We support REAL volunteering
What do you mean real volunteering? Isn’t volunteering simply volunteering?
Unfortunately not. With the explosion in demand for gap year placements there has been a huge increase in the amount of organisations offering volunteering placements. From small companies to large tourism giants, there is a lot of organisations to choose from. There is now a huge choice and as these organisations compete with each other some are offering the chance to volunteer on short term placements and mix it in with tourist activities. These so called ‘voluntourism’ placements appear to offer more and so are attractive to many young people.
Unfortunately in many instances these types of placements do not take the host community into consideration and as a consequence research by the Human Sciences Research Council found that these short term placements can actually cause a negative effect on the host communities, particularly in reference to working with vulnerable people such as orphans.
Furthermore, as a charity committed to youth development it is important to make volunteers and their parents aware of the differences a real, long term volunteering placement will provide compared to one that is only a couple of weeks long. It is common knowledge that a volunteering placement can equip a young person with a whole host of skills and attributes that will make them more mature and of course more employable in the competitive graduate / youth job market. To say a volunteer will learn as much or develop as much in a couple of weeks as they would on a long term volunteering placement is simply not true.
In our experience every volunteer wants to make a difference, some ‘voluntourism’ options simply will not provide that opportunity leaving a volunteer disappointed, disillusioned and ruing a missed opportunity.
Lets volunteer responsibly and get the most out of it for both volunteer and host community! For more information, please see our ‘campaign for REAL volunteering‘
