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Orphanage Voluntourism: Helping or Hurting?

Family/Kids Travel, Featured Posts, Travel News, Voluntourism — on September 18, 2012 1:18 pm
Orphanage Voluntourism: Helping or Hurting?

Each week we spotlight a different volunteer vacation from across the country and around the world. While we vet each program that we chose, the vastly expanding volunteer travel industry is now under scrutiny, especially the growing trend of orphanage tourism. Ben Moroski examines both sides of the issue and offers steps for choosing a legitimate program.

Volunteer tourism or “voluntourism” is a growing niche in the travel industry. A 2008 survey by MSNBC and Condé Nast Traveler found that 20 percent of respondents had taken at least one volunteer vacation and 62 percent of those who hadn’t said they were likely to take one. According to a recent members-only survey conducting by the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), 55 percent of the responding tour operators currently run volunteer trips and nearly half of the remaining 45 percent are considering offering them in the future. Translation: Travelers are no longer content with sightseeing. They want to be immersed in local culture. And most importantly, it seems, they want to give back to the communities they’re visiting.

One of the growing trends in volunteer vacation activities is working with children in developing countries, particularly those who are orphaned or hard-hit by disaster. Currently, the opportunities for such interactions appear boundless.

In Cambodia, for example, the number of orphanages has nearly tripled in the past five years – only a handful of which are operated by the state, most being run privately. But what does volunteering in an orphanage entail, and is it helping—or even harming—the local community?

The concept of “orphanage tourism” received some of its most public scrutiny in a recent Al Jazeera People and Power series documentary “Cambodian Orphan Business” reporter Juliana Ruhfus investigates what she calls, “a darker side of voluntourism.”Ruhfus and her colleagues reveal their findings about the less-than-stellar behavior by both orphanages and tour providers.

One accusation targeted the high cost of volunteering: one tour provider charged volunteers $3,000 per month while the orphanages saw about only $9 per week of that sum. One of the most concerning accusations is that orphanage operators are deliberately keeping children in abject living conditions to generate continued foreign donations and lax or non-existent background checks for potential volunteers.

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  • dreamingofargentina.com

    “Have you ever read tourist accounts of children in orphanages giving them the biggest hugs and not wanting to let go?” asked Andy Hill. “There’s a reason and it’s not good.” He says this perpetual cycle of short-term attachment followed by repeat abandonment is potentially very damaging to these impressionable children.’

    I feel like this is the crux of the problem. Even if the volunteer stays with the community for a few months or even a year, they are still going to abandon these children who have seen too many people leave them already.

    If a volunteer pays $300 a month to help in an orphanage in , say, Cambodia, well why would that orphanage pay wages to a trained person from the community to work with the children? The problem with that is the local person could work with the children in the orphanage for years or even decades. Those children need people who won’t abandon them.

    Also, they’re orphans. They’re not just children, not even just poor children. They need people helping them who know how to work with children who may have psychological and grieving issues. An 18 year-old kid from Sheffield on their gap year does not know how to do this. These children generally need expert help.

    My friend helped out in an orphanage in India for 3 months. She grew attached to one girl who was 14, and that girl really admired my friend, told her she wanted to go to university just like her. ‘You’re such a smart girl, keep studying hard and you can!’ My friend was so happy that she’d made such a positive impact on this young girl’s life, but that’s India not Scotland. Work hard and get grades, it still doesn’t mean you can go to university. Life’s not like that in most of the countries where Western people help out in orphanages. It’s dangerous to promise the world to impressionable young people who deserve more.

    I think the best thing to do would be to donate money to train professionals from that locality, who can work with the same orphans throughout their childhood, who can understand the culture they come from, who can be there every week and provide them with what every child needs: stability and security and love that doesn’t go away.

  • Caitlin

    I just spent a month volunteering in small, disorganized orphanage in Peru. This article is very interesting and I completely agree with many of the points made. Although it sounds nice to say I’m going to help out at an orphanage while I’m travelling, in reality these children need much more than they can receive from a revolving door of volunteers. I know this as I was one of those volunteers.

  • pamela

    I love volunteering these kids but real I can. I wish to start the center for those children but I need sponsorship. Please, If there will be those who will help I am read to start.