Volunteering abroad

I have written a few articles and posts about volunteering, discussing the benefits and disadvantages to the concept of voluntourism and how we can ensure our trip does not add more burden to the local communities rather than helping them.

You can read them here:

Travel String - Travel Trends: Voluntourism
Project Job Search - Volunteering Work
AC - Voluntourism: Benefits or Harm?

My fascination with volunteering and researching into the work of 'tourist volunteers' started after I myself went on a volunteering project with World Youth International, a non-for-profit organisation that set up projects in various countries in the world, helping them with community development and education. I was in Peru for four months and was impressed that they really do work with the communities and made sure that our work was not jeorpardising with the community interests.

Although there are still elements I thought could improve with our work, I do believe we have truly lent a helping hand.

I often ponder on those trips, organised with tour companies that gives the option of allowing their tour participants to 'help out' at a community or school for as little as a couple of days. To me, that's not helping. To me, that's only feeding to the people's feel good factor and does not assist with the sustainability of the work they did, and possibly only creating more hassles for the communities in question.

Anyways, it's a long discussion and I have written all about it in my above article on Voluntourism. Comments welcome.