Co-founders of our newly launched Solar Cooker Volunteering project, honeymooy couple, Brett and Betsy, share their trip with you. Bret and Besty believed so much in the project that on their return to New York they educated friends and family and helped raise additional funds for our volunteer projects!
Although it is ultimately the volunteer who decides with which organisation they want to volunteer with and who will receive their hard earned money, it is vital that organisations provide responsible and ethical programmes. It is disturbing to see more and more articles on-line in which volunteers are over-promised and under-delivered. Is it just a matter of time before South Africa features as one of these “irresponsible” volunteer destinations?
Admittedly there is a growing awareness from consumers that they should do their homework properly. But even then many websites look “responsible and ethical” - they use all the right terminology, are picked out by search engines looking for these key words or phrases. “Green washing” is difficult to see through and many website promote themselves as ethical and responsible volunteer / voluntour organisations.
Voluntourism in South Africa is booming! Every day we come across another operator starting up. Some plagerising material from our own website without even attempting to change the wording. On face-value these websites looks good and say all the right things. But look a bit deeper and the cracks start to emerge. Some of them are not registered companies, some do not list their company registration number, some operate without a physical address, some only have a mobile number to contact them on …. and the list goes on.
The global trend of large wholesale tour operators offering voluntourism products has come to South Africa. A potential shortcoming in a lot of voluntourism models is that they operate their programmes like a normal retail travel booking – your community placement or should I rather say “booking” is automatically guaranteed and your money is taken. Importantly no screening or matching of skill takes place. What this means in practice is that the receiving community – in some cases vulnerable communities, with little rights and influence, often with OVC (Orphans and/or Vulnerable Children) in their midst - has no say on who comes into their community or what they will be doing. This “push” approach to volunteering does not always take into account the needs of the community and brings its own set of risks. In a worse-case scenario these operators could be sending paedophiles to work with children.
Voluntourism has many risks that communities themselves may not be aware of. Despite these risks, they often “buy-in” to voluntourism because of the promise of a monetary donation. One of the risks being that dependency is created and/or increased. And in some cases, the community often does not have the capacity to effectively utilize the large number of volunteers sent to them. If voluntourism is to make a sustainable contribution to communities then it is important that they do not replace local labour but work with local labour. Much of the “work” that volunteers are asked to do can and should be done by employing local labour. Should volunteer programmes be geared more at passing on higher-order skills than doing basic maintenance and repair work?
Share in the experiences of couple Shelly and Joe (USA) who spent their Christmas week volunteering in our community Lfe Skills Volunteering project. Shelly really has a talent for writing and capturing what life is like in rural South Africa.
Some of Joes highlights during his volunteer programme:
Teaching the boys how to play baseball and watching how quickly they picked it up after playing only one game (which lasted several hours). It was rewarding when they wanted to play every day thereafter and then to hear from Kabello that the boys continued to play after Shelly and I left the village.
Helping Kabello build a CV and cover letter. It seemed to have a positive impact as he was taking more pride in running his restaurant/bar business in the community center. Additionally, after encouraging him to continue his education, he emailed us to tell us he plans to go back to school.
Realizing the importance of conserving basic resources such as water, toilet paper, newspaper, etc that previously we would have consumed/wasted without thinking about it.
Some of Shelly’s highlights during her volunteer programme:
Each child is so special and touched my heart. They are so well behaved and appreciative that we were there. I loved seeing their smiling faces every morning as they trickled into the center looking for us.
Loved teaching the kids math and spelling. It was so nice that they asked to learn on their holiday break. I helped one of the boys named Sagat to write his multiplication tables and he said he would memorize them. I know this will help him in all his future math courses. He wrote us a really sweet card at the end of the week.
I enjoyed chatting with Elizabeth and the ladies and the food they cooked was really good!
Mason, 13, USA: It was totally awesome. I was expecting so much from Voluntours and not only did they meet my expectations but exceeded them and I had a blast. At 2 thumbs up, 5 stars you get the point!
Co-founders of Solar Cooker project share their experiences
