During the most recent election, it was said that the current generation of young Americans are amongst the most engaged and involved young adults in recent history. This doesn’t pertain solely to advocating for their candidate of choice, but also to the other parts of their lives as well, including community service. Community service is something held in a prestigious regard during current times. People do community service to “buff up” their college applications or job resumes. Clubs and organizations do community service to put themselves in a positive spotlight. Interviewers frequently ask about community service and other prior leadership experience. In a time where community service is so plentiful and held in such a high regard, one would think that we should be only a couple steps away from obtaining world peace. While the world most definitely has become an overall better place because of the feeling of duty people have to complete service, this is also the same reason why the quality of life of some has deteriorated and new problems have arisen. Volunteerism brings harm along with its benefits, and this harm is becoming more and more prevalent and criticized as the popularity of community service continues to increase.

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            Some of the most heavily criticized types of volunteer work are those that involve working with youth. A common argument is that while volunteers may help the children while they’re directly working with them, the kids are left distraught and upset when the volunteers have to leave, and ultimately this separation occurring time and time again with different volunteer workers outweighs the benefits of the work. Additionally, the short turnover time for volunteer workers also leads to inefficient progress and, in some cases, no progress at all. I think this a perfectly valid criticism, and some volunteer organizations and agencies have already begun taking steps to combat it. For example, here at Virginia Tech, VT Engage has several volunteer opportunities to work with children, but the majority of them take place over an extended period of time, such as reading with an elementary school student once a week for a semester. Another example is internship opportunity offered to my SERVE Buddy, Jacob, which involves teaching an autistic child behavioral norms for a period of several months to a couple years. While the volunteers must still leave those they are serving after long-term service, the impact they leave is far more significant, and the children have the chance to develop a deeper understanding of why the volunteer must move on.

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            Youth work is also heavily criticized because its increase in popularity has led to some volunteer opportunities being created unethically. Over in impoverished countries, volunteerism has become somewhat of a cash cow industry, and ill-hearted “mobsters” have begun creating fake and harmful volunteer opportunities for a profit. A common tactic is to kidnap children from their parents and then move them to an “orphanage” at which volunteers can come and interact with the children, from choosing to teach them basic English to providing them food and cooking meals. These “orphanages” will sometimes charge a donation fee to work there, which they claim is going towards improving the lives of the children, but is in fact going straight into the pockets of those running the scheme. This criticism is well-deserved and is one I wholeheartedly I agree with. While there’s unfortunately no way to assure that the volunteer abroad opportunity one may want to seize is legit, the best one can do is make sure to thoroughly research the organization offering the opportunity and the organization which they will be offering their work to, making sure neither have any red flags that could indicate shady practices. However, in general, volunteer abroad opportunities are often not the best service to perform, as they are often an example of voluntourism.

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            Voluntourism is another criticized aspect of service. A variation of the word volunteerism, voluntourism is when a company offers a chance to perform service in a foreign country while also getting to sightsee and experience that country’s culture. Unfortunately, this volunteer work often involves very little work, and the work that is done is often inefficient or ineffective. Voluntourism has turned volunteer work into a profitable industry instead of an effort to help those in need, and the steps companies have taken to do so have greatly harmed the communities which they claim to help. An example of this was present in one of our readings two classes ago – a group of volunteers went over to teach English to children who lived in an orphanage, which very well could have been like one mentioned above, and at the end of their short trip, which most likely caused separation pain for the youth involved, they learned that their “English lesson” had already been taught three times before. While their intentions were good, the execution was poor and ultimately their trip ended up causing more bad than good.

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            I believe that the best and most efficient way to combat voluntourism is through awareness. The majority, if not all, of the people who fall victim to voluntourism schemes most likely do not even know that the service “work” they’re traveling to do is actually ineffective and harmful, as I find it hard to believe anyone would travel with the intent of damaging the culture and environment of others, especially those in need. Several articles have already been written about the issue, composed by reputable papers including The Huffington Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian, but ultimately people won’t seek out information on an issue if they don’t know it exists, and newspaper articles with no marketing aren’t the best way to announce the presence of an issue. What voluntourism needs is social media awareness and to be spread via word of mouth. As an active citizen and conscious volunteer, I can make sure to spread the dangers of voluntourism with those I volunteer with, and can also use my social media accounts as a way to inform others about the issue. We could also host a SERVE Serves event where we collect donations around campus to donate to organizations and programs that actively combat voluntourism.

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            The final criticism of volunteerism I’ll discuss, and arguably the most important criticism, is that volunteers are often uneducated in the work they are going to do, and about the culture and environment of where they are going to do the work. An example that comes to mind is again from class: we learned that a group of medical students went abroad to provide healthcare in an impoverished area with an overall poor quality of life, but that when they arrived they were ill-prepared with the right equipment, often did not provide the correct level or type of care, and were not the medical professionals the people of the town were promised. The students had also not researched diseases common to the area ahead of time, and therefore misdiagnosed several patients and provided them with the wrong medication. At the end of their trip, instead of helping the community, the “doctors” instead left the people misdiagnosed, dependent on medication, and overall worse than when they arrived.

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            This entire fiasco could have been easily avoided had the students simply been educated, educated on what type of illnesses the people are suffering from, the kinds of services they would be performing, and who they were perceived as within the community. As someone who is currently being educated on how to perform community service in a beneficial, sustainable way and how to train yourself and others to be a leader, I have the ability to provide the education that would have completely changed the outcome of the above trip, and I hope to do so through the future of Recruit ‘n’ Serve. I believe that as someone who is capable of doing so, it is my job to ensure that the future generation of volunteers are equipped with the proper knowledge to volunteer effectively, and that if they then too pass their knowledge along to the next generation, while poor volunteerism will unfortunately never be eradicated, beneficial, effective volunteerism will become more prevalent and greatly overshadow the bad.