We’re about midway through our summer holiday and many university students are using the time to do x good deed in x foreign country.
Fill in the blanks with your own Facebook friends’ status updates and photo captions: Here I am . . “painting a school in Ecuador,” or “caring for orphaned elephants in Thailand,” or “delivering medical equipment to hospitals in Ghana.”
The specifics don’t really matter and, in my eyes, it’s simple math: whatever x equals, it’s generally a positive.
But not everyone agrees.
My Facebook newsfeed, it seems, is Windsor Star reporter Claire Brownell’s worst nightmare. In an April Ottawa Citizen opinion piece she didn’t just advise twenty-somethings against going to Africa, she advised against anything other than “stay[ing] put and work[ing] on fixing problems at home.”
Hers isn’t the only argument I’ve heard against “voluntourism,” trips that combine travel with community service.
In fact, a feature in the October issue of the Charlatan explored the topic with a largely critical article titled, “Too Many Volunteer Heroes?”
Umm . . . I’d expect this type of dissuasion from my bitter and jaded grandparents, not my fresh-faced, ambitious peers. Isn’t it up to us to prove we aren’t as apathetic and self-serving as the cynics make us out to be? Brownell herself looks like she’s in her late 20s or early 30s — not as out-of-touch with Gen Y as one might assume.
It’s time for an attitude adjustment.
On a recent trip to Israel, I volunteered at Save a Child’s Heart, which provides urgent life-saving cardiac surgery to infants and children from under-privileged countries at no cost. My group and I played with children who were about to undergo, or had already undergone, their heart surgeries.
We didn’t cure their illnesses or improve the quality of health care in their countries, but we gave what we could to an organization doing just that. Individuals’ minor roles add up.
Would it be so terrible if “voluntouring” increased someone’s sense of tolerance or compassion Doesn’t self-growth become mass progress once more and more people experience it?
Perhaps we could improve international communication or break down the “us versus them” dichotomy.
It’s much more powerful to stare global issues like poverty, injustice and disease right in the face than it is to write a cheque. This power can ignite a strong spark in someone and take them beyond a summer or semester long project. It can turn into a lifelong mission, and a highly successful one at that.
Of course, the system isn’t perfect, and not all organizations are equal. It’s obvious that prospective participants must thoroughly research any charitable organization before soliciting
donations for it or traveling to the third world with it.
As I write this, I’m at home, where Brownell prefers me. I’m unemployed due to the crappy economy, just as she suspected.
Contrary to her suggestions, I don’t have plans to “start a community garden,” “start a business” or start Occupy 2.0. Maybe I should, but I won’t, especially not before school starts up again.
Frankly, I’d be of better use in Africa bottle-feeding chimpanzees. At least I’d be contributing something.
—Ilana Belfer,
fourth-year journalism
