You are viewing a read-only archive of the Blogs.Harvard network. Learn more.

The Longest Now


Making volunteering abroad useful
Sunday February 28th 2010, 6:31 am
Filed under: Uncategorized

My first work in education and international development was a volunteering program overseas, carried out by a typically ineffective program. It wasted funds, was more tourism than productive work, and despite being replicated in dozens of countries had no capacity to learn from experiences and mistakes over time.

Daniela Papi offers a thorough take on the subject: the dangers of voluntourism.




I liked this bit:

“If you find a company that discusses the trip as “life-changing” for the communities you are visiting, scroll further until you find one that admits that the real selling point is that the experience will be life-changing for YOU. That is OK! That is why we travel, so let’s not try to hide that.”

Comment by phoebe 02.28.10 @ 1:06 pm





Bad Behavior has blocked 191 access attempts in the last 7 days.