Category Archives: humanitarian action

Theater as a Tool for Community Development

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For my Master’s Degree in Development Management at Open University, (the degree is, as of 2021, called Global Development) my last course was TU874 The Development Management Project, completed in October 2005. This final course involved my researching a development-related topic of my choice, and producing a 10,000 word paper as a result of this research. My research project was an investigation of what elements need to be in place before an organization produces a live, in-person performance, or series of performances, as a development tool, excluding performer training and theater techniques. The goal was to identify the systems and atmosphere that need to be cultivated in order to ensure the success of a TfD initiative and to tie these to the concepts taught in OU Development Management courses.

There are numerous organizations using theater techniques as part of their development activities, and there are also numerous initiatives, publications, web sites and individuals that promote and chronicle successes regarding live, in-person performance as an effective tool for development. Even in our current age saturated with multi-media and podcasts, live, in-person performance/TfD is a popular and effective tool for education, outreach and capacity-building regarding a variety of development issues, such as HIV/AIDS prevention, domestic violence, evolving gender roles, or good sanitation practices.

However, at least as of 2005, there was little information on what has to be in place before these techniques are used, excluding performer training, to better ensure that these techniques will be well-received by an audience/participants, and to better ensure that the desired outcomes will be generated. I saw a need for more information on how to cultivate support for and trust in such an initiative among staff at the lead agency, among partner organizations, and among those for whom the theater-for-development techniques will be used.

This project included a review of key literature on TfD, and semi-structured interviews with 12 TfD practitioners.

You can read online:

I know this is old research, but I still think it’s relevant, and I like to make sure people know it’s available.

Those of you who know me were all expecting me to do something regarding either volunteerism, specifically online volunteering or the vital role volunteers play in community technology initiatives, or mission-based organizations and technology, as that’s been the focus of my professional work for decades. Well… surprise!

Live, in-person theater has always been a love of mine: I was always involved in theater in some way during junior high, high school and then my undergrad at university, and for five years, I worked in public relations and marketing at various professional theaters, including the Tony-Award winning Hartford Stage and the internationally-acclaimed Williamstown Theater Festival. The power of theater to reach people fascinates me. There is nothing like it, no experience that matches it. Writing my Master’s Degree final project on a theater-related topic was my opportunity to get back in touch with something that started me off professionally, and something I believe in personally.

Also see my related blogs:

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Decolonizing International Aid (including international volunteering)

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Discussions about unequal power dynamics in international humanitarian aid and development systems have entered the mainstream and become much more prevalent. Local people in communities that are the target of such international aid have become increasingly vocal about the ways in which power and resources in the system remain dominated by, and between, certain organizations and relationships largely based in the “Global North” or “the West” – meaning North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Aid flows between former colonial powers and former colonised regions often mirror their past colonial relationships, with decision-making power concentrated in the Global North.

Structural racism is so deeply embedded in the everyday culture and working practice of those in the sector that it has affected the way local staff regard their own communities and how they engage with INGOs.

In November 2020, Peace Direct, Adeso, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, and Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security held a three-day online consultation with 158 activists, decision-makers, academics, journalists and practitioners across the globe. Participants and guest contributors exchanged insights and local experiences on the current power dynamics and imbalances that exist within the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding sectors. They discussed how structural racism manifests itself in their work, and how they envision a decolonised system that is truly inclusive and responds to their needs. The consultation received more than 350 detailed comments across nine discussion threads. This report presents the findings and recommendations from that consultation:

Time to Decolonise Aid: Insights and Lessons from a Global Consultation.

There are many volunteering abroad programs focused on humanitarian, development and peacebuilding and, just like with paid staff, many of these programs also promote unequal power dynamics. If you want to better understand the backlash against international volunteering (not just voluntourism) and the “White Savoir” complex, this report is worth reading.

Also see:

My voluntourism-related & ethics-related blogs.

Teaching youth about poverty – teaching compassion or supremacy?

Systemic Exclusion in Volunteer Engagement.

Managers of volunteers & resistance to diversity.

accessibility, diversity & virtual volunteering.

Resources from my time at United Nations Volunteers

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It was 20 years ago today that I began my first job with the United Nations. Specifically, I was a program specialist (P3), directing the UN’s Online Volunteering service and co-managing the United Nations Technology Service, both hosted at the UN Volunteers headquarters in Bonn Germany (UNV is a division of the UN Development Programme – UNDP).

It was a position I held for four years and which was the start of a new international career for me.

In the last few years, I’ve been working to preserve the many resources I developed or helped develop as a part of this incredible opportunity, all of which were disappearing from the World Wide Web. Here are those resources:

Lessons from the UN’s Online Volunteering service.
In directing the UN’s platform for agencies working in and for the development world to recruit online volunteers, I carefully documented what worked and what didn’t, challenges, successes and more. I turned much of that into web pages on the onlinevolunteering.org website itself; when the site was changed a few years after I left, those resources and data were deleted. I’ve reproduced them here on my own web site.

United Nations Technology Service (UNITeS)
This was a global volunteer initiative created by Kofi Annan in 2000 and hosted at UNV. UNITeS both supported volunteers applying information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D) and promoted volunteerism as a fundamental element of successful ICT4D initiatives. During the tenure of UNITeS, the UNV program helped place and/or support more than 300 volunteers applying ICT4D in more than 50 developing countries, including 28 Least Developed Countries (LDC), making it one of the largest volunteering in ICT4D initiatives. The activities of UN Volunteers, as well as those by tech volunteers working through NetCorps, CompuMentor, the Association for Progressive Communications, Australian Volunteers International, NetCorps, Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) and Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA), were tracked and promoted by UNITeS as part of its overall mission. Part of the UNITeS mandate was to try to track all of the various tech volunteering initiatives and encourage them to share their best practices and challenges with each other. I was one of the managers of this initiative, developing the web materials and writing about what ICT4D volunteers were doing, as well as managing the UNITeS online community.

Handheld computer technologies in community service/volunteering/advocacy
This was a pioneering article, published in October 2001. It provides early examples of volunteers/citizens/grassroots advocates using handheld computer/personal digital assistants (PDAs) or phone devices as part of community service/volunteering/advocacy, or examples that could be applied to volunteer settings. It was originally part of the UNITeS online knowledge base. It anticipated the popularity of smartphones and #apps4good, talking about these concepts long before they had these names.

UNITeS Contributions to the UNESCO Multimedia Training Kit
The UNV staff managing the UNITeS initiative was invited to prepare a module on volunteers in telecentres and community media organizations for the UNESCO Multimedia Training Kit (MMTK). The module includes a slide show presentation, exercises, case studies and trainer notes. I was the primary author of the UNITeS contribution.

What Was NetAid?
NetAid was an anti-poverty initiative, started as a joint venture between UNDP and Cisco Systems. The initiative no longer exists, though a legacy of the initiative, www.onlinevolunteering.org, continues to this day. I oversaw the transition of NetAid to UNV, and also worked to preserve the legacy of the original initiative.

We also had a country and western band in the basement of Haus Carstanjen, but that should really be a separate blog…

Also see:

Remote Monitoring in the Age of COVID-19

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Humanitarian Advisory Group (HAG) and GLOW collaborated on Remote Monitoring in the Age of COVID-19 as part of HAG’s Humanitarian Horizons research program. HAG and GLOW have partnered on third-party monitoring and evaluation (M&E) assignments for a variety of aid and humanitarian donors, including the Department for International Development (DFID, UK) and DFAT, international NGOs (including Concern World and International Rescue Committee) and research institutes (including the Overseas Development Institute).

This guidance note can be used to:

  • plan remote monitoring approaches
  • raise awareness of remote monitoring best practices
  • advocate with donors for supporting remote monitoring requirements

From the intro to the guide, Remote Monitoring in the Age of COVID-19:

Strong monitoring systems are important for effective program delivery in humanitarian contexts. During a global pandemic, there is a vital need for real-time data and evidence to inform responses to rapidly changing environments. However, collecting and using monitoring data to inform programming is often challenging. During COVID-19, this challenge is compounded by access, safety and travel restrictions.

In addition to implementing remote management and programming, humanitarian actors are initiating or scaling up remote monitoring. Agencies are re-evaluating their existing monitoring design and data collection processes, and recognising that new methods will require changes in staffing, working with partners and resourcing…

This note is intended to guide international and national operational actors on how to adapt and think about remote monitoring in the context of COVID-19. It provides a snapshot of key takeaways from previous research, and draws together emerging learning and guidance.

Update Oct 4, 2020:

War Child Canada has produced a guidance note on remote monitoring and management of gender-based violence programming during the global pandemic. The note goes into detail on integrating community based monitoring approaches and good practice in establishing community focal points, as well as recommending which of these methods should be adopted as a long-term permanent approach rather than a temporary fix.

A helpful guidance note by USAID on remote monitoring approaches outlines a series of factors to consider before implementing remote monitoring. It also highlights which technological solutions to remote monitoring to use in different contexts.

20 years ago, when everything changed for me

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20 years ago this week, an incredible opportunity came my way, out of the blue: I was invited to Germany by a program of the United Nations, to be a part of a group exploring how information communications technologies – ICTs, computers, PDAs, and the Internet – were transforming communities all over the world and the role volunteers played in supporting and expanding the use of ICTs to support a whole range of activities: health education, agriculture, governance, small business development and more (ICT4D).

This is from the original United Nations communications about this event:

Close to 30 experts in development and information and communication technologies (ICTs) met for a workshop from 21 to 23 August at the headquarters of the United Nations Volunteers programme (UNV) in Bonn, Germany, to discuss ways how volunteers can assist developing countries in the application of ICT to human development. Representing a wide range of organizations from all over the world, the workshop participants focused their discussions on how to launch operations of the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS), a volunteer initiative to help bridge the digital divide. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked UNV to take the lead in bringing together a coalition of partners to launch the new initiative, which was announced in April.

I was invited to participate because I was directing the Virtual Volunteering Project at the University of Texas at Austin, and was frequently posting to various online communities about working with online volunteers and how volunteers were participating in various community technology initiatives. A UNV staff member saw my posts on a group called CYBERVPM and some other online communities, passed on my information to another staff member looking for advice, and the rest is history.

The role volunteers have played in helping people use online technologies cannot be under-estimated. Volunteers were the primary staffing for most community technology centers and nonprofit Internet cafés, helping people to get their first email address, surf the web and find essential information. The Community Technology Network, ctcnet.org, compiled best practices from community tech centers all over the world, sharing these on their web site for anyone to access – you can see these resources yourself by going to The Internet Wayback Machine and looking for www.ctcnet.org yourself.

Because of this invitation, my life changed forever: at the end of the event, held at the headquarters of the United Nations Volunteers program, I was invited to apply for a new position that was being created at UNV to manage the online volunteering part of NetAid, which I later successfully moved entirely to UNV and it became the Online Volunteering Service, I also co-managed the United Nations Technology Information Service (UNITeS), the Secretary General’s ICT4D initiative born out of this meeting – it was a global initiative to help bridge the digital divide that both supported volunteers applying information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D) and promoted volunteerism as a fundamental element of successful ICT4D initiatives.

And from there began my work in international humanitarian and development work: I stayed at UNV for four years, got my MSc in Development Management in December 2005, worked in Afghanistan and Ukraine with UNDP, stayed based in Germany for eight years, and continued to work internationally even after moving back to the USA in 2009.

20 years. It’s just so hard to wrap my head around it being two decades since this happened. I will always be grateful for the circumstances and people that earned me the invitation to this meeting. I will always be grateful to have had these 20 years since.

I’m the girl in the peachy/pink shirt in the middle of this photo, by the way… if you are in the photo, please comment below!

Also see:

UN Digital Cooperation report released

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The age of digital interdependence: Report of the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation has just been released. 

In July 2018 the Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) appointed a panel to consider the question of “digital cooperation” – the ways we work together to address the social, ethical, legal and economic impact of digital technologies in order to maximize their benefits and minimize their harm. The Secretary-General asked the panel to consider how digital cooperation can contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – the ambitious agenda to protect people and the planet endorsed by 193 UN member states in 2015. He also asked the panel to consider models of digital cooperation to advance the debate surrounding governance in the digital sphere.

The Co-Chairs of the panel are Melinda Gates (USA), representing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Jack Ma (China), Executive Chairman of the Alibaba Group. Ex officio members are Amandeep Singh Gill (India) and Jovan Kurbalija (Serbia) of the Secretariat of the High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation. Members of the panel that contributed to the report include:

  • Mohammed Abdullah Al Gergawi (UAE), Minister of Cabinet Affairs and the Future, UAE
  • Yuichiro Anzai (Japan), Senior Advisor and Director of Center for Science Information Analysis, Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
  • Nikolai Astrup (Norway), Former Minister of International Development, now Minister of Digitalisation, Norway
  • Vinton Cerf (USA), Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist, Google
  • Fadi Chehadé (USA), Chairman, Chehadé & Company
  • Sophie Soowon Eom (Republic of Korea), Founder of Adriel AI and Solidware
  • Isabel Guerrero Pulgar (Chile), Executive Director, IMAGO Global Grassroots and Lecturer, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Marina Kaljurand (Estonia), Chair of the Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace
  • Bogolo Kenewendo (Botswana), Minister of Investment, Trade and Industry, Botswana
  • Marina Kolesnik (Russian Federation), senior executive, entrepreneur and WEF Young Global Leader
  • Doris Leuthard (Switzerland), former President and Federal Councillor of the Swiss Confederation, Switzerland
  • Cathy Mulligan (United Kingdom), Visiting Researcher, Imperial College London and Chief Technology Officer of GovTech Labs at University College London
  • Akaliza Keza Ntwari (Rwanda), ICT advocate and entrepreneur
  • Edson Prestes (Brazil), Professor, Institute of Informatics, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
  • Kira Radinsky (Israel), Director of Data Science, eBay
  • Nanjira Sambuli (Kenya), Senior Policy Manager, World Wide Web Foundation
  • Dhananjayan Sriskandarajah (Australia), Chief Executive, Oxfam GB
  • Jean Tirole (France), Chairman of the Toulouse School of Economics and the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse

From the report:

Our dynamic digital world urgently needs improved digital cooperation and that we live in an age of digital interdependence. Such cooperation must be grounded in common human values – such as inclusiveness, respect, human-centredness, human rights, international law, transparency and sustainability. In periods of rapid change and uncertainty such as today, these shared values must be a common light which helps guide us… 

We need to bring far more diverse voices to the table, particularly from developing countries and traditionally marginalised groups, such as women, youth, indigenous people, rural populations and older people…  

The resulting report focuses on three broad sets of interlocking issues, each of which is discussed in one subsequent chapter: 

  • Leaving No One Behind argues that digital technologies will help progress towards the full sweep of the SDGs only if we think more broadly than the important issue of access to the internet and digital technologies
     
  • Individuals, Societies and Digital Technologies underscores the fact that universal human rights apply equally online as offline, but that there is an urgent need to examine how time-honored human rights frameworks and conventions should guide digital cooperation and digital technology.
     
  • Mechanisms for Global Digital Cooperation analyses gaps in the current mechanisms of global digital cooperation, identifies the functions of global digital cooperation needed to address them, and outlines three sets of modalities on how to improve our global digital cooperation architecture – which build on existing structures and arrangements in ways consistent with our shared values and principles.

Some of my observations about the report:

  • I like the three broad sets of interlocking issues.
     
  • I was very pleased to see so much emphasis on countering misinformation and on the need to use online tools to build trust and social cohesion.
     
  • The date of the publication is nowhere to be found on the report. I think it was published in June 2019. 
     
  • The term non-governmental organization (NGO) is never mentioned in the report. Not once.
     
  • Activists nor activism is never mentioned in the report. None once.
     
  • The phrase civil society is used. Does that include the work of NGOs, or activists, including those opposed to government or promoting alternative strategies to those being promoted by more mainstream international NGOs, all of whom mobilize people to engage online as consumers, clients, campaigners, supporters, proponents, opponents of activities by corporations/businesses and the government?
     
  • People with disabilities and their unique needs regarding access digital technologies are lumped in with other marginalized groups, which ignores the unique needs of people different kinds of sight impairments, people with hearing impairments, people with different mobility issues, and a range of other physical and intellectual challenges that people creating online tools do not design for. And there’s no mention that improving accessibility for people with disabilities improves access for EVERYONE. The scant references, lumped in with other marginalized groups, are easy to find: just look for the word “disabilities.” This would have been remedied if the panel had included Sharron Rush (USA), of Knowbility or anyone from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

For the next year or two, this report will be used to justify what any UN initiative does regarding ICT4D – and used to dissuade other proposals, like supporting the needs of human rights activists online, or initiatives that make a centerpiece of promoting accessible web design. And given those ommissions, it’s a mixed bag – a followup is most definitely needed to address this. 

See a list of all United Nations Tech4Good / ICT4D Initiatives to date (yes, I track them, since I was involved with two of them, United Nations Technology Service (UNITeS). and the UN’s Online Volunteering service (formerly NetAid).

Here is the panel’s official web site. You can also follow the initiative on Twitter @UNSGdigicoop.

Also see:

Justifying a position as “volunteer” instead of “paid staff”

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From February 2001 through much of February 2005, I worked at the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) program, managing the UN’s Online Volunteering service (formerly NetAid) and the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS), an initiative created by then Secretary General Kofi Annan. UNITeS promoted the importance of engaging volunteers in information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D) activities and supported volunteers engaged in ICT4D initiatives. The UNITeS staff worked from the premise that a key to getting communities, government, civil society and individuals in developing countries to leverage computers and the Internet so that they benefit from their use was to involve volunteers in introducing the tech, building people’s capacity to use it, supporting digital literacy, etc.

UNV places and supports thousands of highly-skilled people throughout the world to undertake a variety of highly-skilled work: HIV education, providing medical care, managing schools, training teachers, managing a government office’s communications, being apart of Ebola response, and on and on. When a placement would get approved for a UN volunteer to work on a project that related somehow to computers or the Internet, there was a program manager for a particular region who would come to my office, per my association with the UNITeS initaitive, hand me the Terms of Reference for the volunteer placement and say, “UNI-Tize this.”

What she meant was this: add in required skills and responsibilities that justify this being done by someone under a UN Volunteers contract, rather than another type of UN contract that would require the payment of more money to the person that fills the position and the designation of that person as a consultant or staff member.

I’ve long believed that any organization that recruits volunteers, for whatever reason, must have a written statement that explains explicitly why that organization reserves certain tasks / assignments / roles for volunteers. The thousands of experts that are recruited and placed by UNV all over the world, working at a variety of agencies (mostly UNDP), in a variety of areas, are called UN Volunteers, or UNVs, but often, there’s not much to show that they are volunteers, especially given the generous financial compensation UNVs receive. The vision of UNV – as well as other volunteer-sending organizations like Peace Corps and VSO – is that the people that are volunteers through their programs are NOT necessarily people who are career humanitarians; rather, the volunteers are professionals willing to give up six months to two years of their jobs/careers and the compensation that would come with such and, instead, work as a part of a humanitarian endeavor. But I’m sorry to say that, for many agencies, involving people under UNV contracts is a way to save money, as such contracts are far, far cheaper than hiring someone as an employee or consultant outright.

When that UNV program manager gave me those TOS to “uni-tize,” I went through and added responsibilities regarding

  • building the capacities of local counterparts regarding whatever it was he or she was doing, with an eye to this UNV position becoming unnecessary as local people take over. I treated every UNV placement that was “Uni-Tized” as one that would eventually be taken over by a full-time, paid local person NOT under a UNV contract, and for that to happen, local capacity had to be built.
  • creating at least one, local event that could help build the skills of community members regarding some aspect of computer and Internet use: where to find information about current market prices for agricultural products, where to find reliable maternal health information, how to evaluate the credibility of online information, etc. In this case, “Uni-Tize” meant to evangelize regarding ICTs for various development activities (ICT4D).
  • suggestions to involve local volunteers in their work in some way, reaching out to students at nearby universities, or at home on leave from university, to help them gain experience that would help in their future careers. In this case, “Uni-Tize” meant to get local volunteers invested in the work of UNVs in some way.
  • suggestions to make particular efforts to reach out to women, girls, religious and ethnic minorities and people with disabilities in any of the above aforementioned activities, to take all of the tasks beyond merely getting tasks done.

I have to admit I loved looking up from my desk and seeing her standing there with a printout of a Terms of Reference in her hand, or getting an email from her for help to “Uni-Tize” an assignment. It was always challenging to really think about what would make the assignment worthy of the word volunteer. To me, my additions made those UNV placements fully justified in using the word “volunteer” to describe their work, to show that this was more than just a job that had a UNV contract.

I’ve said it before, I say it again: create a mission statement for your organization’s volunteer engagement that explicitly says WHY your organization or department involves volunteers. Such a statement will guide employees in how they think about volunteers and guide current volunteers in thinking about their role at the organization. It will help your organization avoid the reputation for being just a low-cost staffing solution – something no volunteer really wants to be a part of. Here’s more about my philosophy regarding justifying volunteer engagement and making certain roles volunteer instead of paid.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

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Rethinking ethics of volunteering abroad medical missions

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I am a HUGE fan of m NPR’s Goats & Soda program. This is an excerpt from a recent article:

In 1969, volunteer teams of doctors and nurses from a U.S. charity called Interplast began flying to poor countries to do reconstructive surgery. They operated on children with cleft lips, cleft palates or burn scars so thick their limbs were immobilized. It sounded like a great idea. The team members donated their time, paid for their travel and lodging and sometimes their supplies, and got to do good…

Today, missions are sponsored by churches, universities and charities. There are for-profit missions as well that collect fees from volunteers, mostly students. A 2016 estimate put the annual cost of getting doctors and other health care workers to sites around the world at $3.7 billion, paid for by donors or health personnel themselves.

But today there’s some real soul-searching going on about this kind of fly-in. At conferences and in academic papers, health professionals are asking: Is this really the most effective way to provide health care to the developing world?

This article from NPR’s Goats & Soda program explores the ethics of this volunteering abroad practice. There are growing concerns about what happens when these volunteers leave, and there’s a lot of concern that the care they’re providing may not be culturally appropriate or even wanted by the people on the ground. Sociologist Judith Lasker, author of the 2016 book Hoping to Help, worked with the Catholic Health Association on a study that showed that about half the money spent on medical missions goes for travel costs for the teams. “It doesn’t seem like a very cost-effective strategy,” she says. After she told a local health provider in Haiti the cost of the airfare for bringing in a single American doctor, the Haitian said to Lasker, “Imagine how many antibiotics that could buy.”

Please read the article before commenting!

And if you are not following NPR’s Goats & Soda on Social media, you really, really need to be. I follow @GoadsandSoda on Twitter. It’s terrific for people that work in humanitarian interventions or development abroad, or want to understand them – but it’s also good for anyone involved in nonprofit work in their own countries to read. There are a lot of issues that bring up that are local to any charitable activity locally – not just internationally.

Update: This September 2019 article from the American Medical Association explores ethical implications of international medical volunteering, such as scope of practice, continuity of care, and erosion of local health systems, and offers a personal perspective from a related field.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

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Provocative campaigns against voluntourism

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The pushback against voluntourism – where Westerners pay large amounts of money to go to another country for a few days or weeks and engage in an activity they believe is helping people in some way with just a few hours of volunteering – seems to be getting more intense, judging from what I’m seeing online. I’m now not the only one posting about the dark side of voluntourism on sites like Quora and Reddit – which is so different from 10 years ago, when I felt like the lone voice on sites like YahooAnswers, and on my own web site, begging people not to support voluntourism.

In fact, the pushback against voluntourism is spilling over into all humanitarian action, with many local NGOs in high-poverty countries asking large international NGOs why they aren’t being paid to teach their own children, build their own schools and water wells, etc., instead of bringing in foreigners to do so and why there are so many Westerners – most of them white – starting their own NGOs in developing countries. Here’s one of a few memes I’ve seen reflecting this: 

To be fair, many international agencies have greatly evolved and already focus on hiring local people for their humanitarian interventions. Many international agencies running refugee camps are, whenever possible, hiring refugees themselves, in the camps, for the work that needs to be done.

Still, the campaigns getting the most traction are the ones against voluntourism, and one of my favorite messaging on this subject is this video, Who Wants to Be a Volunteer from Radi-Aid, an annual campaign created by the Norwegian Students’ & Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH).

There’s also the even more provocative No White Saviors campaign, which I found out about via an online group for professional humanitarian workers – highly-skilled people who go to a developing country for several months, even years, to build the skills of local people so that they can take over the work themselves. The campaign is using social media to share highly provocative images and messages, which you can view and read here:

It’s similar to the satirical White Savior Barbie campaign.

Here is one of their tamer memes:

And here is one of the campaign’s much more provocative memes:

I shared these No White Saviors campaign memes on the volunteer subreddit, an online group on Reddit for the discussion of volunteering, and, as you can see if you look yourself, some folks were outraged, calling the campaign racist. I disagree, and think this campaign is important in pushing forth some very important questions that need discussing – the campaigns have certainly made me reflect on not only my international humanitarian work, but my own local volunteering activities and attitudes right here in rural Oregon.

Your thoughts? Let’s hear them in the comments below.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into developing material, researching information, preparing articles, updating pages, etc., here is how you can help.

Also see:

Paying thousands to volunteer abroad & ignoring same opportunities at home

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Late last year, I did an all-day training for a state fish and wildlife department – a government agency – about how to better engage volunteers: how to better design tasks for a variety of volunteers, to better support volunteers, to better track what they are doing and to recruit – not just recruiting volunteers to get tasks done, but also to recruit in order to reach a variety of communities and people. The people I taught were a mix of biologists and long-time volunteer leaders who had never had training in volunteer management.

(read more about my consulting services and training work)

Before doing this type of intensive, specialized training, I do a lot of research to look at what similar organizations might be doing, trends that the client might want to consider, etc. One of the things that struck me as I was researching state fish and wildlife departments all over the USA was how many activities these agencies have for volunteers that people will pay thousands to go do in another country: building and repairing fish and wildlife habitats, counting wildlife, reporting on habitat conditions and more.

I thought about how this is true of so many other agencies as well: there are nonprofits and government programs all over the USA that will help people learn English, that help refugees navigate their new homes, that help people better understand the risks associated with HIV/AIDS, that help people who have lost their home, that help impoverished women with maternal health and infant care, and on and on – yet, people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for voluntourism experiences that make them feel like they are helping refugees, helping children, helping people at risk, etc., rather than participating in these programs just around the corner – or, at least, in their own country.

I don’t like voluntourism, where people pay money to go to another country and feel like they are helping people or the environment in just a few weeks, and I blog about my distaste frequently. So many – not all, but so many – are scams: a supposed wildlife sanctuary captures wild animals and puts them into enclosures and then sells voluntourism experiences, bringing in foreigners to “help.” A supposed orphanage is full of children who have parents, but the parents are paid to keep their children in the “orphanage” so that foreigners will pay large sums of money to come from overseas and “help.” The organizations take anyone who can pay – they don’t need anyone with actual skills or expertise because, supposedly, no one locally can do this “work”, so they must bring in anyone from abroad with “a good heart.” Sure, there are some worthwhile organizations for short-term volunteering abroad – and I list them on this free resource on my web site. But most are, to me, loathsome.

But I also am puzzled as to why so many nonprofits and government agencies in the USA – and other countries – do such a lousy job of talking about their volunteering opportunities. When I told the state agency I was training that people pay thousands of dollars to go do in, say, Kenya, many of the same volunteering tasks that this state agency struggles to find volunteering activities for, they were stunned. But it’s true!

Have a look at some of those shiny, heart-warming voluntourism sites. I’m not going to link to them here, but trust me, they are easy to find on Google or Bing. Look at photos on their sites, the language they use – look how much fun they make volunteering sound, or how they make volunteering sound like a challenge worthy of traveling thousands of miles for – and paying top dollar to experience. Now look at your organization’s web site: how does your agency talk about volunteers and the activities they do? Don’t oversell your program, but do recognize that any activity that allows volunteers to be outside, to be very physical, or to interact with clients are highly desired by many people. What you may see as just more work to do they may see as an opportunity to make a real difference in a cause they care about deeply.

Here’s more of my advice on volunteer recruitment:

And here’s more of my blogs regarding voluntourism and Westerners going to help abroad:

My voluntourism-related & ethics-related blogs (and how I define scam)

Read more about my consulting services and training work.