Q: My 18-year-old niece is planning to spend two months volunteering at a village school in Ghana. I feel instinctively the whole premise is wrong in so many ways (she doesn’t even have any teaching experience!), but I don’t want to pour cold water on her plans and new-found excitement about the wider world. Her parents also like the idea of her being under the supervision of a volunteer company for her first trip to a new continent. Should I keep my concerns about voluntourism to myself?
A: Your question goes to the heart of internationalism. Indeed, this magazine has long been concerned with the difference between charity and solidarity, probing dilemmas about how one – assuming that ‘one’ is in relative comfort and safety – should act. Look to the archive to find issues titled ‘Tourism in the Third World’ (1984), ‘Wisdom from Above: but do Experts Help the Poor?’, (1981), and ‘Can you Help? Charity and Justice in the Third World’ (1985). One edition from 1982 delivered a robust critique of the practice of sponsoring individual children in the Global South – sending them money along with an exchange of hand-written letters. This was quite a popular way of ‘helping’ at the time. Although child sponsorship still happens, it increasingly feels wrong; it individualizes the problem of poverty, potentially creating favouritism and false expectations among the recipient communities.
