Before I set off to work at Pipeline IDP Camp in Kenya I had a lot of reservations about the effectiveness of (short-term) volunteering. While donating your time and skills to help others is a noble concept, I did wonder how much volunteers can actually contribute in the long run to the projects they get allocated to. It was also somewhat concerning that hundreds of so-called 'volunteer placement organisations' charge exorbitant sums to Westerns for the privilege of working in the developing world. Huh?! In the end I carefully selected a NZ-based ngo that I visited two times beforehand and felt I could trust. Taking the plunge seemed like an excellent way to find out first-hand if my pre-conceived notions were correct... 
What became crystal clear early on is that volunteering is Big Business and that your experience very much depends on the local partner agency. My organisation seemed more concerned with personal politics & selling us safari trips than actually providing in-depth info about what was in store. After my initial disillusionment I decided to focus all my energy on the community at Pipeline, and in the end I do believe that my time there was well-spent (that's what the IDPs told me anyway!). However, I still can't shake off the feeling that people's motivations are not as pure as they make out to be: the 'altruism' of volunteers is often a way to have a meaningful travel experience, and the do-gooder image of many volunteer agencies seems as much about making a profit as it is about making a difference. Then again, this is just my humble opinion - feel free to disagree and call me cynical! The guys who put together the video below obviously share my sentiments - have a look, it's brutally honest & funny at the same time.
1 comment:
Yes Inge I completely agree with your "humble" opinion! As African born and grew up in Africa have seen tones of people both Africans and non Africans doing "good" businesses from people being poor in some continents(poverty), masking those businesses as Projects, these come in different "brands" and "labels" eg conservation projects, development projects etc. Take an example:The total amount of $$$$ for a project is $1,000,000. The funder imposes the condition that there should be a technical advisor from Funder's country who will be remunerated about half the whole money, worse, the technical advisor' expertise is completely different from the project "label", mission, vision or goals plus objectives. This is very true, one of the examples just happened recently in which UNESCO brought to Tanzania a Trainer whose expertise is Physics and he does Ocean and Ice engineering stuffs in Canada. He came to train us Tourism Stuffs....!(Well he said this himself in a cocktail party to few of us)
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