What is Volunteer Travel?  volunteering abroad, voluntourism, volunteer tourism, volunteer holidays, volunteer vacations, gap year volunteering programmes … different names for one of the fastest growing travel trend in the world.

More and more travellers are combining their desire to explore the world with doing their part to contribute something back to the destinations that they travel to by going on volunteer vacations packages.

Teaching English in schools for the poor in rural China, looking after disabled children in Bangkok, Thailand, helping out in orphanages in Cambodia or even volunteering in the heart of prosperous Singapore.

Is Volunteer Travel a good thing?

Some say they are enriching experiences, wonderful opportunities to give back to society, life transforming travel whilst others say they are a sheer waste of time, misguided guilt trips …… the many views and perspectives that people have about volunteering abroad.

Some say international volunteers channel much needed tourism dollars and help to places which would otherwise languish in intractable poverty traps.

Whilst the detractors say it is akin to giving fish and not giving these needy communities and groups the opportunities to learn to fish.

Who is right and who is wrong?
Actually, does it really matter who’s wrong, who’s right?

The fact remains that, when done right, international volunteering during travel has tremendous potential for good. It’s an opportunity to all of us who have the means, to ‘Travel to bless’ or ‘Travel and be blessed’.

Who's blessed when travellers volunteer overseas?

Volunteer travel has the potential to bless.
But who gets blessed?
The volunteer?
The charitable organization overseas?
The underprivileged and needy in these organizations?

The answer must be, everyone.
Everyone involved is given the opportunity to be blessed.

The volunteer gets the opportunity to do something meaningful apart from the normal ‘consumption’ kind of travel. The volunteer is blessed with the opportunity to meet kindred spirits from all over the world whilst co-laboring with them for a worthwhile cause.

The charitable organization gets the much needed help and resources which would otherwise be out of their means, enabling them to do more and better work for the people that they have been called to serve.

The underprivileged and needy gets the support and assistance which could potentially transform and uplift their lives and their communities.

But does it always happen this way? Are there times when volunteers overseas feel that they are surplus to the real work out there, that the only real meaningful benefit they bring are the program fees they pay to the charitable organizations? Are there occasions when well-meaning efforts do not have the kind or degree of desired positive impact to the communities they serve?

The answer must be Yes, Yes and Yes.

But does this mean that overseas volunteer travel is no good and should not continue?

The answer is clearly No, No and No.

Do we uproot all the beautiful budding flowers in the garden because there are weeds and that it is impossible to remove the weeds without removing the flowers at the same time? Or do we keep the garden as it is because certainly, having one more beautiful flower in the garden is still much better than having none, weeds co-existing or not.

Improving Volunteer Travel

Volunteer travel is still relatively new, as compared to the more conventional options of travel. It also tend to involve smaller and often less commercially organized groups such as the hosting overseas charitable organizations, which usually do not have the same level of organizational competencies as compared to the big commercial tourism businesses. And often, many of these organizations are themselves run largely by volunteers or fulltime social workers whose focus is more on the needs of the underprivileged and needy.

So, everyone involved in volunteer travel must chip in to do their bit to maximize the benefits for everyone and reduce the incidences of the less than optimal outcomes even as we accept that they are inevitable.

The important thing is that the potential for volunteer travel to do good is there, there for all of us to bring it to pass, there for us to make that a reality.

Needy communities out there need all the help they can get, especially in many developing countries in Asia. China, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Vietnam and many more. If travelers from all over the world choose to change just one of their many leisure holidays travel overseas every year to volunteering vacations, doing good whilst at the same time exploring and experiencing these countries in new enriching ways, imagine how much good that will bring about ………..

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