Rapid growth in the multi-billion-dollar volunteer tourism industry has prompted calls for tighter controls with concerns over exposing vulnerable communities to unskilled foreign labour and dodgy operators exploiting foreigners for profit.
Voluntourism, which allows socially conscious holidaymakers to pay thousands of dollars to work in poor communities across South America, Asia and Africa, has become a boom sector of the global travel industry.
Estimates of its size vary widely. Nancy Gard McGehee, an expert on sustainable tourism at the US university Virginia Tech, says as many as 10 million volunteers a year are spending up to $2 billion on the opportunity to travel with a purpose.
Cruise operator Carnival Corp this month announced a “social impact” cruise that allows travellers to take part in three days of volunteering, helping to cultivate cacao plants, building water filters and providing English tuition.
But with no industry regulator, campaigners within the sector are concerned about the rising numbers of companies involved, with no mechanism to hold them to account for the work that they do.
“One of the challenges facing people wishing to volunteer responsibly is that there is no independent quality standard, no recognised regulatory body,” said Simon Hare, development director of British charity Globalteer.
“There are small, local outfits as well as big corporations who see volunteering as a way of driving profits rather than an integral part of a long-term strategy for communities with real needs. At best, this can make volunteering a waste of time and at worst it can actually be harmful.”
Critics warn the lack of oversight means volunteers can end up in parts of the world without useful skills, take away local jobs and form bonds with children in need that are shortlived as they quickly move on.
In the wake of the April 25 earthquake in Nepal, the UN children’s agency, Unicef, said it became alarmed by reported cases of child trafficking, calling on orphanages and volunteer agencies to stop sending more willing workers.
“We would ask people to consider carefully the impact of volunteering or donating funds to post-earthquake Nepali children's homes in Kathmandu. Without realising it, such support may be indirectly harming children,” Unicef said.
Unicef said it had encountered the same problem in Cambodia, where there has been a rise in the number of unregistered childcare institutions, kept afloat by the funds and steady influx of volunteer tourists from abroad.
At best, seeing it as a source of profit can make volunteering a waste of time and at worst it can actually be harmful
“Many volunteers have absolutely no childcare skills, and they’re being asked to perform a duty of care for children who are vulnerable. In a developed country, that would not happen,”said James Sutherland from Friends-International, a children's charity based in southeast Asia.
Australian academic Nichole Georgeou, co-author of Looks good on your CV: the sociology of voluntourism recruitment in higher education, said part of the problem was that the industry is consumer driven rather than driven by the needs of the local communities involved.
“There’s this idea that is in-built in voluntourism that we in the West have the knowledge and the skills to make a difference, we have a right to make a difference,” said Georgeou from the Australian Catholic University.
“It doesn’t even matter if we’re unskilled, it’s just the good will that matters because we're somehow bonding anyway.”
A study by Britain's Leeds Metropolitan University, published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism, warned students considering a project for a gap year or summer break that the most expensive trips were found to be the “least responsible”.
Authors Victoria Smith and Xavier Font said volunteer tourism organisations needed to take more responsibility.
“These organisations have a responsibility to ensure their programmes have positive and not negative impacts and should offer financial transparency,” said their report.
Some returning volunteers have expressed concerns about the negative impact they might have had.
“The kids [in the orphanage] were so used to seeing volunteers that they were barely paying attention to us,” said Carla Salber, who volunteered in Cambodia with Projects Abroad, one of the largest voluntourism companies. “We felt betrayed.”
Voluntourism proponents dispute the claim that the industry is doing more harm than good, citing numerous schools and homes that would not have been built without voluntourists and their funding.
“The idea that people shouldn’t come at all in case they traumatise a child who had the most terrible in their life already is really verging on the ridiculous. All our volunteers want to do is help,” said Peter Slowe, founder and director of voluntourism provider Projects Abroad.
Globalteer’s Hare said it was a mistake to lump together good volunteering with bad volunteering and call it all ‘voluntourism’.
“For volunteering to be effective, the focus must be on making sure it’s done properly,” he said.