Tag Archives: volunteering

Subreddits For Good

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As of July 2019, Reddit ranks as the No. 5 most visited website in the USA and No. 13 in the world. Statistics suggest that 74% of Reddit users are male. Users tend to be significantly younger than other online communities like Facebook with less than 1% of users being 65 or over. Reddit is known in part for its passionate user base, which has been described as “offbeat, quirky, and anti-establishment”. I participate in Reddit because I have struggled at times to connect with young, male audiences, and to have a handle on what young people say regarding nonprofits, volunteering, civic engagement and other subjects of interest to me professionally. If you want to reach out to young people, especially men, in the USA, or even know what they might be thinking, Reddit is a terrific resource.

If you are interested in volunteerism or philanthropy, here are subreddits – online discussion groups on Reddit – you might be interested in visiting regularly, which I’ve dubbed, collectively, as “Reddit4Good”, though some are questionable in terms of ethics and quality of info (updated March 17, 2021):

If you are in Utah and are looking for volunteering opportunities, you should follow UServeUtah.

If you want to get ideas for voluntourism – where you pay to “volunteer” abroad, where you get to have a “feel good” experience for just a few weeks or months (as opposed to having to have an area of expertise and local people designing the volunteer role, not a company that brings in foreign volunteers), where you don’t need to have any skills and no one checks your background – that’s not really doing anything “for good.” But I’ll share the places on Reddit where people post voluntourism opportunities (updated March 17, 2021):

Full disclosure: I’m the volunteer moderator of the Volunteer subreddit. Is it tough being a 50+ female moderator on an online community that skews oh-so-young and male? Yes. Yes, it is.

September 21, 2020 update: check out The Nonprofit & NGO Guide to Using Reddit, to see how your nonprofit, NGO, charity or other community program can leverage these and other subreddits to build awareness, promote events, recruit volunteers and more.

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

Your favorite non-English resources re: volunteerism or nonprofits?

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I asked this back in 2011, but it’s time to ask it again:

I would like to know YOUR favorite online resources regarding volunteerism / volunteers (especially the support and management of such), nonprofits or NGOs (non-governmental organizations), including Tweeters, in languages OTHER than English.

Spanish, French or German are most desired, but any language – Arabic, Persian Farsi / Dari / Tajik /, Hindi, whatever – would be welcomed.

In short, I’m looking for the Spanish, French, German, Arabic and other non-USA, non-English-language versions of Energize, Inc., of VolunteerMatch, of resources for those that manage volunteers like what I have on my web site, etc.

Please send the name of the resource, the URL of the resource, and a summary of what the resource is – does it focus on volunteer management? On nonprofits / NGOs / charities using the Internet? Or helping organizations recruit volunteers? Or fundraising / resource mobilization? Or any aspect of management? Is it a web site? A database? A Twitter feed?

I have some of these resources already, but I would like to have more. Plus, mine need updating:

I will share what I’ve compiled already and what’s submitted – and is what I’m looking for – on my web site, and announce the page here on my blog, as well as my Twitter feed and my Facebook page.

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

Hosting International Volunteers: A Where-To-Start Guide For Local Organizations

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I’m seeing more and more local organizations – non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, schools – in developing countries posting on sites like Reddit, asking foreign volunteers to travel to their countries and volunteer. These NGOs and others offer no information on whether or not its legal for foreigners to come to the country and volunteer, no information on what they will do to ensure volunteers will be safe, no information on what screening they do of volunteers to ensure safety of volunteers – they just post, “Hey, we help orphans / wildlife / women, and you can come here and help us.”

It’s troubling.

The reality is that it is not ethical nor appropriate for any NGO to recruit foreign volunteers unless they are already involving LOCAL volunteers and have the full endorsement of local people for the work they do, and it is inappropriate for them to recruit foreign volunteers unless they have complete information on assignments, safety, screening, quality control and more.

That said, some NGOs have a legitimate need for foreign volunteers, and this page on my web site is meant to help.

Hosting International Volunteers: A Where-To-Start Guide For Local Organizations provides detailed suggestions for NGOs in developing countries interested in gaining access to foreign volunteers. This is a “getting started” guide, NOT a comprehensive guide: it’s impossible within the boundaries of a simple web page to detail all an organization needs to do to host volunteers from other countries.

Also see:

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

How to counter the ongoing drop in volunteer firefighter numbers

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In March 2019, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) published its 2017 U.S. Fire Department Profile report. It’s based on data collected via a national survey of fire departments. The report estimates that there were 682,600 volunteer firefighters in the USA in 2017. That is down significantly from the 814,850 and 729,000 volunteer firefighters that the NFPA estimates were active in the U.S. in 2015 and 2016, respectively. The volunteer firefighter numbers for 2016 and 2017 are the lowest recorded levels since the NFPA began the survey in 1983. 

According to the report, 83,550 of the 132,250 reduction in volunteer firefighters between 2015 and 2017 occurred in fire departments protecting communities with populations of 2,500 or fewer residents. The NFPA estimates an overall decline of 83,900 firefighters (career and volunteer combined) in those communities, a reduction of more than 20 percent over a two-year span. 

In addition to the decline in the number of firefighters serving in the smallest communities, the average age of those firefighters continued to increase in 2017. Fifty-three percent of firefighters serving communities with populations of 2,500 or less were over the age of 40, and 32 percent were over the age of 50 in 2017. This continues an aging trend that has been happening for years among the population of firefighters in small communities.

Number of Firefighters in the U.S., 1983, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2015-2017

YearTotalCareerVolunteer
1983*1,111,200226,600884,600
19901,025,650253,000 772,650
20001,064,150286,800777,350
20101,103,300335,150768,150
2015 1,149,300345,600814,850
20161,090,100361,100729,000
20171,056,200373,600682,600

*Note, this is the first year for which firefighter numbers are available from the NFPA.
Source: NFPA Survey of Fire Departments for U.S. Fire Experience

As the National Volunteer Fire Council notes, it is important to note that these numbers are estimates based on responses to a survey of a sample of U.S. fire departments that is designed to be representative of the overall U.S. Fire Service. Approximately 8.7 percent of fire departments surveyed responded to the survey. Any annual differences reflect both actual changes in what is being measured as well as year-on-year statistical and sampling variability.

The NVFC says that, this year, the federal government will award more than $40 million to local fire departments to help pay for volunteer recruitment and retention efforts through the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant program, funded out of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And that’s great. But it’s going to take a huge change in the attitude of most local fire departments for this money to make a difference. As I said in my blog why you can’t find/keep volunteer firefighters: There ARE potential volunteer firefighters out there, even in your small town. There are a LOT of people who are hungry to connect, hungry for a deeper, substantial activity that connects them with the community and causes they believe in, one that gives them an immersive, hands-on, intense experience. Volunteer firefighting can have a great deal of appeal to today’s young people. But if you don’t have a welcoming environment, if you aren’t trying to reach them where they are, if you aren’t using social media, and if you are just talking about all the work that has to be done and the obligations to be fulfilled, those young people are going to overlook you and even go elsewhere and numbers will continue to decline.

In short: we will never, ever go back to a time when volunteer firefighters are recruited in the way they were before the 1980s. The recruitment of volunteer firefighters must radically evolve. How volunteer firefighters are engaged must radically evolve. And it’s going to take more than money.

Also see:

All of my blogs regarding volunteer firefighters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Volunteering to build community cohesion

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One of the reasons I loathe the way the Points of Light Foundation and other organizations promote the value of volunteering – with a monetary value and number of hours – is because it ignores the far greater value of volunteering and the far better reasons for an organization to engage volunteers.

I’ll say it yet again: engaging volunteers isn’t always just to get a task done. Sometimes, volunteering has much larger, more important goals – like a group volunteering effort done to help demonstrate solidarity and understanding between different groups. Volunteers can help build community cohesion and better community understanding. Volunteers can help change minds – without ever asking volunteers to change their minds.

Do you really think the best, most efficient, cheapest way to build affordable housing is by gathering a different group of volunteers each day to build a house together? No – no, it’s not. If that’s why you think Habitat Humanity does what it does, you are REALLY missing the larger point of their mobilization of volunteers.

Here’s yet another example of what I mean when I go on this regular tirade: in Washington County, Oregon, members of an Islamic mosque’s congregation and members of a Jewish temple’s congregation got together to volunteer for a Habitat for Humanity build project in November 2018. Here’s a tweet about the event, with a photo:

This happens all the time, all across the USA. Habitat chapters LOVE bringing together different groups to volunteer side-by-side. Is the value of that the number of hours they volunteered and the monetary value of those hours? No.

If your organization is recruiting volunteers just to get tasks done, you are missing out on the value of volunteers.

And on a side note: four months later, this tweet had only two “likes” and no retweets. Every person on the build site should have been invited to retweet and “like” this if they are on Twitter. Every staff person at Habitat with a Twitter account should have been invited to retweet and “like” this. Don’t post something as wonderful as this and hope it might get noticed – ask your staff and volunteers, including your board members, to share it! Here’s more advice on using social media.

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No fooling: advice for volunteers

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersMy consulting work is focused on helping nonprofits, NGOs, government programs, etc. But I monitor online sites like Quora, Reddit and YahooAnswers, as well having conversations with various people, and the result of that is that I have found many people are struggling with a whole host of issues related to their own volunteering – or attempts to volunteer.

So many corporate folks thought all potential volunteers needed was a web site to search for opportunities. But while such sites have proliferated, guidance on how to choose a volunteering assignment, the options available, things to consider before signing up, even how to complain about a volunteering experience, are severely lacking.

Because of this lack of guidance for volunteers and people that want to volunteer, I created a section on my web site focused on helping people who want to make a difference in some way, through volunteering or through a career. The pages also are meant to help people who are assigned community service by a court or by a school, not only to help them access opportunities but also to move beyond “I have to do this so I am.” Please note that the pages do have advertising – clicks on ads help me pay the costs of hosting my web site, including the blog you are reading now, and pay for Internet access. Please also note I receive no funding for the time I spend researching topics and creating materials for this blog or my web site. 

The resources also include:

Detailed information for teens that want or need to find community service or volunteering tasks.

Ways you can volunteer, no matter how young you are (a lot of folks are under 13 but really, really want to do something)

Advice for family volunteering – volunteering by families with children.

Advice for volunteering as a group / volunteering in a group and a special page of advice specifically regarding group volunteering for atheist and secular volunteers (how to find welcoming opportunities for groups of volunteers that are not religious-based/faith-based).

How to find or create volunteering opportunities to help seniors / elders / the elderly that moves well beyond the “go be nice to old people” advice on other pages. 

Advice for finding volunteer activities during the holidays (spoiler alert: start looking in as early as August – not even kidding).

Online Volunteering / Virtual Volunteering: finding volunteering tasks you can do from wherever you are in the world. While my book with Susan J. Ellis, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, is focused on helping organizations, this page is meant to help people that want to be online volunteers.

Volunteering to help after major disasters for those that have ever wanted to help people affected by a sudden event like an earthquake, flood, tornado, hurricane, fire or human-caused event, this resource details what you need to do NOW. 

Volunteering to address a volunteer’s own mental health, designed to help a person have realistic expectations for volunteering to address his or her own loneliness, depression, anxiety, etc., and to avoid an experience that will make the volunteer feel worse instead of better.

Volunteering with organizations that help animals and wildlife. This is one of the most sought-after types of volunteering, and many people think they should pay large amounts of money to go overseas and help wildlife (and that wildlife is, in fact, being exploited and endangered by these volunteers).

Volunteering on public lands in the USA. While national parks, national forests, national monuments, federally-managed historic sites, Bureau of Land Management land, state parks, wetlands, etc. have fairly decent and easy-to-find information for potential volunteers, there’s no one page that tells people what all of their options are – I’ve tried to address that.

Using your business skills for good – volunteering your business management skills, to help people start, expand or improve small businesses / micro enterprises, to help people building businesses in high-poverty areas, and to help people entering or re-entering the workforce.

Volunteering in pursuit of a medical, veterinary or social work degree / career – volunteering that will help build your skills and give you experience applying skills to work in these fields.

Ideas for Leadership Volunteering Activities. These are more than just do-it-yourself volunteering – these are ideas to create or lead a sustainable, lasting benefit to a community, recruiting others to help and to have a leadership role as a volunteer. These can also be activities for a Capstone project, the Girl Scouts Gold Award, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (U.K.), a mitzvah project, or even scholarship consideration. This is also a resource for any person that wants to create his or her own volunteering activity.

Fund raising for a cause or organization – how to raise money for a nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO), charity or program you care about.

Crowdfunding for a personal cause: raising money to help with health care costs for a sick family member, someone in a dire financial crisis, etc. (as opposed to raising money for a nonprofit)

Donating things instead of cash or time (in-kind contributions) – do people living in poverty, or people after a disaster, really want your used shoes, your used clothes, your used car, etc.?

Creating or holding a successful community event or fund raising event – before you throw a concert or marathon or comedy show or whatever to raise money, read this.

How to make a difference internationally / globally/ in another country Without going abroad. Yes, there really are ways you can help without moving or traveling.

Ideas for Funding Your Volunteering Abroad Trip. This resource includes suggestions of ethical programs and questions to ask any program that wants your money to give you your feel-good short-term volunteering experience in another country.

Tax credits for volunteering – advice for residents of the USA.

How you can advocate for an issue important to you. If there is something you want to tell people about, to prompt them to care, even to prompt them to action, this resource is for you.

Also see my blogs to discourage people from voluntourism and the dangers of “volunteering” to help wildlife abroad.

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

Volunteer (mis)management at schools

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Here in the USA, ’tis the season for volunteers at school book fairs to raise money for various projects at the school that aren’t funded anymore because of ongoing tax cuts!

And it’s a time of year when I get terrific insights into volunteer (mis)management.

My friends know that I research, train and write about volunteer engagement. Their texts and emails to me are a fountain of insight. Here’s a recent series of texts from a friend back in Kentucky, which I’ve slightly edited to protect the identity of the school, and the link at the end of her text is mine:

I signed up to volunteer at the Used Book Sale at school. I signed up to sort books. I got ready, drove to the school, and signed in… only to be told “oh, we don’t need any volunteers today. We will need some Wednesday though.” They asked for volunteers for Monday and Tuesday and I signed up on their sign up list for Monday. They had my email address and phone number, yet nobody bothered to call or email me and let me know I wasn’t needed. They let me drive all that way and then sent me home. This is not an uncommon thing with this school. The night I worked the basketball tournament, I had signed up to work the gate but when I arrived there was already someone working the gate so they told me that “maybe they could use me somewhere else.” I asked and they put me in the concession stand. They had other volunteers for the concession stand too who ended up going home because I was working it – that means I took someone else’s place. And remember: parents have to volunteer so our kids can go to that pizza party. Because of my disability, a “good” day is really valuable to me – I don’t appreciate them wasting my good day like that – there are other things I could have been doing.

Maybe this doesn’t really sound like a big deal. But it is. Schools need volunteers. This isn’t about the pizza party – it’s about a school desperate to staff events highly valued by their students – and these type of students have a very positive effect on student academic performance and discipline issues. This volunteer is frustrated. Once she fulfills her obligations in terms of hours, she’s not going to volunteer even an hour more.

Feeling smug, Oregonians? Well, here’s an email I myself got recently:

Our SPRING Scholastic Book Fair is coming up on March 20 and 21 in the East Cafeteria during Parent Teacher Conferences! Book sales will start on Wednesday from 2 – 8 pm and continue on Thursday from 8 am – 8 pm.

We are asking for VOLUNTEERS to help with set up on Wednesday, book sales on Wednesday and Thursday (1-hour shifts) and packing up after the fair on Thursday. Please check the link below for times that we still need volunteers and sign up for one or more shifts! We say it every time, but we really CANNOT do this without you!

Thanks so much for your help!!!

What school? I don’t know. In what city? I don’t know. The email came from a gmail account. Are there rules for book fair volunteers, like policies for interacting with kids? No idea. Are volunteers going to handle money? No idea. In fact, I had no idea why I got the email – I’m not a parent. After some back and forth with the sender, I discovered that this is a nearby school to where I live here in Oregon. I signed up months ago on the school district web site to help with activities in the school system. I was interested in helping at one-time events or even talking to students who might be interested in a career path similar to my own (a squiggly, meandering career path that starts in the arts, goes through journalism, goes back to the arts, goes into communications for nonprofits, and just keeps getting more abstract…). I never got a response from the school district. Did I pass the criminal background check? Is there a web site I’m supposed to review to learn about the rules for being a volunteer? Are there things I shouldn’t say around children? What if they ask me for my email address? Would there be a new volunteer orientation? Since I never got a response or any answers to those questions, I had completely forgotten about signing up to help to volunteer months before – as, indeed, I do with more than half of the places I sign up to volunteer because they never reply to my application or sign up on VolunteerMatch.

The schools in my district are installing all sorts of machines at entrances to screen visitors and keep kids safe. They might want to look into their volunteering policies and procedures as well.



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Trump is trying to eliminate national service – again

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For the third consecutive year, Donald Trump’s annual budget proposal calls for the elimination of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). This is the federal agency that oversees national service and volunteering efforts, including AmeriCorps, VISTA, Conservation Corps (the modern-day CCC) and Senior Corps. This is a part of Trump’s ongoing war on volunteerism.

The annual budget of CNCS is $1.08 billion, less than 0.03 percent of the overall federal budget. For the past two years, the USA Congress has rejected Trump’s elimination proposals, instead giving AmeriCorps and Senior Corps a $19 million increase in funding for the current fiscal year.

AmeriCorps members are well known for their essential response and recovery efforts following natural disasters in the USA. For instance, For a year and a half after the 2011 tornado in Joplin, Missouri, AmeriCorps members created a missing persons call center, transported volunteers into the field to help with debris removal, moved people from temporary to permanent housing, delivered donated items to families, assisted with minor repair jobs, and coordinated volunteer efforts by various individuals and groups, both local folks and people coming in from other parts of the USA. You can read more in this story by the Joplin Globe. I warned via this blog in 2017 about this possibly happening.

I’ve written about this before, in 2017. And then I wrote about the attempt for this to happen in 2018. And as I said then: I have seen, first hand, the impact that these national service members have had on nonprofit and public institutions, and those they serve, across this nation. These programs are a part of what make my country great – great right now. Members of these services provide CRITICAL services that benefit millions of people in our country. Members go on to an intense awareness about community issues that make them better citizens, more educated votes, and more productive members of society. The first President George Bush (Republican), President Bill Clinton (Democrat), the second President George Bush (Republican), and President Barack Obama (Democrat) all supported these national service programs. If these national service programs are eliminated, millions will suffer, and yet another great thing about these United States will go away.

If you are a US citizen, I strongly encourage you to:

  1. Call your Congressional Representative and two US Senators and share your opinion about national service funding. Calling or sending a postal letter is most effective; emails are too easily ignored.
  2. Look online, particularly via social media, for efforts to publicly support national service.
  3. Contact your local newspapers with a letter to the editor in support of CNCS programs.
  4. Help local nonprofits post information on their web site and via social media about the difference national service members have made in supporting community goals and improving the quality of life in your community.

And to think that, earlier this year, there was a call to expand national service by the National Commission on Military, National, and Public Service, a federal panel.

It’s not enough for you to read this blog and be outraged: you must take action or this is going to happen.

Update May 9, 2019: The US House Appropriations Committee rejected Donald Trump’s proposal to eliminate the Corporation for National and Community Service. The committee also introduced an FY20 spending bill to fund CNCS at $1.14 billion, an increase of $55 million above the FY2019 enacted level. You can find more details about how much funding the House Appropriations Committee has proposed for each CNCS program in this legislative update.

Provocative campaigns against voluntourism

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here is one of their tamer memes:

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

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

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

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

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