Tag Archives: ethics

Proliferation of SmartPhones leads to proliferation of rape videos

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I have talked with women who help manage or even just use community tech centers all over the world – in Egypt, Afghanistan, Jordan and various countries in Africa – and very often, they have told me something that they never put into a program report for UNDP or whomever was funding the center: that the men and boys coming to the center used the computers to view porn more than any other subject.

This story from the BBC has brought this memory back to me. Here’s an excerpt:

…even as it becomes easier to access pornography thanks to cheap data and smartphones, there is concern that this isn’t being accompanied by any meaningful understanding of sex and relationships. Local boys in the village freely admitted to the BBC that they watched videos of molestation and rape. One 16-year-old said he had seen more than 25 such videos, adding that his friends often shared them on their smartphones.

Sunita Krishnan, the founder of Prajwala, an organisation in the southern city of Hyderabad that deals with issues of sexual violence and trafficking says these violent videos reinforce the old belief that a woman’s choice is insignificant and she has no agency.

This earlier story from BBC about the kidnapping, rape and murder of a child talks about some of the reasons for the attitude in the country about women.

India is not alone when it comes to high rates of incidence of rape. But many believe patriarchy and a skewed sex ratio may be making matters worse. There is public apathy as well: the rights and security of women never become election issues.

This story for INews by Divya Arya gives more background:

India has seen an internet revolution of a different kind in the past few years. Low-cost smartphones, cheap data and popular social media apps have enabled vast rural parts of the country to stream videos like never before. Pornhub, widely reported to be the world’s largest porn website, claims that India is now the third largest consumer of its content in the world after the United States and United Kingdom. The majority of its content in India is accessed using mobiles.

For many young Indian men, their introduction to sex is the first time they watch porn. India does have an Adolescent Education Program but implementation remains a challenge and girls and boys rarely mix with each other in smaller cities and villages. As I started travelling and talking to young men about this for a new BBC World Service documentary airing as part of the 100 Women season, the impact of watching porn in the absence of real interaction with women became clear. It was not only leading to objectification of women in their mind, but also re-enforcing the entitlement men have traditionally felt on women’s life decisions. In marriage, motherhood and desire to work, women remain secondary citizens…

Multiple men confirmed to me that videos of molestation, and professionally shot violent pornographic content, both were the most searched content online in cities as well as more rural areas. As more violent content became available, watching simple sex stopped being the preference for many. These men confided about wanting to replicate what they saw online and some of them explained that it did affect their personal relationships adversely.

Clicked on a link within the original story about a related story and it opened with a situation that sounded all too familiar to me:

On his many trips to Internet cafes in the bustling central Indian city of Indore, lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani discovered what he calls the “epidemic” of pornography.

“I would go to download important Supreme Court judgments, and pornographic adverts would pop up instead. And when I looked around, I saw rows of children surfing porn openly without a care in the world,” 

There are calls for bans on porn but there are fears this will lead to banning sites regarding sexual health, even breast cancer.

Here’s an hour-long documentary from BBC’s 100 Women series about the proliferation of online porn in India via smartphones.

I’m glad to see the discussions about what to do about the massive increase in the use of smartphones and social media leading to widespread myth-spreading and all of the consequences of that – but what about this very real issues of these online tools being used to promote and encourage violence against women?

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Signs that a nonprofit idea is doomed – a blog inspired by the words of Anthony Bourdain

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In honor of Anthony Bourdain, whose loss I still mourn, I read Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly for the first time. It’s a fantastic read – I highly recommend it. There’s a short section where he lists all of the wrong reasons to start a restaurant and a list of signs that a restaurant is in trouble, followed by a long narrative of his personal experiences at such failing restaurants. It got me thinking about what I’ve always considered the obvious signs of a nonprofit that’s in trouble and the wrong reasons to start a nonprofit, based on my what I’ve seen and experienced.

So I’ve spent several days thinking about it and making a list. Here it is:

The vanity project. This can be everything from I’ve always wanted to run a nonprofit, so I’m going to start one to my little precious snowflake got turned down from volunteering with a group he wanted to help so we’ve started a nonprofit in his name. These projects are all about the founder – the web site and any media articles are about the person who started the organization, how wonderful they are, or cute, or admirable – not about the clients served, the difference actually made. Many nonprofits are started by a dynamic someone with a particular vision, and I’m not at all saying that’s bad – it’s been my honor to work for some amazing visionaries. In fact, such a champion is often essential to a nonprofit getting off the ground. But when a nonprofit is mostly about the person who started it, you can bet that nonprofit isn’t going to be around long.

We have passion, not a business plan! A group of people feel passionately about trees. Or fish. Or homeless dogs. Or live theater. That’s terrific. That passionate group of people is essential for a nonprofit to be launched successfully and attract donors. But what’s also essential is an old-fashioned, text-to-paper business plan. What actual activities do you want to do in your first year and how much do you estimate that’s going to cost? How are you going to staff those activities? How are you going to ensure the safety of participants? How are you going to evaluate whether you’ve done what you said you would do and ensured you haven’t actually made things worse? What kind of facilities do you need to make all this happen? And you have to have at least a general plan for your first three years where you try to answer these questions as well.

We have a great idea that’s NEVER been done before! Yes, it has. In fact, there is a probably project like the one you are proposing already in your city or county, or online. You are so in love with your idea that you just cannot believe no one has thought about it before. So you announce it, launch it, and then are shocked when asked, “How is your project different from such-and-such?” Sure, you might get a lot of initial press over your “brand new” idea, from reporters who also didn’t do their homework and don’t know this initiative already exists somewhere. But those other established initiatives have an advantage over you: they were here before you, they learned from a litany of mistakes and misdirections you don’t know about, and they know how to avoid those now. They will be here when your idea isn’t so hot and new anymore and you go back to grad school. Here’s a better pitch: We have a great idea for something this community needs, and here is our extensive proof that it’s needed and how it’s different from other projects, along with why we can do this!

Our board of directors doesn’t give money, just ideas! Your board is fiscally responsible for this organization. The executive director reports to the board, who evaluates his or her performance. The board should know how to do that. Boards that don’t know how to do that are shocked when the executive director resigns and, whoops, the bank account is empty! The board should have a set amount of money they need to raise or give every year to the organization in order to keep their seat on that board. Also, how can your nonprofit ask for money unless your board members are showing leadership in donating themselves? If you just want their ideas, put them on an advisory board. If your board of directors isn’t providing a good percentage of your operational funds, either out of their own pockets or via their network of associates, your nonprofit isn’t going to last long.

Our first step: a high-profile fundraising event! So many nonprofits start with trying to find a celebrity to endorse their idea or trying to organize a big concert or even an entire music festival to launch their initiative. The organizers think that all you have to do is get your heart-wrenching letter or energetic pitch in front of some big movie star or music celebrity and, poof, that person is going to be calling you to say, “I have to be a part of this! How can I help?!” It doesn’t work that way. The landscape is littered with failed fundraising concerts – and even lawsuits that resulted from such. One of the parts of Loretta Lynn’s autobiography that doesn’t make it into the film based on that book is one of her early attempts at organizing a fundraising concert for a cause that she cared about – it was a disaster because organizers – people with a lot of great intentions – didn’t have a business plan or a budget. Money was lost, hearts were broken, reputations harmed. See also: NetAid.

Our main message is: give us money! I am not going to follow you on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere else if all your nonprofit is going to do is hit me up for a donation. Show me photos of your volunteers in action, of your happy box office staff taking reservations for your next show, of actors acting in your current show, of someone happily adopting a dog from your shelter, of your staff getting ready for your next farmer’s market, of your executive director talking to the Rotary Club or, if its appropriate, of your clients. Tell me success stories, tell me stories of the challenges your clients face, tell me something funny… don’t just tell me, or beg me, to donate!

We have an angel! It’s not just Broadway producers that dream of a wealthy person that falls in love with an idea and is willing to put up major bucks to fund it – a lot of people that start nonprofits dream of it as well. And like most Broadway producers that want to rely on such, they get their heart broken. But sometimes it DOES work out, and a nonprofit gets the attention of that wealthy someone who gives half, or even the bulk, of the money needed for the first year of operations. Or maybe its a foundation. Hurrah for you! But here’s a spoiler alert: that gift will disappear some day. Maybe not next year. Maybe not the year after that. But it will happen: the angel will get other interests, or die. A nonprofit or NGO that is not constantly cultivating a diversity of funding streams – other foundations, lots of individual donors, fees for service, contracts for service, etc. – is, sooner or later, going away.

GIve us money or volunteer with us or we’ll have to close! Then maybe you should close. Because if this is what it’s come to, it means that, even if you get the money you need to stay open this month, you will be making the same desperate plea next month.

That’s my list. What do you think are the signs of a nonprofit or non-governmental organization (NGO) doomed from the start? Share in the comments.

Also see:

Tearing down women who dare to lead

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The next time you see a glowing article about or an interview with a woman who has started her own initiative or nonprofit in the town or neighborhood where she lives, or who is running for office, or who is leading a fight against some polluter or oppressor in her area, no matter what country it’s happening in, consider what this woman is probably dealing with that isn’t talked about in the article: vicious, constant personal attacks and criticisms.

In a blog I wrote a year ago, called Barriers to women’s leadership we don’t talk about, I wrote about women in other countries who pay a hefty price in their attempts to be ambitious at work and exert any kind of leadership, particularly via gossip but also per constant insults and criticisms from other women. And I noted that those barriers happen right here in the USA to women who try to lead in some way, small or large.

Women are continually, regularly discouraged from thinking of themselves as powerful or ambitious or worthy of leading in any efforts, no matter how large or small. When women try to lead – whether on a project or even just regarding a topic during a discussion- the reaction can be discouraging or even ugly. The reactions come from colleagues, from the community, even from those they try to serve. Even from family members.

Women who try to lead are often subjected to insults and attacks designed specifically to prey on personal fears and insecurities. I’ve certainly it experienced myself. Newly-elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is experiencing it to a degree that would make most people wither – any Internet search of her name will illustrate it. 

Right here in the small town in Oregon where I live, a few years ago, a young woman decided to create a participatory project that she hoped would build community cohesion, something the population was struggling with. She planned carefully, encouraged and welcomed participation, shared decision-making and made it completely transparent, and personally reached out and guided participants in the project, all while making sure her vision was always at the forefront – it was about that vision, not about her. The project flourished: more and more people participated and her vision was being realized: more and more people became aware of local government meetings and action (and how to participate in such), new resources from the county public health office, road conditions, and even new restaurant openings. Rumors were quickly squashed. Neighbors were helping each other – neighbors who might never have met otherwise. Involvement in her project grew to a number that was more than 25% of the population, and it included me – I was skeptical at first, but quickly bought into her efforts. A newspaper wrote a story about her efforts. At a debate for candidates running for local office, two candidates talked about her project in their remarks and how it was so important to the community and they wanted to better leverage it.

But some people didn’t like her success. A small minority of participants provided constant public and private criticism of how she moderated and facilitated activities and how she reinforced the goals of the project, and rarely was the criticism constructive. People who violated the project’s policies – policies that are in writing and about which regular reminders are sent – were angry when they were gently reprimanded, even if that reprimand happened well behind the scenes, discreetly. They were furious when their actions, in violation of the written policies, lead them to being blocked from further participation. The founder received personal insults via direct message and text, like the one posted next to this paragraph (it’s one of the milder ones, actually). At least one person created a fake account on Facebook and posted outrageous messages, trying to make people think it was the group founder. At least three rival projects were launched by disgruntled former participants  – all failed after just a few weeks or months. But that tiny, vocal, persistent minority and their constant insults and attacks finally did her in: after four years, she resigned her role as project owner and manager, not because she thought the project needed fresh leadership, not because there were people who had demonstrated that they were ready to take over, but because, emotionally, she just couldn’t take the belittling and abusive comments anymore. It will now be up to the remaining volunteers to keep the project going. And maybe the project will continue. But what I’m worried about is that she’s probably going to continue to be targeted for comments by people in any endeavor she undertakes in this small town because she DARED to lead.

For anyone who offers advice for women who want to be leaders that is focused on smoothing out presentation style and being more gentle or diplomatic, I say, quite frankly: bollocks. Being overly concerned by one’s image with everyone or even the most vocal group of critics, however large or small, diminishes that person’s mental and emotional resources needed for leadership. People who are distracted about how everyone else perceives them – or even a vocal minority – are less clear about their goals and less capable of reaching them. And make no mistake: women are targeted by this kind of criticism far, far more than men.

I hate most of the articles I have ever read on women’s leadership. One I did not hate is Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers by Herminia Ibarra, Robin J. Ely and Deborah M. Kolb. A version of the article was published in the September 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review. And I loved this quote from the article in particular:

Integrating leadership into one’s core identity is particularly challenging for women, who must establish credibility in a culture that is deeply conflicted about whether, when, and how they should exercise authority. 

The reality is that effective leaders must have the confidence, and maybe even arrogance, to take initiative and action despite insults and criticisms. They have to know when a criticism is something to be considered, something to be used for improvement, and when it’s meant solely to be spiteful, to undermine and derail efforts and to personally attack someone and undermine their confidence. Effective leaders must be firmly anchored in their purpose. They need to always keep their cause, mission, project, objective, key message, whatever it is, as the first and foremost priority in all they do, and remember that everything they do needs to be true to that cause or message – a cause or message bigger than themselves. Absolutely, leaders need to listen to and consider comments and criticism about their performance – but they also need to know when to ignore insults. They need to know when they are hearing constructive criticism and when something is being said or done solely to tear someone down. And that can be difficult for even the best leaders.

When men are firmly anchored in their purpose, they are admired as confident. When women do this – well, we all know what is said about women who do this. But maybe instead of telling women to alter their behaviors if they want to be leaders, we need to start calling out the double standards in how we describe and respond to women leaders.

Updated April 15, 2021: A comic strip demonstrates the challenges women face online. It’s developed by Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet). In a story of three differently aged, differently shaped and differently employed women, we see what violence can look like online, how the seemingly harmless can actually contribute to it, and what we can all do to prevent it and to create a safer space for women online.

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Governments cracking down on nonprofits & NGOs

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Budapest, Hungary is one of my very favorite cities, and not just because I think it has the BEST FOOD IN THE WORLD. Budapest has what I consider the perfect mix of gorgeous history all around and vibrant new ideas from its young people. It feels unique and ancient while also feeling bold and progressive. It’s an energy that both preserves what’s best about a community or country (history, architecture, environment, the arts, etc.) and helps it prosper and move forward, particularly in times of great economic and cultural change.

It is with great sadness that I read about efforts by the Hungarian government to shut down the Aurora community centre.  “Now, the Aurora, which rents office space to a handful of NGOs — including LGBTQ and Roma support groups — says it has been pushed to the brink of closure by far-right attacks, police raids and municipality moves to buy the building… NGOs are routinely attacked through legal measures, criminal investigations and smear campaigns — something the Aurora told CNN it has experienced first-hand.”

“We wanted to create a safe environment for civil organizations,” said Adam Schonberger, director of Marom Budapest, the Jewish youth group that founded the community center in 2014. “By doing this we became a sort of enemy of the state. We didn’t set out to be a political organisation — but this is how we’ve found ourselves.” Schonberger didn’t think authorities had targeted Aurora because of its Jewish roots. Instead, he put the harassment down to the group’s values of “social inclusion, building civil society and fighting for human rights.”

Here’s Aurora on Facebook. And here is the Aurora’s web site.

I am very partial to these kind of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) – what we call nonprofits in the USA – that help cultivate grassroots efforts, encourage the sharing and exploration of ideas, and help incubate emerging movements and other NGOs. I believe these NGOs can play an important role in helping immigrants assimilate in a country as well and help the country benefit from the talents and ideas these immigrants may bring. I’ve had the pleasure of addressing groups like this in Eastern Europe, and in the USA in Lexington, Kentucky, and I’ve walked away feeling renewed and energized. Add in promotion and celebration of the arts, like Appalshop does in Eastern Kentucky, and I’m ready to pack up and move to a remote town in Eastern, Kentucky.

This NGO’s struggles are part of an ongoing shift all over Europe, and indeed, the world, in local and national governments that are rejecting diversity, changing times, dissent and intellectualism, and governing from a place of fear. I could think that I’m isolated from this trend here in the USA, where I’m living these days, but I am not. I remember back in the 1990s, when similar political groups went after arts organizations, even going so far as trying to defund the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) – I helped arrange for Christopher Reeve, a co-founder the Creative Coalition and then performing at a theater where I was working, to debate Pat Robertson about the NEA on CNN’s Crossfire on July 16, 1990, and the theaters where I worked back in those days all felt pressure regarding their artistic choices because of these movements. Those controversies are still here, as any search on Google and Bing shows.

Nonprofits in the USA need to watch carefully what’s happening in other countries and think about how such could happen here. Remember the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN)? It was a collection of community-based nonprofits and programs all over the USA that advocated for low- and moderate-income families. They worked to address neighborhood safety, voter registration, health care, affordable housing and other social issues for low-income people. At its peak, ACORN had more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities across the USA. But ACORN was targeted by conservative political activists who secretly recorded and released highly-edited videos of interactions with low-level ACORN personnel in several offices, portraying the staff as encouraging criminal behavior. Despite multiple investigations on the federal, state, and county level that found that the released tapes were selectively edited to portray ACORN as negatively as possible and that nothing in the videos warranted criminal charges, the organization was doomed: politicians pounced and the public relations fallout resulted in almost immediate loss of funding from government agencies and from private donors.

There are growing misconceptions about the role of nonprofits in the USA and this could fuel local, state and national movements against nonprofit organizations – not just arts organizations. Nonprofits of every kind need to make sure they are inviting the public and local and state government officials regularly to see their work and WHY their work matters to the entire community, not just their target client/audience. Most nonprofit organizations need to do a much better job using the Web to show accountability. In short: don’t think it can’t happen here.

Also see:

Many app4good efforts fail to get stakeholder input: lessons from UNHCR

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Developed in a ‘bubble’, many apps that were developed by various IT dogooders for refugees duplicated existing well-used communication platforms. They didn’t take into account complex issues of trust, how information (or rumors) spread, nor how rapidly the political and protection landscape changed. There was also demonstrated naivety around data protection and the political sensitivity related to information being shared.

“I definitely don’t want to disparage the motivations nor the commitments demonstrated by thousands of volunteers during in Europe. But, ‘tech-led solutions’ to complex challenges failed to solve the significant communication issues.”

Katie Drew of the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) writes a much-needed piece about the many apps4good / tech4good efforts launched to help migrants that didn’t last past their splashy launches. She also provides helpful advice for future efforts. Her advice is applicable to ANY hackathons / hacks4good that think a room full of IT folks can solve an issue faced by migrants, people experiencing homeless, women facing domestic violence, or any mission of a nonprofit or non-governmental organization.

Also see:

guide to ethics in app & other tech tool development

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I really love this and I would love to see this guide built into all hackathons / hacks4good, the development of apps4good, etc.:

Ethical OS Toolkit: a guide to anticipating the future of impact of today’s technology
Or: how to not regret the things you will build

I have only one disappointment with the guide, but I’ll save that for the end of the blog.

This is from the guide, and explains why this document is needed:

As technologists, it’s only natural that we spend most of our time focusing on how our tech will change the world for the better. Which is great. Everyone loves a sunny disposition. But perhaps it’s more useful, in some ways, to consider the glass half empty. What if, in addition to fantasizing about how our tech will save the world, we spent some time dreading all the ways it might, possibly, perhaps, just maybe, screw everything up? No one can predict exactly what tomorrow will bring (though somewhere in the tech world, someone is no doubt working on it). So until we get that crystal ball app, the best we can hope to do is anticipate the long-term social impact and unexpected uses of the tech we create today.

The last thing you want is to get blindsided by a future YOU helped create. The Ethical OS is here to help you see more clearly.

The guide includes:

  • A checklist of 8 risk zones to help you identify the emerging areas of risk and social harm most critical for your team to start considering now.
  • 14 scenarios to spark conversation and stretch your imagination about the long-term impacts of tech you’re building today.
  • 7 future-proofing strategies to help you take ethical action today.

The risk zones that the guide identifies are:

  • Truth, Disinformation, and Propaganda
  • Addiction & the Dopamine Economy
  • Economic & Asset Inequalities
  • Machine Ethics & Algorithmic Biases
  • Surveillance State
  • Data Control & Monetization
  • Implicit Trust & User Understanding
  • Hateful & Criminal Actors

The Ethical OS is a joint creation of the Institute for the Future and Omidyar Network’s Tech and Society Solutions Lab.

The guide has lots of discussion questions that developers can explore. It’s not so much that the questions have right or wrong answers – they are meant to spur consideration of how a new technology meant to help people could be misused, something that all too many developers DON’T think about.

The guide also has suggested questions for board members and trustees to ask themselves about tech development, so they can understand the possible risks to their organizations as a result of use of the app.

My only disappointment with the guide – and it’s a BIG disappointment – is that the section on Economic & Asset Inequalities never mentions accessibility for people with disabilities. When tech tools are not accessible for people who have sight impairments, people who have hearing impairments, people with mobility issues, etc., those tools create economic and asset inequalities. It’s really inexcusable that this wasn’t mentioned even once.

Some other blog posts regarding tech4good and work ethics:

What should be on a political web site

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I’m a stickler for nonprofit organizations being as transparent as possible, well beyond what is required by law, regarding their financing, spending and staffing. As mission-based organizations, with missions that are supposed to benefit people and/or our environment, being accountable not only to donors but to all the public at large is crucial in showing credibility and ethics. Many in the for-profit/corporate and political sphere are threatened by the work of such organizations – nonprofits, NGOs, community-based organizations, etc. – and they can use an organization’s perceived lack of transparency about certain information to feed the public’s distrust of such organizations. Nonprofits can head this office by sharing as much info as possible on their web site about who they are and what they do.

I think a nonprofit, NGO, etc. should have on its web site:

  • a list of its board of directors
  • a list of its staff, at least senior staff, and their credentials
  • a statement of when the organization was founded and why
  • a list of key activities and accomplishments since the organization was founded
  • a statement regarding how much money it raised or earned in the last fiscal year and how much it spent, and at least a general idea on what it spent that money on

There have been nonprofits that I have seriously thought about giving a donation to, but when I go to their web site, they don’t have this basic info, so I don’t donate. I wonder how many other donations these nonprofits have missed out on because of this lack of info? There’s even more I think should be on a nonprofit’s web site, like complete information about volunteering, but that’s another blog.

I apply this rule about mandatory information that must be on a web site to political organizations and political candidates I’m interested in as well. No matter how passionately I feel in support of a candidate or a viewpoint, I want to know who is running things and how the money will be spent, even a general idea. You want me to donate to so-and-so so they can win an election? What are you going to spend the money on? In particular, how much will go to paying for TV time, radio time, flyers, web site development, etc., and how much is going to be paid to consultants for their ideas? What percentage of your staffing is by paid consultants and what percentage is by unpaid volunteers? And if you are a political organization, when were you founded, who is staffing the organization, and how did you pick the candidates you have suggested in your voter guide?

Another tip for political organizations: when someone comes to my door and says they are from such-and-such organization, and they want me to sign a petition about judicial reform or some new law or whatever, I am more likely to listen to that person if he or she says, “I am a volunteer with so-and-so.” Knowing someone is a volunteer, not a paid political person, gives whatever that person says much more weight with me. A volunteer is giving up precious time, often on a weekend, to reach out to me about a person or a cause – that’s how passionate that person feels about that candidate or ballot measure or whatever. And that carries a huge amount of weight with me. A paid person is the same as an ad on TV, and I just shrug, take the info and usually cut them off – I’d prefer to look up the candidate or issue myself in my own time.

Also see:

If I can’t find what I’m looking for on your web site, who else can’t?

Use Your Web Site to Show Your Accountability and To Teach Others About the Nonprofit / NGO / Charity Sector!

REQUIRED Volunteer Information on Your Web Site

Volunteers themselves speaking out about their unethical voluntourism experiences

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There are few things more cringeworthy than watching 20 British schoolgirls trying to build a well under the scalding Nepalese heat. This is what I imagine a group of local men were thinking as they politely stood back while we puzzled our way through this contraption. The orphans peered through the windows, somewhat accustomed to this strange set-up. An unnecessary number of hours later, a ceremony took place thanking us for our hard work. We had singlehandedly brought clean water to this poor, desperate orphanage. We could fly home better people.

This scathing comment is from an editorial called DUCK expeditions are a load of quack published in the Palatinate, the official student newspaper of Durham University in the UK. The blog is an honest account of unethical voluntourism by someone who, as a young teen, went abroad, thinking she her good heart but complete lack of expertise was what a poor community abroad needed and wanted. I applaud her for coming forward when she realized what her voluntourism experience had really been, in terms of helping and impact abroad.

In addition, via link on Reddit, I found a blog from 2015, by a young woman in Germany whose hope for a voluntourism experience to help turtles actually became torture for them:

“The ‘turtle conservation program’ was shut down after the police came (there is a law in Fiji to protect turtles as they are threatened by extinction). A girl made a… ehh… Let’s say critical Facebook post. I think ‘inhuman’ and ‘animal torture’ were some of the words she used… I’m just glad that I got my money back without any problem because I know about 7 people who had to go to court to get some of their money back because the agencies made a lot of great promises without keeping them. What they offer is not really volunteer work, here they call it voluntourism. A lot of money which doesn’t actually help anybody but just finances the international agencies. I got quite disillusioned about volunteering here. I left the volunteer house as soon as possible and went to a resort. The turtles were set free, but they are probably dead because they have been in the tank for too long and weren’t able to survive anymore. I’m so sorry for them.”

I did reach out to the author and, indeed, she exists and this was her experience. In an email to me last month, she noted:

I must say that I really regret not following through on that whole thing after I got the full amount back. I should have addressed that magazine to publish the whole story or the topic, or at least have given public critics, but I was 18, alone in Fiji and everything was very exciting… I was just too distracted with all that comes with starting university. So I am happy to hear that somebody actually does address that topic…

I appreciate these young people speaking out – it’s NOT easy. These are people who really did want to do the right thing, and while their attempt at voluntourism ended up being wasteful or even destructive, their voice now IS doing the right thing, and I applaud them.

But it’s not just people who paid to volunteer in unethical programs (in contrast to ethical ones) who are speaking out – it’s also people who were exploited in unethical programs:

The support of orphanages has created a thriving industry in which children are separated from their families and subjected to terrible abuse and neglect, as I was — being used as a commodity to generate funding… Having these adults coming in and out of our lives felt like we were continuously being abandoned.

This statement is from Sinet Chan, who grew up in a Cambodian orphanage and has pleaded with Australians not to donate to or volunteer at orphanages. Her quote is from this article about the push in Australia to make ‘orphanage tourism’ illegal.

I’m not letting up on this issue of calling out unethical voluntourism programs (in contrast to ethical ones).  

There are ethical voluntourism programs. They are few and far between, but they do exist. An ethical voluntourism program:

  • Is led by local people.
  • Is transparent about how the funds paid by volunteers are used.
  • Does not take away local jobs (in fact, very often, it creates them, or funds local workers).
  • Does not bring volunteers into contact with wildlife or supposed “orphans”, or unsupervised contact with children.
  • Is focused on a project that has a measurable outcome valued by the local community, one that might not happen, or not happen as quickly, without the volunteers’ participation.
  • Has safety and safeguarding policies and requires volunteers to be trained regarding such.
  • Has a process to vet volunteers, to assure they are appropriate to be involved in the program.
  • Educates volunteers about the region or country where volunteers will work, the issues and challenges that have led to the need for your program, etc.
  • Does not reinforce colonialist ideas or White Supremacy.

If you want to help abroad and not pay for the experience, then get involved locally and get the expertise that’s needed by volunteer sending agencies that don’t charge (but expect you to stay for a lot longer than a couple of weeks!). You shouldn’t feel that you should get to do something abroad that requires expertise – work with at-risk youth, help animals, help refugees, etc. – unless you have experience doing it locally, in your own country, preferably in your own community.

There is such a thing as effective short-term international volunteering. And it is NOT impossible to break into humanitarian work. And caring about people and animals abroad is a great quality to have. But taking action abroad needs to come from a place from respect and knowledge.

July 8, 2018 update: My consulting colleague and all-around amazing human Dr. Erin Barnhardt wrote about her own experience as a pay-to-volunteer-abroad experience in her 2012 PhD thesis, Engaging Global Service: Organizational Motivations for and Perceived Benefits of Hosting International Volunteers. She notes in the introduction to her research:

While my experience in Jordan was on the whole overwhelmingly positive, I was surprised and somewhat disappointed to discover that I was in fact a largely ineffective volunteer. I knew that staying for only two weeks meant that my contributions would be severely limited and that my lack of Arabic language skills would further hamper my impact, but I’d assumed that coming in with a professional expertise meant that I could make some kind of lasting contribution during my very short tenure. What I discovered though was, despite having gone through a reputable volunteer-sending organization to an organization that regularly hosted international volunteers, the infrastructure to put me to work was minimal and somewhat ad hoc. I came to the Jordanian NGO with a genuine interest in helping out, only to discover that there was in fact little for me to do.

I so appreciate Erin’s honesty – and the honesty of all people who have paid-to-volunteer abroad and are now speaking out about it.

July 16, 2018 update: When volun-tourism isn’t all it’s cracked up to be’ – ‘It was pretty much a zoo’: The conditions came to light by Amanda Rowland, 21, an upset and unhappy volunteer who had paid over $3000 to visit the centre in in Malaysia for a month in January. Amanda had been sold the trip as a chance to work at a temporary holding facility for orangutans rescued from illegal possession.

May 31, 2019: Chase and JP Morgan has a commercial to encourage financial planning that promotes volunteerism with wildlife: a happy couple gushes about their volunteer trip abroad scrubbing elephants’ feet and further gush how they would like to make that trip every year from now on, and their financial advisor is happy to oblige. So disappointing to see these two companies promote such a highly unethical and harmful practice!

June 2025: I went on a voluntourism project. Yes, really. And it was awesome. It met all of my criteria of ethical voluntourism. 

My other blogs on this subject:

AccessU: three days accessible design courses

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Accessible online design – design that welcomes people with disabilities – is a part of addressing the digital divide and meaningful digital inclusion.

John Slatin AccessU is an interactive and communal conference where attendees learn everything needed to integrate accessibility into online products. Presented by the nonprofit Knowbility, AccessU provides methods and resources that can immediately be put to use by designers, developers, project managers, administrators, and anyone who is responsible for online content and development.

Classes at Knowbility’s AccessU include:
Accessibility 101: Beginner’s Basics, Annual Accessibility Legal Update, Accessible Office – Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Accessible PDF Documents, Accessible iOS Development, Building Accessibility into Design, Designing Accessible Forms and Tables, Mobile Accessibility, Accessible User Experience Design Studio, Practical Accessibility Testing Tools for Everyone, Usability Testing for People with Disabilities, and much more.

John Slatin AccessU
Mon, May 14, 2018 – Wed, May 16, 2018
Austin, Texas
https://knowbility.org/programs/accessu/

More than 49 million Americans have some type of disability. One in five people will experience a disability at some point in their lives, and those numbers are sure to increase as the population ages.

People with disabilities want to be able to learn online, to work, to buy things, to attend online classes, to volunteer, to donate and to contribute to their society just as everyone does. And just like other people, they want to use the Web and other online technologies to access information and network with others.

Also note that Title II of the ADA prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in all services, programs, and activities provided to the public by State and local government. That has been interpreted by the courts to include online services and programs.

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International aid workers having sex with people in countries in crisis

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I’ve written about the danger of sexual assault for women that work in aid and development, including PeaceCorps members (see the end of this blog for links). But, as I’ve researched, written and published these pieces, I’ve thought about women living in those developing countries, and how those local women are at even greater risk of sexual assault by the foreigners coming to their communities, either military, private enterprise or humanitarian workers. They are at MUCH greater risk, in fact. The Oxfam scandal reminds me that I’m overdue to focus on this.

If case you aren’t aware: earlier in February, The London Times reported that the U.K.-based agency Oxfam covered up an internal inquiry finding that the country director for the African country of Chad, Roland van Hauwermeiren, and members of his staff, had paid prostitutes in Chad for sex. Similar accusations emerged after van Hauwermeiren and his team were reassigned to Haiti following the devastating 2010 earthquake there. In an open letter responding to the allegations, van Hauwemeiren, a 68-year-old Dutch citizen, denied the allegations of sexual exploitation, saying he had “intimate relations” with a woman in Haiti during his tenure there, but that she was “not a prostitute. I never gave her money.”

Can local women in a developing country that has been devastated by war, corruption, natural disaster and/or poverty have consensual sex with foreign military members, business people or aid workers? Can a refugee? I say no. It’s impossible for someone in such a vulnerable position economically or socially to freely consent to sex with someone with that much power. 

About 20 years ago, there was an online community called the Aid Workers Network. I was one of the facilitators of that network, and we had some really incredible discussions about working in aid and development. It was through that network that I read an article about a humanitarian worker seeing his boss leaving a brothel, and it was the first time I had ever considered issues around aid workers and sex with local people – or even six with each other.

I’ve worked with international aid agencies since 2001, including in some developing countries, and in my briefings for working in those countries and with local people, people who are in highly-vulnerable positions because of their dire economic situation and because of the insecurity of their situation, I never once heard a caution about sexual relationships with local people, about power dynamics that many would say render it impossible to call a sexual relationship with a local woman and a foreign man “consensual.”

Sara Callaway, co-founder of Women of Colour Global Women’s Strike, noted in this article in The Guardian: “When women are starving and living in rubble, it is not prostitution. It is rape – what choice do women have?”

Other than on the now-defunct Aid Workers Network, I never once witnessed this as a topic of discussion among aid workers, including at the United Nations. I never felt that I was in a position of stability in terms of my job to dare to ask questions of human resources managers or anyone else, for that matter, regarding being on guard regarding sexual exploitation of local people by aid staff. I now so regret not asking the questions I wanted to, even if it would have jeopardized my career at the UN.

Here’s what I think needs to happen to keep local women safe and to change the culture at oh-so-many field offices regarding the safety of local women in their interactions with international staff:

  • Aid agencies MUST have written policies regarding international staff engaging in romantic or sexual relationships with local people or international staff that are subordinate to them, and these policies should be communicated when a person is hired and re-iterated regularly to ensure that no one can say, “Oh, I didn’t know!”
  • Visiting a prostitute in a developing country for sex, rather than as a part of official work with sex workers to ensure their basic rights, protect their health, etc., should be grounds for dismissal of international staff, as a violation of that agency’s written code of conduct. It should not matter if money was exchanged or not. Aid agencies cannot say they worry about the rights of women and then ignore that staff are visiting prostitutes for sex in developing countries. They must also consider what their policy will be regarding local male staff and their interactions with sex workers – this isn’t just about appropriateness; it’s also about abuse of power.
  • Aid agencies should publicly report how many accounts of sexual misconduct they investigate each year, the number of people dismissed each year for sexual harassment or abuse, and the processes they have for investigating and dealing with reports of sexual harassment or abuse. No need for names of people nor even of the countries where incidents happen – naming the countries where such happens could, in fact, endanger humanitarian workers in those countries.
  • Aid agencies should also say, in writing, publicly, if they are willing to rehire or reassign a staff member or contractor they suspect to have violated their policies regarding sexual misconduct or abuse, and what their policy is for providing a reference to such staff people regarding jobs at other agencies.

Oh, but what if an international aid worker truly falls in love with a local person? Then the aid worker can quit their job, get out of that power position, and get on a more level playing field with the love of their life.

There has never been a greater need for aid agencies. There has never been a greater need for foreign money to support those aid agencies. Aid agencies have prevented wars – no, not all of them, obviously. Aid agencies prevent genocides – no, not all of them, obviously. But without aid agencies, the amount of chaos happening in the world would be untenable. Aid agency scandals provide perfect scenarios for isolationists in government to cut foreign aid even further. Humanity, nor the environment, can survive without aid agencies – and they cannot survive if they do not address this very real, serious issue.

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