people in this world. Furthermore, if developed correctly, through charitable organisations we can be responsible for eliminating poverty just as we have been responsible for creating it.
Views From A Bridge 