Virtual volunteering: it’s oh-so-personal

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logoThe 20th anniversary of the launch of the Virtual Volunteering Project is approaching! I count it as December 1, 1996, actually, though I could be off by a few days. It was probably summertime 20 years ago that the project was funded, actually.

All that was on my mind when I read that World Pulse, a global nonprofit organization, put out a call for stories that explore the role of technology in our lives and its potential to bring positive change:

At World Pulse, we see so many signs of the good. Every day, women and men creatively embrace tech tools to solve the pressing problems facing our communities and our world. From mobile apps designed to track incidents of violence against women to crowdfunding platforms that put money in the hands of social entrepreneurs, technology is making so much possible for women everywhere.

What technologies have the most potential to make a difference in your community? Do you have a story about using communication technology to form meaningful relationships or bridge a geographical divide? Maybe you are part of a group using technology to mobilize for change.

I submitted my own story for this challenge, noting:

I’ve been researching virtual volunteering for more than 20 years now, and the biggest shock for most people that aren’t familiar with the practice and hear me talk about it at length is just how close I feel to so many of the volunteers and volunteer-involving agencies all over the world. They are my friends and colleagues, just as real as people I work with onsite, face-to-face. These are all real people with hopes and fears and challenging ideas and humor and talents. So many of these online relationships, established through email and Twitter and online communities, are so very, very personal to me.

I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

By the time I left the Virtual Volunteering Project, I had worked with  more than 300 online volunteers. I could tell you so many things about many of them: their career goals, their music tastes, what they enjoyed doing as online volunteers, what they DIDN’T enjoy, and on and on. No, I didn’t know them all that intimately – not all of them wanted to be known that intimately, and there just isn’t enough time in the day to get to know 300 people that well, online or off. At least one of my online volunteers had mental disabilities, and his doctor was one of his references; I got to talk with that doctor once on the phone, and he told me what a huge impact virtual volunteering had had on this particular volunteer. I hung up the phone and cried – I’d had no idea.

I kept working with online volunteers when I took over the UN’s Online Volunteering service, then also a part of NetAid, in February 2001, and a year later, one of the online volunteers died that I had been working with since joining the UN Volunteers program headquarters. She was very young, killed in an accident. I was shattered. We had often IM’d each other, just chatting over this and that. She’d formed a nonprofit with other online volunteers she met through volunteering online with UNV. I was also heartened that, when I sent an email to the entire UNV organization announcing her death, something any program manager did for a volunteer killed in the field, the head of the organization then, Sharon Capeling-Alakija, immediately directed her staff to write the online volunteer’s parents a letter of condolence, just as UNV does when a UN Volunteer dies.

That’s why I get so weary of explaining over and over to people new to virtual volunteering, or skeptical of the practice without reading anything about it, that this volunteering is not impersonal. As I said in an email to someone that blogged disparagingly about virtual volunteering, saying that, as a result of it, “volunteering has the potential to lose its social and community-building benefits”:

Your blog assumes onsite volunteers work in groups and have lots of interaction. This is often not the case. MANY onsite volunteers work in isolation: they arrive, they receive an orientation and training, and then spend their time alone in a room stuffing envelopes, or sorting in-kind donations, or checking inventory, or cleaning something, etc. You cannot assume that onsite volunteering automatically means lots of personal interactions.

I’ve studied virtual volunteering since the mid 1990s, and what I’ve found is just as much or as little social and community-building benefits as any other volunteering. It all depends on the culture of management: is the manager of online volunteers one who provides lots of personal interactions, or one that gives a task and then interacts only at the request of the volunteer? Whether or not any kind of volunteering has social or community-building benefits depends on the manager and the culture of the organization, not necessarily the task being done onsite or online.

Working with virtual volunteering? It’s personal. At least it is for me.

vvbooklittleThere is lots more information about what it’s like to work with online volunteers in The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, available both as a traditional printed book and as a digital book. The advice is based on both extensive research of virtual volunteering practices at a variety of organizations all over the world and my own experience working with online volunteers – I’ve now worked with more than 1000, some of whom I’m still friends with online, some of whom have become friends offline as well. And if you are about to write about virtual volunteering, but you don’t want to read the guidebook, then PLEASE, at least, first read these Myths About Virtual Volunteering.

assigning law breakers to community service: worthwhile?

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justiceAs I’ve mentioned before, I regularly get hate email for my ongoing campaign against companies selling letters saying someone did court-ordered community service, claiming it is virtual volunteering when, in fact, no volunteering is actually done. None of the haters have changed my mind: I think these companies are unethical and, at times, illegal and harmful to all volunteering and I dream of them all being shut down. But a recent exchange in the comments section of one of the blogs has made me finally address something on my blog I’ve been meaning to for a while: the appropriateness of assigning law breakers to community service.

According to volunteerism expert Susan Ellis, courts in the USA have given some criminal offenders the option of completing a set number of hours of unpaid work in a nonprofit organization or government community initiative in lieu of a fine or spending time in prison, or as an adjunct to probation or parole, for at least three decades. Here’s an example here in Washington County, Oregon.

Reviewing various literature online and hearing about programs over the years through my work, I’ve surmised that governments like alternative sentencing, in the form of community service, for five reasons:

  • it can greatly reduce the costs of incarceration and supervision of nonviolent offenders.
  • governments see community service as restitution or restorative justice – through service, people are “repaying” the community for the societal costs of their crimes.
  • governments envision nonprofit employees lamenting, “We have all this work to do – if only lots of people willing to work for free would show up and offer to do it.” In other words, these people assigned community service are free labor that nonprofits need.
  • governments think it might teach the offender about ethical behavior and, at least indirectly, how their criminal/negative/illegal behavior affects the community overall, and how it would be better if they would eschew such behavior and be a positive, trusted part of the community instead.
  • it could be an opportunity for an offender the opportunity to learn a new skill, explore a career, and perhaps improve their employment prospects

Courts can order a person to do community service, but they cannot order a nonprofit to accept an offender as a volunteer, and that means many people struggle to find community service. Per all of the frustration about this on various online community fora, like Quora, I created  a resource to help people assigned community service by the courts. It’s packed with advice, more than you will find anywhere else, on how to get into community service quickly. The advice is realistic and it’s free.

I’ve never before questioned the appropriateness of involving court-ordered volunteers, from my perspective as a host of volunteers, because I’ve been lucky enough to write my own mission statements regarding volunteer engagement at whatever program I’m working in, I have always made volunteer involvement about creating evangelists for my program rather than getting people to work for free, and I have always made part of that mission to involve a diversity of volunteers and for all volunteering to have a primary goal of teaching volunteers about the cause at hand, not of getting lots of work done. It has been a luxury to have that kind management freedom, and it’s a luxury that most managers of volunteers do not have. I think a diversity of volunteers, from different backgrounds, made the programs I was involved with stronger, for a variety of reasons I explore on my web site. So, yes, I have been able to involve people who have been assigned community service as volunteers, onsite and online, and my experience with them has been quite good. I’ve never been opposed to involving someone as a volunteer who is doing the work because the court demands it, so long as that person meets the requirements of the task. That means I don’t take every person who applies to volunteer – I have a high bar for participation, to screen out people who won’t take the commitment seriously, who don’t communicate well online, or really don’t understand what they are applying for. I have never had the time to take on absolutely anyone who applies to volunteer and hope it works out. That said, volunteers that have been assigned community service kept volunteering with me even after the required number of hours were completed, which I’ve heard from other managers of volunteers is not unusual.

So, I’m not opposed to the idea of involving people compelled by a court to volunteer. But I do think it’s overdue to have a conversation about the value of this community service for the offender, for the nonprofit, and for the community. It’s overdue to ask some tough questions about it, because there are assumptions about the benefits that I think are unproven.

Looking at the reasons governments like alternative service, let’s consider if the reasons are valid:

  • it can greatly reduce the costs of incarceration and supervision of nonviolent offenders.

I don’t have any stats that say this is true, but I can’t imagine it’s not. It is very expensive to put someone in jail. By contrast, governments don’t pay anything for offenders to do community service with nonprofits – most or all of the costs are shouldered entirely by the nonprofit. As volunteers are NOT free, these costs can be substantial – but not for the government. Even programs run entirely by the government specifically for offenders to do community service (work crews to pick up trash, clean up parks, restore a playground, etc.) are far cheaper than jail.

  • governments see community service as restitution or restorative justice – through service, people are repaying the community for their crimes.

I am not sure I really know what this means. In this sense, it’s a purely symbolic act. And I get that symbolic acts can be powerful, but is there any way at all to measure this benefit?

  • governments envision nonprofit employees lamenting, “We have all this work to do – if only lots of people willing to work for free would show up and offer to do it.”

Anyone who works with nonprofits knows this isn’t the case. Nonprofits are NOT saying this. Again, volunteers are not free; it costs a lot of time and resources to involve and support volunteers. Most organizations that are struggling to find volunteers need people that will make at least a year-long commitment and give a few hours every week – that’s not something court-ordered community service seekers want at all. Most organizations also want particularly-skilled volunteers, even if they don’t require commitments of several months – rarely can an organization take absolutely anyone as a volunteer, regardless of their skill level. Plus, I can’t find any studies where nonprofits say, “Yes, because we involve court-ordered community service people among our volunteers, we are a better organization, we’ve had greater impact, we’ve saved money, etc. And here’s the data that shows it…” So the government is not fulfilling a need of MOST nonprofits by requiring offenders to give a certain number of hours of community service.

Even more than that, here are the two reasons given for community service for people that commit crimes that I really, really question:

  • governments think it might teach the offender about ethical behavior and, at least indirectly, how their crime affects the community overall, and how it would be better if they would eschew such behavior and be a positive part of the community instead.
  • it could be an opportunity for an offender the opportunity to learn a new skill, explore a career, and perhaps improve their employment prospects

Yes, sure, community service COULD teach these things. But does it, usually? And what does it take on the part of the nonprofit in terms of knowledge, resources and activities for court-assigned community service to have this kind of transformation for the volunteer?

In Giving Back: Introducing Community Service Learning, Improving Mandated Community Service for Juvenile Offenders, An Action Guide for Youth Court Programs and the Juvenile-Justice System, published by the Constitutional Rights Foundation, is this assertion:

“Community service, as mandated by the courts, plays a prominent role in our juvenile-justice system as well. Today, many juvenile-justice professionals regard it as an opportunity for rehabilitation. They believe that mandated community service can help juvenile-justice respondents understand the impact of their actions on others; give back to the communities they have harmed; learn critical-thinking, citizenship, and problem-solving skills; develop a personal stake in the well-being of their communities; and raise awareness of their own self worth.“

So, does it? I can’t find any resource saying it does. Apparently, neither can this guide, as it never cites any sources that affirm this. But what the guide DOES say about the transformational power of community service confirms just how much work it takes to make volunteering more than getting work done. And it takes a LOT in terms of resources, time and expertise – three things many managers of volunteers do NOT have. The exercises in the guide are meant to go along with youth performing community service, in order to take the service to a new level, something way beyond “let’s get work done.” And I believe the activities could really do that – but I also know that the vast majority of nonprofits do not have the time nor expertise to do these exercises with court-ordered community service folks.

  • Where are the studies that show that community service teaches offenders about ethical behavior or citizenship or community responsibilities and/or that it affects their future actions for the better?
  • Where are the studies that show community service reduces recidivism rates?
  • Where are the studies that show that offenders benefit from doing community service, in terms of learning a new skill, exploring a career, and even improving their employment prospects?

If you have names of or links to these studies, please note such in the comments below. I’m not looking for feelings about this, from the point of view of the court – I’m looking for hard data.

If you are a nonprofit that can say that, as a result of involving court-ordered community service people, specifically, among your volunteers, your are a better organization, had greater impact on the community, saved money, etc., and have the data that shows it, let’s hear from you.

I’m not looking for feelings about this, from the point of view of the court or government – I’m looking for hard data.

If you have been assigned community service because of an offense and want to comment, please limit your comment to answers to these questions:

  • do you believe your community service taught you anything about ethical behavior, how your crime affects the community overall, how it would be better if would eschew such behavior and be a positive part of the community instead, citizenship, etc.? If yes, please say how. If no, please say if you think it is possible at all. 
  • do you see your community service as restitution or restorative justice – through service, you are symbolically repaying the community for your offense?
  • do you believe that, through your community service, you received the opportunity to learn a new skill, explore a career, and perhaps improve your employment prospects? If yes, please say how. If no, please say if you think it is possible at all. 

If you want to be anonymous in your comment, that’s fine – just fake your email address when you comment on the blog, and I won’t show your IP address online.

Please, no debates on whether or not you should have been arrested, if what you did was really a crime, etc. – that’s not a conversation this blog is seeking.

On a related note: I found a guide online, Community Service Restitution Programs for Alcohol Related Traffic Offenders, published by the US Department of Transportation, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in 1985 or 1986. It was prepared by International Business Services (IBS) under a contract with NHTSA. Volume One is The 5 As of Community Service is a manual to aid state and local jurisdictions in the design and implementation of community service programs. Volume Two is Case Studies and Resource Materials. Volume one notes, on page 22: “A program representative from the Community Service Program in Boulder, Colorado, stressed the importance of carefully preparing agencies at the outset by precisely defining program expectations. Some programs provide agencies with written agreements clearly delineating the responsibilities inherent in participation.”  Is this a best practice in court-ordered community service? I don’t know about you, but I have NEVER gotten guidance from a court or a probation officer about working with a court-ordered community service person. NEVER.

On page 31, is this: “The underlying premise of community service, that offenders are more valuable to the community when engaged in voluntary service than when incarcerated, rests upon the assumption that those offenders will be responsibly monitored.” I admit I laughed out loud at this. It’s a nice assumption, but given how many people are getting away with paying for a letter saying they did community service when they really didn’t, I think it’s a misplaced assumption.

One final note: the publication Giving Back: Introducing Community Service Learning, Improving Mandated Community Service for Juvenile Offenders, An Action Guide for Youth Court Programs and the Juvenile-Justice System is OUTSTANDING. I think any manager of volunteers should read it, regardless of the volunteers’ ages, particularly the parts about how to make the community service transformative. It’s a great way to make volunteering at your organization more than just getting lots of volunteer hours to brag about.

Also see:

“If no one is complaining, we don’t have to change how we do things”

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handstopOne of the most common defenses I hear from an organization or program not addressing issues regarding diversity, communications, and accommodations is this:

We’ve done it this way for years, and no one has complained about that. No volunteer / client / member / donor has ever said they don’t like how we do such-and-such. You are the only one. So we’re not changing.

My observation might be about the way something is worded on a web site. Or the process to submit an application for volunteering. It could be about the lack of mass transit access to a location of an annual event or training. It could be about a lack of representation of various groups amid volunteer ranks. Or about a prayer before a volunteer recognition event at a secular organization. It could be about a lack of certain information in another language. Any of the aforementioned, and more, often incurs that defense when I bring up an issue related to diversity, accommodations or communications.

Often, when I do a little digging myself, talking to people that wanted to volunteer at the organization but didn’t, or to current members, or to former clients, and on and on, I find that, indeed, there is dissatisfaction among a few, maybe even more, but no one says anything to the organization itself, because no one wants to be seen as ruining an event or hurting the feelings of others or not being “a team player.” Some even fear repercussions by friends, neighbors and others. So they don’t say anything about something they would like to see changed or improved because there is a culture within the program or the entire organization, that discourages complaints or suggestions.

In the 1990s, I worked for a really incredible organization called Joint Venture: Silicon Valley. While I worked there, as internal communications manager – very much a junior staffer – a board member arranged for a retired HR executive from his oh-so-large global company to visit our organization and do a survey and discussion with staff about the work culture and environment, and then report our feedback to senior staff, keeping individual comments anonymous. That HR executive handled those surveys and conversations with the greatest of care, making us feel welcomed and comfortable in sharing what we liked, and what we didn’t, about our workplace. Afterward, he revealed to us, then senior staff, that junior staff and assistants felt we operated from a place of fear, rather than a place of power. We, as an organization, were risk-averse and even suggestion-averse. We felt corrections were given out by management far more than praise and support. After senior staff got over the shock of the culture they created – they really had no idea – things changed almost immediately, under that HR expert’s guidance. It rapidly became a delightful place to work, because senior management changed the way they worked and talked to all staff. And we all felt free to suggest, even to complain.

Would your organization be so brave?

Also see:

Proud to fool courts re: community service

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justice“Jay” of this IP address: 68.37.81.189 (he didn’t give a real email address) commented on the most popular blog I’ve ever written, one where I exposed a company called Community Service Help, Inc. and its affiliated nonprofit, Terra Research Foundation:

I completed approx. 300 hours of community service online with some site and it was affiliated with the Terra Research Foundation back in about 2013. I work full-time and have far better things to do than complete community service and jump through the endless hoops the court system makes you go through in their attempt to “fix” me over a minor violation. I presented the hours sheet to my Probation Officer and he never asked what I was doing for community service exactly, and guess what, I never felt the need to tell him either. That’s his job to find out if it’s legit or not, not mine. He approved it once I completed all the hours and that was the end of it, I haven’t felt a single ounce of remorse for it either. We all moved on with our lives. So, kudos to anyone who has “fooled” the court system by completing online community service by watching videos. You made the right decision.

I’m so glad Jay wrote. Like others who regularly write to insult me regarding this blog, Jay really wanted to mock me for my hardline advocacy over the years against Community Service Help and Terra Research Foundation – both of which have taken down their websites and, apparently, have gone out of business (hurrah!). But instead, he provided a perfect comment that shows exactly why these organizations are unethical and even illegal: here’s a person admitting that it wasn’t really community service. He’s admitting it was a lie. He got away with it but, of course not everyone does. And, thankfully, at least some companies are getting targetted by law enforcement and paying a steep price for what the courts are seeing as not just inappropriate activities, but illegal activities.

The other downside of organizations selling letters affirming community service when, really, none has been done, is that this will make courts and probation officers all the more suspicious of virtual volunteering. As I’ve blogged before, I’ve worked with some people as online volunteers who needed community service hours for the courts, and they’ve all been terrific volunteers. Virtual volunteering is real volunteering. Organizations selling community service harm that message.

So, thanks Jay, for the great comment!

My other blogs on these companies that sell virtual volunteering and other community service in order to fool probation officers and courts, which include links to the various media articles about these companies:

Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction, July 2016 update on how Community Service Help has gone away, and the owner of the notorious the Caffeine Awareness Association pled guilty to a false-filing felony.

Haters gonna hate, November 2014 update on Community Service Help and other similar, unethical companies

Community Service Help Cons Another Person – a first-person account by someone who paid for online community service and had it rejected by the court.

Online community service company tries to seem legit, a November 2013 update about efforts these companies are making to seem legitimate

Update on a virtual volunteering scam, from November 2012.

What online community service is – and is not – the very first blog I wrote exposing this company, back in January 2011, that resulted in the founder of the company calling me at home to beg me to take the blog down

Online volunteer scam goes global, a July 2011 update with links to TV stories trying to expose these scam companies

Courts being fooled by online community service scams, an update from November 2011 that is the most popular blog I’ve ever published

Update: In September 2017, the former treasurer of the Wichita County GOP, Jonathan Paul Lyne, on probation for drug and tampering charges, was accused of faking his community supervision. He had to serve 180 days in the county jail before being transferred to a substance abuse felony punishment facility.

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook offers detailed advice that would help any court understand how to evaluate the legitimacy of an online volunteering program. It’s geared towards nonprofits who want to involve volunteers, but any court or probation officer would find it helpful, as more and more people assigned community service need legitimate, credible online volunteering options.

Kentucky politicians think volunteers are free

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Seal_of_KentuckyKentucky’s governor, Matt Bevin, a Republican, is working to end kynect, the state’s widely-lauded health insurance exchange and one of the most successful under the federal Affordable Health Care Act. His proposal will transition enrollees to the federal health insurance exchange. His new health care plan would also require “able-bodied” adults on the plan and without jobs to take a job training course, get regular job counseling, or do community service for nonprofit organizations.

Last week, administration representatives were asked at a committee meeting by Kentucky State Representative Mary Lou Marzian, a Democrat, if any state funding had been allocated to support the cost of background checks for volunteers required to do community service. The answer was that “any nonprofit that chooses to conduct background checks would need to cover the costs.” In other words, the state government will require community service of certain people, and expects nonprofits to accommodate these people with volunteering opportunities, but will not cover any of the costs associated with screening the people, let alone the substantial costs of training and supervising them.

There was also a concern voiced at the meeting about volunteers being asked to cover the cost of their own background check; many organizations do require this, and the people being required to do community service in order to keep their health insurance will largely represent people with low incomes. This issue was identified by Kentucky State Senator Julie Raque Adams, a Republican, as a “red herring;” Adams asserted that many organizations don’t really need criminal background checks, and she based this assertion on her children’s volunteer experiences.

All of the aforementioned information was related by the Kentucky Nonprofit Network via their Facebook page and an article in The Interior Journal, serving Lincoln County, Kentucky.

Senator Adams’ comments about background checks, and those of representatives of the governor’s office, are deeply disturbing, showing a woeful lack of understanding of volunteer engagement and risk management, one that is similar to the US Congress. As noted by the Kentucky Nonprofit Network:

The perception of societal benefit and an overwhelming need for volunteers by the sector seemed to outweigh any recognition of the realities of the true costs of managing a volunteer program (or influx of volunteer requests) – supervision, management, support, background checks (including the reality that this isn’t a luxury – it may be required to protect vulnerable populations), etc. Perhaps this is true – is there a dire need for volunteers?

The network is asking this question via Facebook – and so far, no nonprofits are saying, “Hurrah! An influx of volunteers! Just what we needed!”

It’s obvious that the Governor’s office did not do any research regarding nonprofits in the state and their needs regarding volunteers, and certainly no research regarding the substantial costs associated with involving volunteers.

In addition, K.J. Owens of Louisville won applause from the overflow crowd in Frankfort at a public hearing regarding the proposal when he said the plan “seems motivated by the concern that poor people are defective morally . . . that poor people just aren’t trying hard enough. The people on Medicaid are in no more need of moral guidance than the governor and the people on the governor’s staff.”

On a different but equally disturbing note, Bevin’s proposal also would eliminate dental and vision coverage now included in Medicaid Several other speakers expressed the same concern about excluding dental benefits in a state with some of the worst oral health in the nation, including one of the highest rates of adults with no teeth.

More information about the proposal, as well as a platform to comment on this proposal to the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, can be found via the website chfs.ky.gov, and I call on all nonprofits back in my home state, all volunteers for those nonprofits, and anyone who cares about this issue, to give feedback via this state web site!

Congrats to the Kentucky Nonprofit Network for focusing on this issue. That’s what state agencies should be doing, and too many do not. It will be interesting to see if AL!VE (Association of Leaders in Volunteer Engagement) will address this issue at all. This is a big deal, and nonprofits all over the country, not just in Kentucky, need to pay attention!

Let’s hope Bevin doesn’t get any ideas from the U.K.’s disasterous Big Society efforts from a few year’s back (UK as in United Kingdom, not the University of Kentucky…).

Update: August 14, 2016 letter to Deputy Chief of Staff Office of the Governor, Matthew G. Bevin from Danielle Clore, Executive Director/CEO, Kentucky Nonprofit Network. It asks very tough questions about this proposal – which have not yet been answered.

Volunteers are NOT free.

Volunteer management is community engagement

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logoAll these years that I’ve been a manager of volunteers and a consultant regarding the management of volunteers, I have felt quite alone in how I approach the value of volunteer engagement.

I believe that volunteer engagement should live under “program” at an organization, not under “human resources” or the fundraising/fund development department. Here’s why:

  • I believe in creating tasks specifically for volunteers because, sometimes, volunteers are the best people to do a task, even if it’s not the most efficient way to get something done, even if it means the tasks take twice as long as they would if completed by an employee. That may be because the organization needs to emphasize transparency to the community in its operations, and therefore wants to give community members a first-hand view. That may be because it wants to give the community a sense of ownership in the organization, through volunteering. That may be because clients prefer interacting with volunteers in certain activities rather than paid staff.
  • I believe in sometimes defining tasks in such a way so that certain people – a specific type of person – could do them as volunteers – a group, youth, people with disabilities, online micro volunteers, etc. That may because such volunteering gives the organization access to audiences they may never reach otherwise. That may be because the organization has a mission to serve specific audiences or engage in certain activities, and this kind of volunteering is a manifestation of this.
  • I believe volunteer engagement can help to address youth unemployment, cultural conflicts, intergenerational misunderstandings, integration, community cohesion, social integration, and on and on. Volunteer engagement can play a vital role in building social cohesion and intercultural understanding.
  • I’m passionate about a big tent approach in talking about volunteer engagement, including anyone who is donating their unpaid time at a nonprofit, school, government program or other mission-based entity – that means I include people volunteering in order to fulfill a community service obligation or people in an unpaid internship. I don’t believe in motivation purity tests when it comes to who gets called a volunteer (only those volunteering out of the goodness of their heart get to be called volunteers? No.).
  • Volunteers are not free, and often do not save money. Plus, no one says, “Wow, I really want to work for free for such-and-such organization!”

I believe volunteer engagement is so much more than just finding people with supposedly good hearts to do work for free. I believe volunteers aren’t just people that want to donate time out of the goodness of their heart, but also people that want to gain job skills, people who want to apply what they are learning in a classroom, people who feel anger about a particular issue and want to do something about it, people who think the volunteering activity looks fun, people who are skeptical about an organization and wants to see first hand what they do, people who are new to a community and want to meet locals, and on and on.

So I’ve spent copious amounts of time deriding the monetary value of volunteer hours. I talk instead about measuring success for volunteer engagement in terms of impact and transformation and community connection, not hours donated and number of volunteers involved.

I’m not entirely alone in this way of thinking: Sharon Capeling-Alakija, then head of the United Nations Volunteers programme, talked about why UNV was committed to its online volunteering program, she never said it was because NGOs or UNVs have so much work to do and need people to undertake some of that work for free. She said it was because “this is a way for people to be involved in the work of UNV, first hand. Before the OV service, the only way to do that was to be a UN Volunteer – and most people don’t get to do that.”

Not that I believe that an organization has an obligation to involve absolutely every person that wants to volunteer as a volunteer. Some organizations, because of their mission, may not be appropriate places for children as volunteers, for instance. Nonprofits and schools have every right to say no to an offer of group volunteers from a corporation if the proposed volunteering activity offers little return of investment for the organization. And I don’t think every volunteer is worth the effort – volunteers aren’t automatically “good guys.”

But all of my ideas about volunteering, along with my promotion of virtual volunteering, has made me the odd gal out at most conferences and in most conversations regarding volunteerism and volunteer management. In fact, my point of view about the value of volunteerism has made many people angry, people that want volunteering to be talked about only in the most basic, old-fashioned terms: people donating their time purely out of the goodness of their hearts, never for any other impure reason, like because they have been compelled by a court. They want to value volunteers based on number of volunteers, how many hours those volunteers give and a dollar value for those hours.

In January 2016, I decided to say all this and more via my keynote speech to the South Carolina Association for Volunteer Administration (SCAVA). My speech was to managers of volunteers, and it was about what we are versus what we should be, what we COULD be, touching on all the aforementioned points. If managers of volunteers are merely in charge of creating assignments for people with good hearts, and measuring the success of such with the number of hours contributed and a monetary value for those hours, then we deserve to be thought of as low-level administrators, and we deserve the anger we get from labor unions. If we want a seat at the senior staff table, it’s time to approach volunteer engagement as community engagement, as something much more than bodies doing work for free. We don’t just coordinate, we manage, we facilitate, we direct. I thought my speech would very likely cause people to storm out of the room – and instead, I got a standing ovation, complete with yelps and tears. It was a stunning reception. People said they had never heard volunteer engagement talked about that way.

But I found out that I’m late to this evangelizing, per recently finding this outstanding blog from 2008, Volunteer Management: Once More with Meaning, by Jennifer Woodill of Ontario, Canada. She developed these ideas while working at St. Christopher House (now West Neighbourhood House). Woodill seems to have been as frustrated as me regarding how nonprofits and corporate folks talk about volunteering. Like me, when she started out as a manager of volunteers, she joined the Association for Volunteer Administration (AVA) – now defunct – and attended various conferences and meetings, hoping to find kindred spirits and inspiration. But what she found instead was a big disconnect, as she notes in her blog:

My big-picture questions about how voluntarism connects to community development, civic engagement, and social inclusion were never discussed in these resources, however, or in meetings with other volunteer managers.

She continues later:

The principle of resource development views volunteers—much like money—as resources or assets. You can see this principle at work by identifying where volunteer management lives within an organizational structure. Often volunteer management is housed with administrative and fundraising functions. This principle underlies the trend to measure volunteering and calculate hours worked, people employed, and placing dollar values on the value of a resource. Again, quantity rules over quality, because a numerical value cannot express relationships developed or the ability to cultivate passion in another’s work. This principle of resource development allows an organization to deem a prospective volunteer “not worth the effort” after conducting a quick cost-benefit analysis. But if a volunteer is poorly educated or he has a disability, traditional management principles don’t view him as a valuable resource.

And this:

I propose an alternate way of approaching volunteer work and management, where the emphasis is on social inclusion and community development. With this alternate way of thinking, planning for volunteer involvement, practices, and management structure starts with these central questions: “How can we find creative ways for community members to get involved in and engaged by our work? How can we develop an organizational culture where volunteer engagement and involvement is central to all our programs? How can we develop a culture in which volunteers are completely integrated into the organization?” These questions move us in new and creative directions… in this model, an organization also makes a commitment to think creatively about ways to create opportunities for newcomers to volunteer. Instead of finding the “best” person for the “job,” an organization makes a commitment not to exclude newcomers from participation in a community and to create meaningful space for their engagement.

I don’t agree with all of what she says in the blog, like the statement “social exclusion is an inevitable result of conducting volunteer management based on the principles of efficiency, resource development, and control.” I don’t think the emphasis on quality standards in volunteer management is what is excluding a diversity of volunteers – I think it’s the emphasis on how to value volunteer engagement perpetuated by various groups like the Corporation for National and Community Service, various UN entities, and the Independent Sector is what is driving the oh-so-narrow view of what volunteering is. Still, you MUST read Jennifer’s blog!

Of course, I had to track Jennifer down and tell her how much I loved her 2008 blog! I found her on Twitter, and she seemed genuinely flattered at my fawning. But then she said this in our public online conversation:

I decided to leave my work with #volunteers cause I couldn’t move forward. I needed to make a difference.

My jaw dropped. We lost her. She needed to make a difference, and traditional management of volunteers did not allow her to do that.

I’m not surprised though. After all, most organizations worldwide, not just in the USA, want to measure volunteerism with a monetary value for service hours. Most volunteer management conferences focus on talking about the basics – how to recruit large numbers of volunteers, how to retain volunteers for years and years, etc. – but avoid more advanced topics, like how to recognize unconscious bias that might drive our exclusion of certain volunteers and how and why to create volunteering opportunities for people struggling with unemployment. These conferences and workshops also segregate technology use in volunteer management to one catch-all workshop on the last day, rather than integrating it into all workshops. There are no workshops on how volunteer engagement can, and SHOULD, support the goals of the marketing department, or the goals of a specific program.

The European Volunteer Centre (CEV) feels that unpaid internships are “mistakenly perceived to be or even presented as volunteering,” yet also says that

Volunteering is an outstanding source of learning and a contributor to personal and professional development. CEV considers it important to recognize volunteering as a source of non-formal and informal learning, while keeping a balance in order not to move the focus from the benefit to others to the benefit of the individual in the form of qualifications or recognition of skills.

So, apparently, volunteering can have all the goals of an unpaid internships, but can never be called an unpaid internship, because then it’s not volunteering? A European conference in April of this year in Romania supported by CEV and focused on managers of volunteers emphasizes that managers of volunteers should “be able to explain the definition of volunteering and differentiate it from other concepts such as civic engagement, internship, traineeship, etc.” – yes, that’s right, don’t you dare confuse pure volunteerism with impure and completely unrelated practices, like executives on loan, pro bono consultants, unpaid internships, etc., and it’s most certainly NOT community / civic engagement…

As a manager of volunteers, I don’t want to be just an HR assistant. There’s nothing wrong with HR assistants – I was one, actually, a long time ago, and it was an excellent work experience. But as a manager of volunteers, I want to be talking about how the organization will use volunteer engagement to better connect to the community and help meet our program goals. I want to see managers of volunteers invited to speak at conferences by the American Planning Association and or conferences for online community managers or conferences on building community.

In my speech to the South Carolina group earlier this year, I lamented that managers of volunteers are obsessed at being labeled “nice,” that we like to be thought of reliable, sweet and over-worked. And that thinking makes us expendable. What’s the first position to be cut in bad economic times? The manager of volunteers. Why? Because most people do NOT know what we do. They think anyone can do what we do. We contribute to this thinking ourselves, because of the old-fashioned approach to volunteer management and volunteer value:

To get other people to think of you differently, YOU have to start thinking of yourself differently… here are some words I’d like to hear about managers of volunteers in addition to nice:

  • daring
  • innovative
  • pioneering
  • unpredictable
  • instigator
  • radical
  • audacious
  • feisty
  • gutsy
  • cutting edge

How much longer are managers of volunteers going to marginalize themselves by having such a limited view of who volunteers are and why volunteers should be involved? Volunteering is community engagement, and such engagement is vital to any organization serving a cause or a community. It’s overdue to demand more from conferences and workshops about volunteerism. It’s overdue to reject limited views of the value of volunteerism. It’s overdue to demand more of ourselves.

women-only hours at community Internet centers? why?

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This is a blog post I made on 31 August 2009, on my first, now long-gone blog host. Just finally managed to find it at archive.org

women-only hours at community Internet centers? why?

Back in August 2003, I had the pleasure of co-hosting an online discussion at TechSoup regarding Gender and the Digital Divide. It was a discussion regarding the barriers that keep women and girls away from computer and Internet-related classes and community technology centers (telecenters, Internet cafes, etc.). One of the things that came up in this discussion back then was that the barriers for women and girls to tech access are even more pronounced in developing countries, where family-obligations and cultural practices keep large numbers of women from ever stepping foot into a community technology center, telecenter, Internet cafe, etc., whether nonprofit or privately-run.

I was reminded yet again of this recently while corresponding with an Afghan female colleague: her employer has blocks on hundreds of web sites, including several she needs for her own career and skills development. But using an Internet cafe is not an option for her, and thousands of other women in Kabul like her, because:

    • her family would never allow her to go to such a place without a mahram (a male relative she could not marry, such as a brother, uncle, or father, acting as a safety and social escort), and most men aren’t willing to devote a few hours a week to accompany a female relative to an Internet cafe.
  • given the atmosphere of many public Internet sites — the posters in the wall, what’s being looked at on some of the computer screens by male patrons, men coming and going — it’s not an option for her to use a public Internet site even with a mahram.

My friend — and thousands of other women in Kabul — need a place that’s either devoted only to women Internet users, or, a public site that has women-only hours. I have yet to find either using Web searches and posts to various online communities.

But it’s not just in Kabul. Cultural practices keep women out of public Internet sites in communities all over the world.

I appreciate so much that I have the freedom where I live to walk into any public place with Internet access, and not have to worry about any social or legal ramifications as a result. But I also have to acknowledge that not every woman on Earth does have this freedom and, until they do, community technology centers run by nonprofits and Internet cafes run for-profit need to think about their accommodations for women and girls.

Public Internet access points in Kabul, elsewhere in Afghanistan, or in other developing countries, can encourage more women to use their services by:

    • creating women-only hours at a time that is appealing to women, or creating a women-only space with its own supervised entrance/exit and its own bathroom
    • providing women-only classes
    • staffing women-only hours, women-only spaces or women-only classes by women volunteers or women paid staff members, and with just one or two male staff members (if any) closely supervised and never, ever alone with any woman (staff or customer)
    • providing childcare for women using the site (it’s okay to charge a nominal fee for this)
  • a computer user space free of any images that might be deemed offensive to a conservative culture

How else can community technology centers, telecenters, Internet cafes, etc. in conservative areas be more accommodating of women and girls? Let’s hear from you.

— end of original blog —

This blog lead to the creation of this web page, Women’s Access to Public Internet Centers in Transitional and Developing Countries, which I’ve just updated.

Also see

Enhancing Inclusion of Women & Girls In Information Society

Virtue & reputation in the developing world

Judgment & reputation online – and off

humanitarian stories & photos – use with caution

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whitesaviorbarbieIf you are going abroad, particularly to developing countries, even just for vacation rather than a humanitarian mission, be really careful and respectful in what you write for the public about your travels, including your use of social media – blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. -, and what photos you take and post. Think about a post or photo carefully before you publish: is it accurate? Is it enlightening? Could it be seen as patronizing? What would the people I’m talking about say if they read what I said/saw my photos? Would it be acceptable for a stranger to talk about your community, and share photos of your children, on their blog in the way you are about to?

Earlier this month, National Public Radio did a story about how Zambians, other Africans and aid workers are using social media to show factual errors and condescending remarks in a memoir by British actress Louise Linton about her gap year. The hashtag being used is #LintonLies.

An excerpt from Linton’s book:

I still sometimes feel out of place. Whenever that happens, though, I try to remember a smiling gap-toothed child with HIV whose greatest joy was to sit on my lap and drink from a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Really? THAT moment was that child’s GREATEST JOY?! And that is the kind of circumstance that makes you feel not out of place? She also talks in her memoir about child soldiers in Zambia – something that is not actually an issue in Zambia. Throughout her book, she confuses Zambia with Congo and Rwanda. The Zambian embassy in London has even called her out.

And then there’s actress Debra Messing, who seems similarly confused about Africa being a country, and posted photos online recently that gave people the impression that her message was more about “look where I am!” than the people she was supposed to be there FOR on behalf of two NGOs, as dissected by a commentator at Jezebel.

It all looks like ‘White Savior Barbie’ come to life – White Savior Barbie is an Instagram account that hilariously parodies volunteer selfies in developing countries, as highlighted in this article on the Huffington Post. There’s also an article in the satirical magazine The Onion that mocks voluntourism , joking that a 6-day visit to a rural African village can “completely change a woman’s facebook profile picture.”

I actually have a little bit of sympathy for Messing. I know that they had good intentions. And we’ve all done things out of ignorance that we later, often quickly, regret. We all make cultural missteps. We all make communications missteps. And aid workers can get quite carried away in an ongoing and very smug game of more-in-tune-with-people-and-not-acting-privileged-than-thou when they mock volunteer humanitarians and others, and that can be just as bad as the missteps they mock. I’ve been called out a few times for things I’ve written my blogs from developing countries – sometimes I haven’t agreed with those criticisms, sometimes I have. But I hope I’ve never come from a place of “look at me going to save all these poor people!”

I also hope these missteps don’t stop people from sharing their adventures online, including photos:

UNICEF recognizes the enormous power of visual imagery such as this to engage, inform and inspire audiences – and to advocate for children’s rights. Photographs or film footage that depict real life situations of children, and UNICEF programmes supporting them, are one of the most effective ways to communicate these issues. — UNICEF Guidelines: Protecting children’s rights in corporate partner image use, viewed online in July 2016. More UNICEF photo guidelines here

I learn so much reading various posts on social media from people working in developing countries. It’s brave to put yourself and your thoughts and opinions out there, for public consumption. But be ready to revisit what you’ve said and thought online when it comes under public criticism.

And aid agencies, PLEASE train your workers, including volunteers and celebrity representatives, on how to use social media – and what not to do – before they start their work abroad or go on a field visit.

Check out this code of conduct resource from Child Rights International Network regarding taking photos of children in developing countries (really, anywhere).

Update October 21, 2016:  “a hot mess” of “neo-colonialism, racism, hypocrisy and privilege.” A Christian ministry feels the backlash of a very ill-thought video of their impressions of Uganda. Another story about the video from NPR’s Goats & Soda.

Update May 10, 2017: A photo of a young girl being raped, used by the magazine LensCulture to promote a for-profit competition by Magnum, a prestigious photo agency, violated UNICEF’s ethical guidelines on reporting on children by showing the victim’s face, which makes her identifiable, and lacked any explanation regarding the enslavement and abuse of the girl. The incident also brought attention to a broader issue in photojournalism: how the Western media depicts — and often demeans — young women and girls in poor countries. More about the incident here (the photo is NOT shown on this page).

Update March 26, 2018: This story was originally published on November 26, 2017 and has been updated. An Instagram user who goes by the name of Jossa Johansson came under fire for the caption of a post with a photo of herself embracing a little girl from Kibera, Kenya. It began, “One of the happiest moment in your life was probably when you met me and my friends,” wrote Johansson. And from there, it gets even worse. The uproar reinforces the message of a joint campaign aimed at volunteers in developing countries: Think before you snap that photo (and write that caption). The campaign offers guidelines and a cheeky video to first-time travelers or young volunteers eager to capture every moment of their vacation or mission on Facebook or Instagram. It was created by Radi-Aid, a project of the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund (SAIH) that fights stereotypes in aid and development, and by Barbie Savior, an Instagram parody account. A seemingly innocent selfie with African kids, for example, can perpetuate the idea that only Western aid, charity and intervention can “save the world,” says Beathe Ogard, president of SAIH in Norway. These children are portrayed as helpless and pitiful, Ogard says, while the volunteer is made out to be the superhero who will rescue them from their misery.

Also see:

Wikipedia needs improvement re: volunteerism-related topics

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wikipediaI’ve been updating Wikipedia again. I do that from time-to-time. This time, specifically, I’ve been updating information regarding days, weeks and months that have been designated for volunteers or about volunteerism by a major organization, a country or the United Nations, as well as updating information about organizations and associations for those that manage volunteers. You can see all my updates on Wikipedia, ever, here.

It’s unfortunate that there is no program or organization – not one – that sees what I’m doing on my own, when I have time, as an independent, lonely volunteer, as part of its own mission. The result of this lack of an official champion to mobilize contributors is that Wikipedia is severely lacking in accurate information related to volunteerism, and the volunteerism field is losing a lot of its history. For instance, many major events related to volunteerism aren’t mentioned on Wikipedia or are barely mentioned, like the Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future, a major event in 1997 in Philadelphia headed by then President Bill Clinton and former President George H. Bush.

But I’m getting tired. Cleaning up Wikipedia and making it an accurate, content-rich resource regarding volunteerism should be a group effort – it shouldn’t just be me. Because I don’t have time and I don’t have all the knowledge! And it shouldn’t be ad hoc, because what’s happening is that people are going on to Wikipedia and changing content on pages related on volunteerism based on how they feel, not based on facts and cited sources, and they know that no one is going to find their edits, because no one is really watching.

There should be an official edit-a-thon to make Wikipedia an accurate, content-rich resource regarding volunteerism. And I just do not have the resources, on my own, to organize an edit-a-thon. I would love to be a part of such an effort – and with funding, I would be happy to organize it, to ensure a range of people and organizations are involved. An edit-a-thon would get a lot of pages created, updated, and linked together, as appropriate, in a two days. It would be a concentration of forces to get the bulk of the work done quickly. It would help people after the hack-a-thon keep contributing accurate, appropriate information. It would create benefits long after the edit-a-thon ended.

Oh, well… in the meantime, below is what I’ve outlined as needing to be done on Wikipedia regarding volunteerism, in case anyone out there wants to help.

Pages that need to be created on Wikipedia:

Pages related to volunteering that need updating, preferably from people intensely familiar with the organizations that are in charge of them (I created some of these pages, FYI, hence why they lack full info – much of what I wrote I had to track down on old web sites on archive.org because the associated web sites aren’t up-to-date for 2016):

June 20, 2017 update: I’ve created a Wikipedia page for National Philanthropy Day, November 15. It’s an observance designated by the Association of Fundraising Professionals – and AFP still doesn’t have a page, and I’ve done enough, someone else needs to create it.

Aug. 3, 2016 update: There is now an International Year of Volunteers – there is a Wikipedia page for IVY+10, and I’ve put on its “talk” page that it should be deleted, and remain a subsection of this main IYV page. I also note this on the IYV talk page. The IYV page needs much more information about national conferences that were held, publications that were made, and big events and activities that were organized in conjunction with IYV all over the world. It’s going to be a challenge, because all IYV web sites are long gone; if you remember the URL for an IYV-related initiative, you can type it into archive.org and review the old information. But do NOT cut and paste information from those sources onto the IYV page! You have to rewrite things and cite every source for every sentence or paragraph! Otherwise, the page will get deleted.

Pages that I consider a hot mess and in dire need of content improvement:

August 1, 2017 update: The Presidents’ Summit for America’s Future is currently a subsection of America’s Promise on Wikipedia. It should be its own page, with much more information.

Three pages that I’m not allowed to update anymore because other Wikipedia volunteers feel that my expertise gives me too much of a bias (oh, yeah, you read that right), but really need a cleanup:

There are Wikipedia pages regarding human resources management, but nothing on that page regarding how the management of volunteers is different, and there’s no page on the management of volunteers. There’s a page on virtual management but, again, no page on the management of volunteers. What I’m trying to say is that there needs to be a page about the management of volunteers!

One page that is decent, but needs to be reviewed to make sure it’s up-to-date: list of volunteer awards. Maybe there needs to be one page of days, weeks and years regarding volunteerism, like there is for this page for volunteer awards.

And then all of these pages need to be linked together appropriately and then be linked to and from other pages I haven’t mentioned here.

And all of that is just a START. My outline above isn’t comprehensive, and it is quite USA-centric. Volunteerism is a global phenomenon, yet you might not suspect such reading the aforementioned pages. And what are the Wikipedia pages like on these subjects in Spanish, German, French, Polish, Russian, and on and on?

Will anyone out there take up the call to host an edit-a-thon? Or will others with expertise in volunteerism join me in trying to improve these pages, without waiting for an edit-a-thon?

(Update July 21, 2016): If you decide to start helping with this effort, some advice:

  • Make sure the page you want to create doesn’t already exist under a different name.
  • Read carefully this official Wikipedia page: Wikipedia is not here to tell the world about your noble cause.
  • Make sure you keep information neutral. Write for an encyclopedia, not a brochure.
  • Use LOTS of citations for what you write, and don’t just use the official web site as your source material.
  • Look at similar pages as a template for the page you want to create or improve. For instance, I used existing pages regarding designated volunteering pages as a template to create new ones. A page on volunteer management should follow the style of the existing pages for human resources management and virtual management.
  • Once you create a page, make sure every Wikipedia page that mentions that organization or phrase links to it. For instance, whoever creates the United We Serve page needs to do a search on United We Serve on Wikipedia and make those phrases on other pages link back to the new page. Also, create links to the page under “See Also” on other pages, as appropriate. If you create a new page and don’t immediately create lots of links to it, it will be deleted.
  • This Wikipedia Cheatsheet is amazing. 

If you decide to have an edit-a-thon to address these many problems on Wikipedia regarding its lack of accurate, complete information related to volunteering and national service, please carefully read these official Wikipedia guidelines on how to hold such.

Wikipedia has a guideline on conflict of interest that states, “You are discouraged from writing articles about yourself or organizations (including their campaigns, clients, products and services) in which you hold a vested interest.” If you represent the organization being talked about on a Wikipedia page, you are supposed to make any editing suggestions on the article’s talk page, using the template {{Request edit}}; supposedly, this will help draw attention to your request and some Wikipedian somewhere will make the edit. The reality is that this rarely happens, and your edit request may languish forever (mine do on the pages Wikipedia has decided I can’t edit anymore). By all means, use the Talk pages as recommended by Wikipedia, but once you do that, it’s best to mobilize your own volunteers that are familiar with Wikipedia and your organization to actually get these edits done.  Make sure those volunteers have user talk pages that provides full details on who they are, and their entirely volunteer, unpaid status with your organization.

(Update March 7, 2019): As many of you know, Susan J. Ellis has passed away. I have been working on a Wikipedia page for her for three years – yes, THREE years – and in conjunction with #WIKI4WOMEN, a virtual volunteering initiative led by UNESCO and Wikimedia celebrating International Women’s Day 2019, I’ve published it today. Will it last, or will an over-zealous and probably male Wikipedian delete it, deeming it as not really noteworthy? I hope that I have enough citations and justification on the Talk page so that it will last. You could help by adding a link to Susan’s Wikipedia page somewhere appropriate on the Wikipedia page regarding virtual volunteering – a page I’m not allowed to edit because Wikipedians have deemed me “too close” to the subject matter – and adding anything to her page about her or her work that comes from a source other than her own books or web site – a book review, a commentary on her work, etc. I don’t know how to add a photograph and prove that I have permission to do so, so if you can do that, awesome.   

(Update April 9, 2021): I continue to tweet and otherwise post about this idea for an edit-a-thon to improve the information on Wikipedia regarding volunteerism. Still no interest from anyone. No one. Another page that needs to be created in Wikipedia: one regarding Ivan H. Scheier, one of the true American pioneers of the field of volunteerism. I just cannot do this by myself, friends.

Tourism, a catalyst for peace and development

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World Tourism Organization

Press Release

Madrid, Spain, 14 July 2016

PR No. 16055

Tourism, a catalyst for peace and development

Tourism can play a key role in building peace and supporting reconciliation processes, concluded the UNWTO Conference on ‘Tourism, a catalyst for development, peace and reconciliation’ held in Passikudah, Sri Lanka between 11 and 14 July.  

Community engagement and empowerment, capacity building and training, and public/private sector partnerships are key factors in advancing a culture of peace through tourism in post-conflict societies. Participants recalled the importance of placing tourism at the heart of the peace and reconciliation agenda, to ensure the sector can deliver on its capacity to generate development and social inclusion.

“Tourism is a vehicle for trust and goodwill. Cultural understanding can change attitudes and build peace. Tourism’s role in peace building is also  enacted through its contribution to poverty alleviation, cultural preservation and environmental conservation,” said President of Sri Lanka Maithripala Sirisena in a message to the Conference.

“For most of the last thirty years, this place has been a warzone. Today, Passikudah is an example of how people affected by conflict have picked up the pieces and rebuilt their lives. We would not be meeting here if it were not for peace,” said the Minister of Tourism Development and Christian Religious Affairs and Lands of Sri Lanka, John Amaratunga. “We will work to provide an example to the world on how to rise from the ashes of conflict to become a leading tourism destination,” he added.

“We face a deficit of tolerance. Tourism brings people together; it opens our minds and hearts”, said UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai, opening the Conference. “Yet to gain peace we need to give people opportunities for a better future; we need to create jobs and bring them hope,” he added.

“The Petra National Trust conducted a number of informal surveys that suggest that when tourism is poorly managed, societal tensions persist, local communities’ connection to their heritage weakens, responsible practices around tourism sites suffer, and local culture and values erode,” said HRH Princess Dana Firas, Chair of the Petra National Trust, Jordan, in her keynote address.

The Conference focused on four main topics: the contribution of tourism development to peace, local community involvement and ‘peace sensitive tourism’, public/private partnerships, and marketing in post-conflict destinations.

“This was an historical event in an area once torn apart by war. We trust that tourism development in Sri Lanka will bring more opportunities to the people and particularly the youth of the country,” said Paddy Withana, Chairman of Sri Lanka Tourism, closing the event by recalling that the conference welcomed perspectives on how that can be done in full respect of communities and traditions from across the country.

On the occasion, five Sri Lankan companies – Aitken Spence Hotel Holdings PLC, Lanka Hotels & Travels PVT Ltd, Laugfs Leisure Limited, Siddhalepa Ayurveda Health Resort and Theme Resorts & Spas Pvt Ltd. – signed the Private Sector Commitment to the UNWTO Code of Ethics for Tourism, pledging to upload and promote the values of the Code. The signing ceremony was witnessed by UNWTO Secretary-General Taleb Rifai, the Sri Lankan Minister of Tourism Development and Christian Religious Affairs and Lands of Sri Lanka, John Amaratunga, and Hiran Cooray, Member of the World Committee on Tourism Ethics.

Additional information:

The conference website

Tourism and Peace book

Photo album of the conference

Contacts:

UNWTO Media Officer Rut Gomez Sobrino
Tel: (+34) 91 567 81 60

UNWTO Communications & Publications Programme
Tel: (+34) 91 567 8100 / Fax: +34 91 567 8218

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), a United Nations specialized agency, is the leading international organization with the decisive and central role in promoting the development of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism. It serves as a global forum for tourism policy issues and a practical source of tourism know-how. Its membership includes 157 countries, 6 territories, 2 permanent observers and over 500 Affiliate Members. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn and Flickr.