Features
Why students and teachers should be aware of ‘orphanage tourism’ Rob Oliver and Michelle Oliel offer words of caution and advice on gap year volunteering Volunteering: a popular gap year option Like many students around the world, international school students often view a gap year between school and university as an opportunity to travel and gain new experiences. One of the most popular ways to spend a gap year is volunteering abroad, part of a much broader phenomenon of ‘volunteer tourism’ (or ‘voluntourism’) that has grown rapidly in the last two decades. It sounds like a win-win situation for a student on a gap year: volunteer to help others, and see the world at the same time. And the thriving volunteer placement industry knows it. Gap year students are a key market for volunteer agencies, with a growing number of websites making enticing offers of short-term volunteer-travel opportunities in Africa, Asia and South America. Many of the companies operating in the volunteer tourism field are well known and well regulated, giving advice to students and operating under codes of conduct. However, concern has grown in recent years about the impact of volunteer tourism on local communities, and in particular the hidden impact of unqualified volunteers spending short periods of time with vulnerable children in residential care institutions such as orphanages and children’s homes. To put it simply, student volunteers and volunteer agencies may in some cases be making deep-seated development problems worse, despite their good intentions.
number of commercial orphanages, run on a profit basis, has risen rapidly in some countries, most notably countries which attract a large number of volunteer travellers, such as Kenya, Cambodia and Nepal. One of the reasons for this rise is the growth of ‘orphanage tourism’ – fee-paying volunteers working for short periods in some orphanages without qualifications, often as part
The rise of ‘orphanage tourism’ Estimates of the number of children worldwide living in nonfamilial institutions such as orphanages range from 2 million to 8 million, but it is widely recognised that the majority of children in institutions – some claim as many as 80%, or even 90% in some countries (Lumos Foundation UK, 2016) – have at least one parent alive. Children end up in orphanages for a variety of reasons, including natural disaster, conflict, displacement and HIV/AIDS, but there is one overriding cause: poverty. Parents and guardians give up their children (sometimes forcibly) to institutional care because they cannot afford to look after them or provide for them. The good news is that the number of orphans globally has been steadily falling in recent years. The bad news is that the Autumn
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