Why I stopped being a voluntourist | Hacker News Reader

Why I stopped being a voluntourist

pippabiddle.com

357 pointshansy179 comments

Open articleView on HN

I took a trip to Africa to go on a Safari and climb Kilimanjaro. I was amazed at how many do gooder tourists there are.

The conversations go like:

Me: What are you here to do?

Them: Build a school.

Me: Oh, you are a carpenter.

Them: No, part of a school program.

Me: Oh, you are providing unskilled construction labor. Didn't realize Tanzania had a shortage.

Near the end of the trip, I met a friend's cousin, asked what she was doing, and she was going from village to village verifying that chlorination systems in NGO built wells were working. I was impressed. I asked how she got that gig, and she told me a story about her going to Tanzania to build a school. She decided to make a real difference.

Her story changed my attitude. I am certainly less snarky about kids going to do unskilled construction labor.

> I asked how she got that gig, and she told me a story about her going to Tanzania to build a school. She decided to make a real difference.

When you (or she) don't explain how she got from A to B, your epiphany has a lot less force. Most kids that come back from these trips seem to have no idea that they weren't helping. How did she realize it? How did she do something about it? How did she start actually doing something?

Use your imagination? Someone wants to help, goes to A, someone else there will be paying attention to how that person is behaving, how effective or ineffective etc. Call it simply human behavior or scouting or what not. For most of the visitors that's it, they'll be thanked at the end and feel good, but some might get a call or an email at some point to ask of they want to be more involved with B.

So basically, you're saying that these trips are tech company interviews?

If it was a tech company interviews, they'd grill her for 8 hours about how she would implement a new branch of chlorine halocarbon organic chemistry, invent a P=NP solution to the traveling salesman problem to minimize her drive time, drill her on NMR spectrum analysis even though she'll never use a NMR on the job, sit thru an explanation of how they only want rock stars, and then, if she's a real bro and fits in with the hard partying culture and isn't too old (LOL) then she can get that entry level bench tech job, for a little while, till they run out of money.

More like a weed out class in college. It gets the volunteer some exposure to X and gets rid of the ones who aren't going to be worth more time and effort.

Yeah, I didn't explain it well. The first trip was with her church, and the job was 5 years and an engineering degree later. It was the first trip that sparked the interest and gave a comfort level with the country.

I am certainly less snarky about kids going to do unskilled construction labor.

Most middle-class Americans could find a neighborhood within 15-minutes drive that could really use their help. But "my adventures in East Palo Alto" just isn't as exciting on a law school application, or a date, as "tales of Eritrea."

Pretty much this. Go to Habitat for Humanity and if you live in a city they'll generally be doing something local.

H4H was virtually packed when I volunteered. They had a waiting list for every college and university in the area. Apparently all those frats and sororities need a certain number of volunteer hours. Summertime, when building projects are usually in full swing, they didn't have nearly enough volunteers as the students typically were home or interning.

It's not volunteer work if the school, fraternity or sorority requires it of you.

It's not voluntary if it's a requirement to get into the school/frat.

It's more like free forced labor that most of the time is not even needed by the non-profit but hey the kids need certain hours so let's make the move garbage from one trash can to the other all day and if they finish early make them move it back.

"let's make the move garbage from one trash can to the other all day and if they finish early make them move it back"

Perhaps you were going for humor but locally some (mostly religious) high schools have mandatory required volunteer (LOL) graduation requirements, and criminal court "community service" also means work at the same recycling center, so you end up with a weird and probably very unhealthy mixture of ex-cons and teens at the recycling center basically "doing time" moving stuff from one dumpster to another all day. The weirdest part of the whole situation is its perceived as a social good.

Well, the teens learn some discipline and following orders. The criminals learn not to do whatever it is that got them community service. Everyone wins.

I think the fear is the mixture. So you take impressionable youth and force them under legal obligation to spend more time with elders of their socioeconomic group who selected a life of crime often than time spent with their own parents. What could possibly go wrong? Optimistically they'll be scared straight, but ...

It's not like they're sending people sentenced to 40 years hard labor for robbing a bank to community service at the recycling center. They're probably mixing with people who got first-offense drunk driving or disturbing the peace charges.

Or GHASP having plant material in their possession!

You make it sound so black and white when in reality everything is gray.

I happen to know a few "criminals" and they're not bad people they just choose to do shady stuff. Although I've met a few that i instinctively distanced myself from because you can tell they're always out to trick you or get something from you it's usually not that simple.

Some of them were even punished way out of proportion to the severity of their crime.

I don't know if most kids have the skill to deal with these people and since the crafty ones come off as overly friendly they might even get lured in.

It's probably not idea to mix clueles teens with street smart criminals.

I disagree entirely!

Otherwise sheltered teens likely have at least enough family resources and support that a couple hours of supervised contact isn't going to turn them into rampaging criminals, and dealing with people who aren't on a track straight into college and then into elite employment will make them more grounded.

My friends and I got community service for trespassing a few years back. We were assigned to a building material recycling center. Some of the people sentenced to work there were doing the minimum work required to not be reported, but there were a bunch of people, including my friends and I, who genuinely saw it as an opportunity to help out. We worked hard and put in as much effort as we would if it was our normal job. Would I have rather been making money or doing something fun with my friends? Of course. But I committed a crime and this was my punishment. Except I could actually see how my punishment was benefitting society, unlike being jailed or fined. Plus, I actually learned a little bit about different types of wood, and that there is actually a building material recycling center where you can buy a bunch of cool house stuff for cheap.

In other words, I think community service works.

People volunteer for all sorts of reasons that fit your description -- b/c they're required by a school/frat, b/c it's a requirement (or even an elective) to earn a badge in boy/girl scouts, b/c they feel pressured by others in their community (e.g. in a church), b/c their parents made them.

You may feel that some (maybe even most) people's motivations are less pure than others, but that doesn't make their actions "not volunteer work".

All these organisations clearly spell out what they expect from you when you sign up. Community service is a major component for a lot of them.

> It's more like free forced labor that most of the time is not even needed by the non-profit

H4H: You sign up, you show up, you learn a few things. Labour is still the biggest part of construction so your contribution is noted and essential.

> But "my adventures in East Palo Alto" just isn't as exciting on a law school application

You're wrong on that one. Talking about volunteering every weekend in East Palo Alto will get you a lot further on a law school application than your essay on a week in Africa. Admissions staff aren't stupid. Strong commitment to local activism is valued much more than paying large sums of money to travel halfway around the world on a glorified vacatiion.

I agree with this comment.

While I have no idea about Law School applications and what will help you getting in, I do know that as the leader of the volunteering club in high school and spending four years helping in the community was a lot more interesting in college interviews than other things I had on there.

However the opportunity I took in college to go to Africa (North Western Zambia) to build a data entry system and the back end database to digitalize the records of a hospital tended to get a lot more attention when looking for jobs than any of my more relevant internships did.

When I read these articles like the main link I feel happier about what I did. I finished pretty quickly and then spent time training but the majority of the time after the database was built was doing whatever else was needed but my inability to do a lot of the things well they seemed to tolerate with such kindness since what I was good at was already completed.

I'm not sure I understand how the law school would be "stupid" for being indifferent to local vs 3rd-world volunteerism, let alone strongly preferential to the former.

3rd-world volunteerism involves working without any of the amenities you take for granted (e.g. using different toilets), so it's not much of a vacation, and it involves helping people who are a lot worse off materially than "ghetto" kids. Unless law schools started getting nativist recently, of course ...

A friend went down to Central America with a group to do basic construction stuff. They were all from the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, where the majority of construction laborers are from Central America, so it seemed odd. On the other hand, the volunteers did have passports to get back into the US.

The main point the article is making, that not all volunteers are providing a net positive, is an interesting one.

I have a problem with her position, though. She ends the article with: "Be smart about traveling and strive to be informed and culturally aware. It’s only through an understanding of the problems communities are facing, and the continued development of skills within that community, that long-term solutions will be created."

The problem is that it's hard to be culturally aware and to understand the problems communities are facing if you aren't exposing yourself first hand to those communities. I imagine quite a many useful volunteers, the author included, started off as "voluntourists". And perhaps therein lies the greatest strength of these programs - they help expose little white girls (and boys) to other cultures and problems they otherwise would be unaware of and some percentage of those move on to more useful volunteering.

If she is going to advocate the position she's taken, then she could at least end the article with some alternatives for would be volunteers. As is, if anything, she's just alleviating some of the guilt people might feel over not volunteering: "By volunteering I would be causing more harm than good, so the right thing to do is nothing."

> The problem is that it's hard to be culturally aware and to understand the problems communities are facing if you aren't exposing yourself first hand to those communities.

Absolutely, and on top of this it takes a while to learn that stuff in an ongoing process, and definitely isn't easy -- you aren't going to learn it in a week's exposure.

So that means if one wants to help by 'going there', one should be prepared to make a lengthy and long-term commitment to be there. Likely years. (If not necessarily consecutively).

Because for a while you won't be helpful, and it'll take time to increase your helpfulness, as you figure shit out. Be prepared to persist through some of the time will be really challenging.

If someone is not ready for that, then maybe 'going there' isn't the right role for them. There are plenty more roles one can take to help, many involving raising/giving money, but also educating oneself and one's neighbors, and other work one can do from one's own location.

If someone can't see beyond 'going there' or 'nothing', that's their problem to overcome or be helped to overcome, but it doesn't make it true that 'anything is better than nothing' -- it can be really hard to avoid being useless or harmful in culturally unfamiliar contexts.

This is a good point. Someone doing mostly-not-effective volunteering isn't there 99% of the time. But that's kind of the point -- they've made a connection and now care about the project. That's got to have ongoing value in terms of things that'll be more helpful (either valuable help or money). Perhaps even sufficient for people who are there 99% of the time to re-lay some brick and call it even.

> The main point the article is making, that not all volunteers are providing a net positive, is an interesting one.

> "By volunteering I would be causing more harm than good, so the right thing to do is nothing."

The right thing to do, as she actually points out in passing in the first part of the article, would be to do what you're good at and send the money to a competent organization.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/65/money_the_unit_of_caring/

http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...

I remember the Red Cross writing something similar, that basically boiled down to "please stop sending us supply, give us money instead - by sending items you're making our logistics much, much more complicated and deprive the economy of people who need our aid from the money that we'd introduce if we bought stuff locally".

Where do competent organizations get their staff? Who is motivated to pursue the training for that career?

They send/hire professionalists on-site for the money people donate.

Less Wrong also published an article arguing the option of:

>choosing a career with high direct social value than by choosing a lucrative career with a view toward donating as much as possible.

That would cover skilled volunteering efforts.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/hjn/earning_to_give_vs_altruistic_ca...

Haven't read that before; thanks for the link!

If you want to do voluntourism, I suggest something different: start a business or help set up an outsourcing center.

You'll definitely have a positive effect on people by teaching them about western business practices. I'm told by my former coworkers that my standard US egalitarianism was quite unusual. By "egalitarianism", I simply mean "I'm CTO, you are a mechanical turk, we can go eat pancakes and you aren't obligated to make me tea". So were my efforts to ensure that everyone was growing in their career. My feminist sensibilities ("so be late, tell your husband to make dinner") were also a bit scandalous [1].

I came back to India a month ago to attend the wedding of someone I worked with, and I was very surprised to hear all that. I don't know whether to be happy (I made things better) or unhappy (because their next job won't be so good) about it.

By building a good business and maybe destroying some bad local ones, you'll do far more good than you will by doing unskilled construction labor. And very importantly, the people who work for you will learn that western style management is a great way to make money.

[1] By US standards I'm one of those evil misogynists who thinks statistical disparities are irrelevant and discrimination is a testable hypothesis and market opportunity. But drop me in India and I'm suddenly a crazy feminist ranting against rape culture (FYI India has one, the US doesn't).

"You'll definitely have a positive effect on people by teaching them about western business practices."

This is the most ethnocentric thing I've read in quite a long time. Much of the world would be better off, in my opinion, having never learned first hand about western business practices. Western business practices have caused a vast amount of destruction in the developing world.

Treating low skill commodity workers as human beings on the same social level as yourself is such a destructive western practice. So is hiring a stranger with a great github rather than your brother in law, hiring a woman if she is the most qualified, etc. Or there is that destructive western practice of managing by output - the boss is working until 8pm but you can go home as soon as you hit your quota.

Blaming westernized companies (by which I mean both western companies and local companies like Reliance/Infosys that try to run things in the modern manner) for the problems of the third world is silly.

All they've done is caused you to learn a little bit about other countries and made you feel guilty that things are a lot worse elsewhere. China would be poor even if your iPhone was proudly made in CA by illegal immigrants (yay for Nationalist Apparel), it would just be easier for you to ignore.

China is the second largest single country economy on earth and growing. They will be completely covered with healthcare in the next 10 years. They are the largest holders of gold on earth, hold the largest amount of debt from the US. They are developing, but as a nation, they are not poor.

> Blaming westernized companies (by which I mean both western companies and local companies like Reliance/Infosys that try to run things in the modern manner) for the problems of the third world is silly.

It is perhaps a bit silly. I mean, there are actual examples of mining rights being held from colonial times, Dutch East India company, Haiti being forced to pay for slaves freedom from rebellion for 140 years etc. and some of those do still have influences, but I don't think they are the primary ones. I don't, however, think all of these values are always exclusively western though. Japan has worker rights, as far as I can tell from a cursory glance on Wikipedia.

Assuming India wants, or needs foreign influence, Japan is just as good a place to get it.

Westernized might have been the wrong word. Perhaps modern would be better. And yes, both India and the us can (and have) adopt some Japanese business practices as well.

And we certainly can learn from India - that's a blog post idea. A bit more emo hipster than what I usually post, but maybe I'll do it anyway.

I hope you learned your lesson about using words to make your point. Next time, try to express yourself in pure telepathy, avoid giving people an opportunity to flame your diction and dismiss your ideas.

Are you seriously using the most westernised Asian country as an example of non western business practices?

Your point still stands, but Singapore is far more western than Japan.

I was just picking a country that seemed to me to be as good a country as any, with their own methods of law, their own values etc. who has remained productive as a nation.

I think I may be learning I might not have the same definition of "western" as some people. I had always imagined Western as referring to Western Europe and the US but now I think there is a colloquial phrasing that uses western as a synonym for modern. If that is the case I think this next century is about to get really confusing...

Western as in "white people showed up and ran everything". (like singapore, or Hong Kong)

Japan before WWII but after the West showed up, based it's whole economy and work system on Germany, after WWII it was essentially run by the US. They are completely "Western" (as in white people) when it comes to their way of business and economy.

I think you need to google salaryman. There is nothing equivalent in any Western country, not in scope, extent, social significance, prevalence. Nothing. It may be unique to Japan. The "Organization Man" was as close as the West ever got and it's been a long time since most professional business people worked like that, if they ever did.

Nothing equivalent to someone who works for a salary, does overtime, but isn't overly passionate about there life... yep that's unique to japan... what was I thinking.

> China is the second largest single country economy on earth and growing. Having the second largest GDP doesn't mean much if you have more than 10x as many people as number three on the list.

Agreed. But I am talking from a "Wealth of Nations" perspective rather than a per-capita basis. The brand, "China" is not poor and is only getting richer, not saying anything else than that. There are certainly poor people in China and will be for some time to come.

> Treating low skill commodity workers as human beings on the same social level as yourself is such a destructive western practice. So is hiring a stranger with a great github rather than your brother in law, hiring a woman if she is the most qualified, etc. Or there is that destructive western practice of managing by output - the boss is working until 8pm but you can go home as soon as you hit your quota.

I really don't know what to say. If it is your assumption that every firm/organization in India follows nepotism and doesn't value true merit, it would be simply a wrong assumption, IMHO. Aren't we all aware as to how Wall Street or any big business in the West hires? cough "Business Networking" cough I guess a good read in this regard would be 'Liar's Poker' or 'The Big Short' by Michael Lewis. [1] There have been corporations(might not be in the truest sense, but a collective of skilled workers with a common directive nonetheless) in India which have achieved amazing feats in the past. One could even say that few of the harmful practices of the West (reckless crony-capitalism for one, or the practice of prioritizing the aim of maximizing shareholders' investment over general public/social responsibility) was an unknown thing but now, it is gaining good traction in India unfortunately. One might find it surprising that India didn't face a subprime/financial crisis when US was neck deep in it. 'Managing by output' isn't really a copyright of the West. In fact, the concept of measuring butt-in-seat time or shifts was totally alien till folks from the West brought it here. (And later pushed further by Adam Smith's Labour theory) Prior to that, it was pure ownership of a task and responsibility. Kautilya's Arthashastra specifically deals with labour theory and even flexi-time to an extent, by taking into account productivity and quality of throughput and not just rote effort/time spent. [1] The skilled artisans/craftsmen never worked by the clock, and thus were able to achieve great things. For them, it was all art. There wasn't even a clear line between art and sciences, but everything was art, including science/maths/engineering.

Off note, I wonder if the mother of that kid that died in Bhopal on that fateful night might have wondered, how the world would have been now if the white man hadn't embarked on the noble enterprise of burdening himself to civilize the non-white people.

Also, am quite sure that the affluent and middle class folks in the West are terribly happy treating low skill commodity workers (who might be immigrants) as human beings on the same social level as themselves.

I really would want to write a long post. Will certainly do so once time permits.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liar%27s_Poker / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short [2] http://userwww.sfsu.edu/mbar/ECON605/Arthashastra.pdf

If it is your assumption that every firm/organization in India follows nepotism and doesn't value true merit, it would be simply a wrong assumption...

If you read my post, you'd clearly see that I don't believe every local firm does this: "...I mean both western companies and local companies like Reliance/Infosys..."

My belief, based on my experiences living here, is that this is far more common than in the US, Canada or UK. Admittedly, my experiences are biased - I spend most of my time in bigger cities, and in IT circles. So if you want to claim that your experience disagrees, all we have is our own dueling personal experiences (unless you know where to get data on this). Do you claim I'm wrong on this point?

'Managing by output' isn't really a copyright of the West...

Using the term "western" brought up unnecessary emotional baggage and was not strictly correct. I should have used a different term, perhaps "modern" or "MNC-style" (I think economists have a precise term for it, but I forget what it is).

I have no idea what the relevance of mortgage underwriting standards is, but I think you might be arguing against some claims that I didn't make. I'm not asserting some sort of vague cultural/moral/racial superiority.

I'm claiming that certain modern business practices are not widely used here, but are common in the west[1]. And I'm claiming India will be a better (i.e. richer, happier) place when it adopts them more widely. This is no different than coming up with a list of plumbing devices and saying that they will benefit India's water supply when they are more commonly used. The only difference between business practices and plumbing devices is that business is a bit more abstract - as a result, I didn't even recognize it until someone carefully explained it to me after the fact.

[1] And I've stated elsewhere that they are not as common as they should be, even in the west. For all Michael O. Church likes to rant about it, VC-istan is a lot better than many other parts of the US.

> you'd clearly see that I don't believe every local firm does this

Yes. I clearly see the original comment seems to infer that most of the (or almost every!?) local firms in India does that.

> Do you claim I'm wrong on this point?

To an extent, yes. India and Indian industry/economy is not just IT and not just big cities. There's a lot more to it. I would be most honored if I get a chance to show some of it first hand, if at all our paths cross in life and we get to meet in the real world, outside of these digital confines.

> I'm not asserting some sort of vague cultural/moral/racial superiority.

Pardon me, but the original comment indeed seems to mention that the "western style management and work culture" is morally superior to the local one.

> I'm claiming that certain modern business practices are not widely used here, but are common in the west[1]. And I'm claiming India will be a better (i.e. richer, happier) place when it adopts them more widely.

Yes, agreed. But one can rest assured that better practices are being adopted at a much better pace here, because developing economies are already resource constrained and thus they are forced to come up with best practices to maximize value extraction from a given set of resources. ISRO and recent Mars mission was big news already. I believe business practices always have locality as a dimensional factor associated with them for their applicability and relevance. (HSBC ad about local knowledge comes to my mind)

You're being really uncharitable towards yummyfajitas here. I think if you were to give him the benefit of the doubt rather than trying to take the worst possible interpretation of his words at every turn, you could have a more productive conversation. He didn't respond to you by accusing you of favoring the caste system -- why are you accusing him of, first, racism, then favoring only crony capitalism?

I have several Indian friends who've expressed approximately the sentiments that he did about the average Indian business, specifically very hierarchical management compared to American culture, which is indeed problematic in settings of knowledge workers -- you don't manage them the way you manage an assembly line. Heck, you shouldn't even manage an assembly line that way, the line workers know the equipment better than you do. You can disagree with him and them without accusing people of racism or blaming them for the East India Company.

> accusing him of, first, racism, then favoring only crony capitalism

Well, am quite sure all of us here are quite reasonable folks who do not harbour racist feelings towards another fellow man. The very fact that Yummyfajitas chose to come here and run a company stands testament to the fact that he isn't racist at all and is a very reasonable person. And if I sounded like I was trying to load a bundle of (unreasonable) guilt onto yummyfajitas, I humbly beg for forgiveness.

The only question was about "modern business practices" and "oriental (right word!?)/third world business practices". Even before we discuss this, we might have to consider the concept of success from angles, 'modern' and otherwise. If the definition/concept/understanding of 'success' differs, then most certainly the guidelines to be followed to achieve 'success' would differ, don't they?

Modern economics states "free market", "profit", "shareholder value" and people who pursue these and achieve them are termed successful. These might work for the modern and fully developed societies where 'scarcity' takes a totally different meaning. But these same things will have a totally different impact in third world countries when adopted without changing them to suit the socio-economic needs locally.

Treating low skill commodity workers as human beings on the same social level as yourself is such a good practice.

Yes. Can we summarize this as "do not expect others to be obligated to be subservient to you, irrespective of their designation/background/abilities"? If so, can we extend the same to the context where a developed nation forces a developing nation to sign a treaty (and threatening sanctions if otherwise), expecting the developing nation to act subservient to the powerful one? If this is wrong, then the 'practice' is nothing but 'anything that suits us based on the situation'. (well, this would become a totally different post altogether, let me not digress too further)

> blaming them for the East India Company

Well, that is past. I would not hold accountable/accuse the present day westerners for the Raj and all of our present day miseries here. It would be incredibly foolish of me. At the same time, I would find it difficult to believe the idea that everything that's worked elsewhere will work here as well and bring upliftment and social development. That is all.

> I mean both western companies and local companies like Reliance/Infosys...

Just adding another note, on the firms you mentioned.

Reliance, is a known to be a crooked player that uses non-ethical business practices and is a major crony-capitalist player. Modern business practice followed: profit at any cost.

Infosys, on the other hand, isn't ethically/morally corrupt and is actually known for setting standards in corporate governance. But these days, it seems to have lost the game and run into troubles by fanatically adhering to the "maximize shareholder value while minimizing risk" rule. Modern business practice followed: keep shareholders happy no matter what.

Both followed 'modern business practices' too much to the word, or so it seems.

> So is hiring a stranger with a great github rather than your brother in law, hiring a woman if she is the most qualified, etc.

Oh, such wonderful news. So height is not a requirement for positions of power now! Someone should change the wiki page. And well, it might just be sheer coincidence that many big names in India have women CXOs. The western style management has ensured that women in the west are very well empowered to reach positions of power without any gender bias troubling them.

This is not blindly ethnocentric, it's the OP's thesis based on a feminist critique of the existing business culture in an area OP built a business. His/Her observations were that, for his/her employees, western business culture was potentially an improvement over existing conditions.

OP in particular observes on experiencing lingering caste pressures and strongly misogynistic trends in the expectation of business environments. You're suggesting this is preferable to employee equality and industriousness?

>western business culture was potentially an improvement over existing conditions //

Western business culture is primarily "profit is the end that justifies the means" - exploit any person, resource or environment to their|it's detriment as longer as you make more profit for the owners/shareholders.

Many times I've seen on HN "the purpose of a business is to make profit; stat".

Equality, helping those in poverty, cultural benefit, elimination of crime - none of these are Western business ideals; they're cultural constraints placed on businesses that they do their best to avoid losing profit to.

Now not all businesses are so immoral - but I'd say immorality is indicative of "Western business practices"; they only appear better because of cultural constraint, when those businesses get to exploit people and environments that aren't being monitored and aren't subject to legal protection that's when the abuses of the business ethic rear their head.

Am very sure the above comment would get downvoted. Well, the West is always right, cause they have got the money!

>>> Western business culture is primarily "profit is the end that justifies the means"

This is certainly not true as otherwise there weren't as many charitable funds sponsored by businesses and as many publicly useful things done by those.

>>> exploit any person, resource or environment to their|it's detriment

That is not true either, moreover - this is not true even if we accept your previous premise. There's nothing in making profit that mandates that it would be to the detriment of any person, resource or environment. Moreover, not ruining the resource supporting your business is certainly more conductive to the profit than ruining it, since it allows to extract profits for the longer period of time, so even from pure profit-driven approach you are wrong.

>>> Equality, helping those in poverty, cultural benefit, elimination of crime - none of these are Western business ideals; they're cultural constraints placed on businesses

Equality taken as equality of citizens before the law is certainly good for business, since inequality usually means inability to conduct certain profitable deals. E.g. when there were place "for white people only" in US, it meant profitable business involving non-white persons could not be conducted there. Crime is obviously bad for almost every business (maybe excluding security guard and alarm systems business).

>>> Now not all businesses are so immoral - but I'd say immorality is indicative of "Western business practices"

Since western business practices is nothing more but Western people conducting a set of voluntary transactions, you've just called the whole set of Western people inherently immoral. Not only this smacks of racism, it is certainly not matching the observable truth of Western people having a lot of morals guiding them.

>>> when those businesses get to exploit people and environments that aren't being monitored and aren't subject to legal protection that's when the abuses of the business ethic rear their head.

Oh, I see what you mean. Western people are immoral in general, but there is a tiny sliver of them - those that enact and enforce the "legal protection" - i.e. the government - that are the moral backbone of the Western society. As soon as the person joins the government, they become moral, and able to enact the protections derived from their freshly gained morality, and as soon as they leave the governmental aegis, they revert to their natural immoral state and only the "legal protections" keep them from running rampant exploiting people around them.

>you've just called the whole set of Western people inherently immoral. Not only this smacks of racism //

Westerners are descended from all races and creeds, they just happen to be part of a certain geo-political and financial region now.

There is a minute proportion of the population of the "Western World" that has any control over the business process beyond that they're able to leverage by voting with their dollars, through their unions or when voting.

>but there is a tiny sliver of them - those that enact and enforce the "legal protection" //

On the contrary, the established culture - moulded most recently through democratic process - has created an environment that limits the extremes that remain profitable. Most major companies in my Western country will [seemingly have] flout[ed] the law if the fines are sufficiently low; they're limited largely by what is going to be considered reprehensible enough to prevent people buying their goods/services. Directors receive multi-million dollar remuneration packages whilst they employ children and women at extremely low wages and often in situations in which they're effectively captive - we're talking companies like Adidas¹, Unilever, Nestle, those with the most recognised brands.

Many of the members of the controlling sections of Western government demonstrate at times a, shall we say, fluid approach to morality too. They often seem almost equally willing to lie and cheat and exploit the good of others to their own ends without due regard for the effect on the populous or environment.

tl;dr Power is oft to corrupt.

1 -- example, http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcompanyratings/adidase..., Adidas's employment practices are illegal in Bangladesh imagine how out of sync with the moral mores of USA they are.

In my anecdotal experience, western business practices have also caused a vast amount of destruction in the west.

Western government practices haven't been all that constructive, either.

About the only ideas I think the west should be exporting to the developing world are a general intolerance for corruption and graft, and its engineering standards for multi-story human-occupied buildings.

> But drop me in India and I'm suddenly a crazy feminist ranting against rape culture (FYI India has one, the US doesn't).

So none of those men in US jails and prisons are being raped?

You should enjoy another country without imposing your values on them, it is OK for you to like or love your way of life, you are absolutely allowed to be proud, and so are they. What is not in good taste is assuming your way is always better, assuming they can't solve problems in time as your country has or assuming you or they are their country or responsible for where your/their country currently is economically. When it comes to human rights however, I'm on the same page as you I think, impose away.

I don't eat dogs, some cultures do. I eat beef, some cultures don't. Some eat pork, some don't. Are any of those really ethically wrong, or do we just have different cultures with different reference points? Isn't having different cultures and methods in the world a good thing? You can't always be right, and when you aren't, you might be glad there is another model that exists somewhere in the world. A cultural hedge, if you will.

I look forward to the rise of India in the future, I am sure in time, we will be stealing ideas from there, but perhaps I'm just being naive.

On the topic of men in prison, the US does indeed have a rape culture. I thought it was clear from context that I'm using the term the way western feminists do, but I guess I should have been explicit.

Of the specific business practices I suggested, which one do you believe is not a good way to make money?

I'm not sure why you use the term "impose". I'm a guy with a laptop, I have no power to impose anything on anyone.

The only value I've ever imposed on anyone is my opposition to eve teasing. I'm hoping political correctness hasn't gone crazy enough to consider that one culturally insensitive, but who knows?

> On the topic of men in prison, the US does indeed have a rape culture. I thought it was clear from context that I'm using the term the way western feminists do, but I guess I should have been explicit.

I am afraid it wasn't clear. I do not have all the same cultural references and opinions you do. I saw the phrase "the US does not have a rape culture" and I thought, that sounded a little finger pointy. That's all, I suppose that drives an urge in me to point the finger back. Glass houses and all that. I can agree with some of what you say, especially when you said you meant "modern", not "western" as I think we have different definitions for the latter.

Perhaps my opinion is driven from a colonial history of my country and your country has less of that. Anyway, I have a feeling if we went further down this rabbit hole we would end up seeing eye to eye on many things, I'll draw this one up to a simple cultural misunderstanding, not of you in India, but of you and I. So with that, I won't take up any more of your time.

The usual feminist meaning of "rape culture" these days doesn't include prison rape (at least not when it's happening to men). Indeed, I've seen people labelled as anti-feminists and misogynists for suggesting it does. It usually though not always encompasses prison rape jokes because those are considered to harm women, but not the rape itself.

From a modern feminist perspective, billboards of scantily-clad women have more to do with rape than men being non-consensually forced into sex.

I don't know a single feminist who doesn't consider prison rape, regardless of the gender of the assailant and victim, to be horrific.

Indeed, many discussions of rape culture do expressly talk about prison rape, and the notion of sexualized violence as a means of punishment.

Well done you, for bringing your values to your culturally inferior employees, and teaching them the ways of "western style management".

It wasn't on purpose. I didn't even realize it until a few weeks ago when I was explicitly told this. At the time, the only distinction I was making was between valley and wall st culture.

(Im from ny, and my partner was a banker, so from my perspective that was the important distinction.)

A part of my mind says this comment is sarcastic. If that is the case, well, I guess us culturally inferior workers should be thankful that someone took the burden of teaching us the ways of western style management and enlightening us.

> If you want to do voluntourism, I suggest something different: start a business ... You'll definitely have a positive effect on people by teaching them about western business practices.

Yeah right. Unfortunately, it might have been too much of positivity for this kid from Bhopal (http://media2.intoday.in/indiatoday/images/Photo_gallery/060...) to handle.

A few years ago, I volunteered in SE Asia for 18 months using my electrical engineering skills to help rural villages get access to electricity. At the time, I'd been working professionally for around 7 years and was just becoming competent at working independently. Although I'd gotten my PE status a year earlier, I can't say that I was at a senior engineering / consultant level.

So it was a surprise for me to find that I was one of the most experienced and skilled engineers in my organization (and in many other energy-related organizations for that matter). I concur with the OP and have met quite a few western volunteers that were well-intentioned, but generally had no technical skills.

Of those who had qualifications, they were usually in the social sciences, development studies, media / communications, public relations, etc. Useful skills no doubt, but I felt that the country could have benefited more with direct assistance from the hard sciences and engineering, e.g. hydrology, agriculture, civil engineers, etc - those skills were always in demand. In the end, there's a reason why development is often done so badly - they practically let anyone do it.

Most Peace Corps type voluntourism works on the premise that throwing "white" folks into a country and telling them to fix things will generate results. This is because, you know, we understand the incredibly complex social, economic, political, and cultural dynamics of countries better than they know themselves.

We're better educated, and if these backwards countries would just start doing XYZ they'd start to lift themselves up and out of poverty. You know, things like alternative livelihood by making souvenirs out of trash. That's the ticket.

But we don't understand the issues and aren't equipped to be able to even determine what a particular region of the country actually needs, especially not in 2 years or less.

Real results can only come from funded research into what the underlying issues are and how best to combat them. Also, if the United States weren't so economically oppressive.

I disagree however, with the notion that being "white" is a hindrance in the developing world. Being "white" is an advantage everywhere.

I've met people who did Peace Corps, and my opinion was much better after meeting them. First they actually became fluent in the local language. Second their focus was often more on enabling locals than on trying to do stuff themselves. For example, they would work with locals on how to push through applications for grant money from developed countries. Dealing with American foreign aid bureaucracy was actually a skill they were well suited for due to their background and education. Finally, they lived on almost no money in the community for a long period of time. The standard of their living was commensurate with the average person in the host community.

Personal development is fine and yes, the Peace Corps is incredible for that, but only one thing you mentioned is beneficial to the host country: money.

If pushing through grant money is the volunteer's primary talent, they can just as easily do so without spending all that useful money on plane tickets and training.

The other issue is that money by itself doesn't solve problems. You have to use it to solve real issues. But the Peace Corps doesn't fund research into what the issues are, because that's expensive and unsexy to anyone touting what the volunteers are up to. So you get grants to fund construction of libraries when everyone in the country can already go to an Internet cafe and read Wikipedia.

There are multiple decent reasons for Peace Corps not to fund formal research into what the issues are. There is no general recipe to make such research actually useful, especially without local knowledge. The function is already being done by development agencies or NGOs in their own flawed ways, and Peace Corps doesn't have funds for it. Peace Corps doesn't fund big infrastructure projects like building new libraries either. Its capability and mandate really only extends as far as placing and training requested volunteers. Volunteers are limited to the missions requested by the host government and local hosts. If those hosts want help applying for grants, volunteers might help them with that. It's unlikely we know better than locals how we should be helping them. It's actually impossible to determine and carry out locally meaningful interventions entirely from offices in the US, still less if nobody has any training. Even just applying for grants (for what, to be used by whom?)

Peace Corps isn't saving the world, but it does a little in a lot of places and it costs peanuts. If you can do better local work in the same places with the same resources, that's great, do it.

>you get grants to fund construction of libraries when everyone in the country can already go to an Internet cafe and read Wikipedia //

Everyone?

Perhaps you misunderstand what a modern library is - it's a place for accessing information, not limited to books. Most likely it's effectively a free internet cafe or an information centre for a particular school.

Mind you I've seen government funded medical centres without even beds (well mattresses, they had the frames) - so the chances of the information resources turning up and staying put are perhaps slim.

Libraries are also community centers. They offer a lot more than just books. They can offer community programs, children's programs, and assistance on a lot of matters from librarians. They also can offer plenty of fiction that is copyrighted and not on the Internet (legally). Internet cafes are expensive, libraries are completely free. They are also a meeting place for the community and a sense of pride. For some reason they get a bad rap here on HN and in the tech world in general.

Heh, right, because those locations the Peace Corp sends folks are doing so damn well by themselves!

To add a git to abat's comment, sometimes "white" volunteers will be willing to go places where local people don't want to go, like remote or dire poor villages. The most hard working people will have found their way out, and they will focus on maintaining or improving their situation rather than going back to help (except if they are really successful). At some point these places will lack educated and forward thinking people, and volunteers coming out of nowhere can actually have a positive impact, at least on the mental side. Highly inefficient globaly, but not always meaningless.

Have you ever met anyone who was actually in the Peace Corps? The few folks I've talked to were remarkably competent folks.

I disagree. I think a volunteer from the US or Europe can have a big impact for exactly the reasons you list as negatives.

For a start, they come bundled with the optimism, determination and an innovative mindset that is normal in the Western World. Even if they're way off the mark and not skilled enough to build a school, sometimes just seeing someone from outside their community who isn't shackled with local politics or local racism and is just doing something, anything, can be a source of inspiration to the local population.

One Peace Corp volunteer I met was posted to a former Soviet block country. The locals were still stuck in the Soviet mindset that the government would provide for them. He introduced them to computing, he mapped out their entire town onto Google Earth and set up a WiFi service. Yeh it's not much, and they weren't dealing with starvation or illness like parts of Africa, but just by having an 'outsider' living in the community can be a help just by itself.

"we understand the incredibly complex social, economic, political, and cultural dynamics of countries better than they know themselves."

Yeah, that's exactly what the qualified ones do. Exactly why we send them. But there are not enough qualified volunteers.

The problem with the Peace Corps, from discussion with my cousin who did his tour in Africa in the 80s and scared me out of even considering it myself, is the PHBs say they only send over qualified volunteers but fundamentally, "we need one thousand warm bodies" so they have a ranked list where he came in very near the top with a recent degree in agronomy and unfortunately somewhere between near the top, and warm body 1000, it drops into the article description of "unskilled inexperienced untrained barely educated laborer white girl or boy". They really needed 1000 agronomists and livestock qualified veterinarians and technician level workers, but what they got was like 100 regional teams of ten or so where on average about one guy per local group had any real idea what he was doing. You're going over there to help modernize farming out of the ancient era and you have no idea what soil chemistry is... well, I guess you get to hold the shovel, not much else you can do while I run this soil analysis. Another problem is it dilutes the brand so to speak of the work they do... there really are useful volunteers, just the ratio of useful/useless depends strongly on who volunteered that year and the demand and a variety of political concerns. Finally he spent most of his time basically managing at a distance and without any official authority his unskilled fellow americans as they attempted to do a highly skilled and technical job, so the locals didn't even get any direct benefit from his work (although via levels of indirection he did benefit them). One interesting perspective is that our world wide logistical distribution system can, in the absence of warfare, quite easily provide people in the middle of nowhere with enough rope to hang themselves, along the lines of just because you can now purchase a certain seed doesn't mean it'll grow, or if one unit of chemicals improves yield 50%, you'd be amazed how many otherwise logical humans will want to try a hundred units of the same chemical, what could possibly go wrong? Not to mention intelligent use of modern tools, finally having the technology to wash all your topsoil downriver doesn't mean its a great idea to do so, trying to make the desert bloom is a fools errand, etc, but I digress.

Now it would not surprise me if there's at least four perspectives opposed to each other, that being what they claim to do, what they actually did in the 80s, what they do now, and my cousin's story. But he did tell a compelling and believable story at the time, as I recall it and there might be some insight in it anyway.

Sometimes, problems are easier to understand (and solve) looking at them from the outside, instead of being right in the middle.

Living in Indonesia for two years has changed my perspective quite a bit. One of the big things about American culture I now regard as totally odious is the idea that everyone wants to be like us and therefore if we remake the world in our image we are doing everyone a favor. Most of the world doesn't want to be exactly like us -- they like some things about us and dislike other things, and what we like about ourselves may not bear any relation to that.

Societies are homeostatic, equilibrium-seeking systems. If they weren't they'd fall apart under the sorts of stresses that life places on us wherever we live. Foreigners coming in to believe they are making a difference inevitably solve the wrong problems and likely solve them badly.

Now, my parents took some boarding school students to help build medical clinics (under the direction of "Where there Is No Doctor" author David Werner) in the mountains of Mexico back before I was born. They were providing unskilled labor in an area that really did have a shortage (because most people were working in the farms). The upshot though wasn't that the clinics got built faster (they might not have) but that my father got interested in medicine and changed careers from being a math teacher to being a doctor. I have never heard my parents talk about what a difference the students made, or even so much about whatever difference they made.

But having talked with David about this he told me about some of his failures, about how they had this big anti-folk-medicine campaign that they hoped would reduce infant mortality due to diarrhea but then when the floods came, people wouldn't use their folk medicine anymore and the mortality rates went up instead of down and he said they had to go back and reposition what they were offering as one remedy among many.

Often we forget that the people closest to a problem are the best prepared to solve it, and we forget to trust them on this. It is far too often the case that the do-gooders and the activists who haven't yet learned this lesson, solve the wrong problems, often badly, and make things worse.

If you really want to help people, find a charity to donate to via Givewell. It won't feel as warm and fuzzy as volunteering, but in most cases that's the best way you can actually help people in need.

Relevant: Fuzzies vs. Utilons

http://lesswrong.com/lw/6z/purchase_fuzzies_and_utilons_sepa...

I'm using kiva.org and have deposited $9,000 over couple of years. With auto-relend option my account circulated currently $58,325 through 2,268 loans (individuals or groups) in 61 countries.

http://www.kiva.org/lender/kizaemon

For auto-relend I chose all countries except US, both genders. The sectors are Agriculture, Clothing, Education, Food, Health, Manufacturing, Retail. Have not chosen sectors Arts, Construction, Entertainment, Housing, Personal Use, Services, Transportation, Wholesale, as I do not feel these are basic enough.

FYI, kiva is a scam (in as much as the company is incompetent) that primarily props up predatory lenders in other countries

Evidence: Just look at the portfolio yield of many of kiva's lenders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva_(organization)#Current_int...

If you're making more than a percent or two interest in what you believe is warm-fuzzy charitable lending, you're simply deluded. Almost all of these enjoy double digit interest rate yields... that's after losses for defaults. Most are around 30% some over 80%. It is very obviously a morally bankrupt practice which has managed to clothe itself as a charity.

I'm not disagreeing with you, and recall reading elsewhere about Kiva's deceptive practices, but could you back up that claim with some evidence, or at least a more detailed explanation?

Great. Now here's the question. What's better, having loans available at high interest, or having no loans available at all?

I'll go with the former.

It's not clear that the presence or absence of kiva affects the calculus at all.

This is why I've stopped believing in giving to on-the-door charity pleas, or give-some-money-to-X-before-you-check-your-goods-out-at-the-checkout. It seems much better to properly research one or a handful of organizations and give to those, than to give to organizations you have hardly heard of because of the immediate social pressure.

Previous HN discussion on the matter

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7214353

I used to donate through Kiva until I discovered that the whole "directing" story was just marketing. That doesn't make Kiva evil, but it does remove much of the feel-good motivation of supporting a named project.

Articles and blog posts like this disappoint and annoy me. They lack logic and intellectual depth.

I sincerely hope young Americans/westerners don't get discouraged by reading such nonsense.

The problem described here is a combination of naivety and misallocation of skills and resources. It has nothing to do with being white and yet this lady can't seem to get away from that.

I'm South Asian and I would have faced the exact same problems this lady faced had I volunteered in the places and organizations she did. However being older and perhaps wiser, I wouldn't have made the error of volunteering to do things I have no skill in. Thats the only mistake she made and the problems she mentioned are easily fixed with a little common sense. Yet somehow she can't see that

I wonder where this silliness comes from - could it be the result of the modern American education system ?

Before closing I should mention I would likely never have been born had it not been for a bunch of young European women who saved my orphaned grandmother from certain starvation and neglect when she was a toddler. They gave her a home, an excellent education and looked afer her till she was a young woman. Their actions helped my grandmother get the skills she later used to pull her family out of poverty (resulting from the Partition of India) into the upper middle class.

Thank heavens for those dedicated, young, white voluntourists.

Thank heavens for those dedicated, young, white voluntarists.

The point is they were not "voluntourists", they really did sacrifice to help your grandmother - as opposed to showing up, getting in the way while doing a few trivial things for a week or so, playing much of the time, and otherwise squandering money which would have been better just sent to the orphanage outright.

White people are finally starting to "get it". http://youtu.be/dyf2Cf5GkTY See Dambisa Moyo's interview about her book "Dead Aid" The statistics showing how aid is actually hurting African countries and not allowing them to develop on their own the way the rest of the world has.

Bill Gates fights incredibly hard to try to prove that aid is incredibly effective and considers this a "myth" to be dispelled. What do you think about the concept?

Except that Bill Gates isn't going around building furniture himself. More like donating a small part of money for purposes like that, and a big part of money for science and technology which can help eradicate bigger problems(like disease and hunger).

Philanthropy he couldn't extend to market competitors, but which he can extend to the poorest of the world? Why, that's hypocritical!

Don't just read Moyo.

Read 'Poor Economics' by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Duflo is at MIT and is all about trials to figure out what works with aid.

Read 'The Bottom Billion' by Paul Collier who is a development economist at Oxford.

Read 'The Idealist' by Nina Munk which is about how we can say that Geoffrey Sach's millennium village project has failed.

Read 'Africa Rising' by Vijay Mahajan about how many countries in Africa are actually been doing well economically for the first time in decades.

Read 'The White Man's Burden' by Bill Easterly about how he thinks aid has all failed.

The development of the poorest countries is incredibly important. These people all have thought heaps about it and are very serious about wanting to help.

Nobody really knows what the answer is but at least get a picture of the different viewpoints.

I second Poor Economics, great book. It's fascinating how the book shows that entrepreneurship is actually MORE prevalent in poor societies than in rich ones.

The choice isn't giving $3000 to be a voluntourist, and give $3000 to a charity to hire locals to do the work. The other choice is to go to Europe and blow $3000 having a good time.

Exactly this, voluntourism is an exchange of money for time spent experiencing a very different culture which you can tell other people about for a long time and also feel good while telling stories to kids or laying bricks. Oh and a week long safari according to the article.

There is very little that is altruistic about the practice and an altruistic option is not an option for most people who go on these trips. I don't know what cut of the $3000 the school in the article got, but if it wasn't enough then I'm sure they wouldn't invite a load of useless white kids around to set their construction back.

1. Race had nothing to do with the point of her story. She threw it in there to sound edgy.

2. These programs are as much if not more about affecting the life of the volunteer. Her realization that she thought way too much of her value wouldn't have happened without going there and having the experiences.

3. I know people who are extremely effective in what they do in underdeveloped countries. Her pride brought her to the wrong conclusion about where she was at the beginning of the experience. It's unfortunate that her pride is still in effect, misleading her about the capabilities of others.

>It slows down positive growth and perpetuates the “white savior” complex that, for hundreds of years, has haunted both the countries we are trying to ‘save’ and our (more recently) own psyches.

Why does this have anything to do with race? Is it any different for a black person with no useful skills to go on one of these voluntourism trips?

No, as the article explicitly points out.

Then why does the author end the article by talking about the "white savior" complex, and why is the article titled "The problem with little white girls"?

Probably as a means to reference the "white man's burden".

Literary Allusion > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Man%27s_Burden

To the Tanzanians, all Americans are white, regardless of pigmentation. According to the article.

To be fair, American blacks run significantly lighter than African blacks.

IMO Yes and I was expecting the article will point that out just by reading the title.

I was in Tanzania a few years ago as a tourist and I came across many young westerners doing all kind of things like HIV prevention. Sometimes I thought I belong to a minority among westerns by just being a tourist.

I was trying to view the situation from the other side. What must it be like to be a black guy living in Tanzania being told by little white teenagers how to have sex? Little black kids getting cool toys only from white folks, all teachers who know cool stuff being white. I don't stretch the argument too much if I claim that you will get the impression that all good things come from white people and that black people are too stupid to even have sex. As an educated person I know that this is not true and I can differ between spurious correlation and real causes, namely growing up in a developed country, but I doubt that little children are able to do so. They will assign many things to skin color just to realize that they can't change their own and then will think they are doomed and have to hope for the good will of the white saviours for the rest of their lives.

yes, because teaching the children living there that white people are rich and you can never be white is worse than being accosted by rich people from another land who at least look something like them

It really it isn't so much about race as it is privilege (race only in that statistically a lot of white kids in the burbs are well off). If you don't have to work for anything it is hard to become good at anything while at the same time since you aren't failing at something you end up thinking you're such a super duper special person. Basically even the nice people get screwed up by being a special snowflake all their developing life.

The only part that is probably really about race is that the well off white kids are probably less likely to get told they are unhelpful idiots on these trips.

About the brick laying, I'm told that you usually do that poorly if you have no experience (unlike activities like making sawhorses etc. which require little skill). Our local Habitat chapter has experts come in for brick-laying.

In the end, 'voluntourists' are just trying to give what they think they're able to. If they aren't net negatives, I see it as a good thing because they will spend money there, they will bring attention to whatever cause, and other such things. When they're a net negative, though, perhaps it's not such a good idea. It's nice that you want to help, but sometimes what you have to offer isn't what they need.

Especially problematic in disaster areas. If you go unprepared and get dysentery, then instead of help you are one more distressed person - a net negative 2 (or more) from real help.

>About the brick laying, I'm told that you usually do that poorly if you have no experience (unlike activities like making sawhorses etc. which require little skill).

As a former bricklayer, i'll confirm it, unskilled labor shouldn't lay bricks, it will fail at some point.

My parents have a fireplace in the back yard. It has completely collapsed once. My (presumably unskilled in brick laying) dad rebuilt it but now it is falling apart again. I'm guessing the original builder wasn't skilled in brick laying either.

Thanks for the info, I always wondered why that fireplace wasn't staying up.

Beyond structural issues, these types of fireplaces shouldn't be built using normal bricks, they aren't exactly safe. ( the bricks can explode under certain conditions )

There's also a special type of brick and cement that is required for the inner layer of the fireplace.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_brick

This is the reason why groups like Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontiéres) exist. If you want to help sick people, do it with MSF.

There's also Engineers without Borders, but I recently discovered it's not actually about helping with construction work, more like teaching about engineering logistics/principles. Still, point is it's done by engineering students who should know what they're talking about.

In fact there are a whole load of 'Without Borders' groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Without_Borders

There's a book I'm just beginning, When Helping Hurts[1], that dives into this subject deeper. Complicated for sure.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/When-Helping-Hurts-Alleviate-Yourself/...

I have volunteered regularly to run children's summer English camps in rural China. The point of these camps is mostly to give the kids an opportunity to have fun and learn some English while they're at it, because such nice opportunities simply don't exist where they are. Camp counselors in North America for summer camps don't go through extensive counseling training either. The bar for such volunteer activity is lower, but the bar should be much higher in other cases. Here are some things I've learned about non-profit organizations that are well-run.

Firstly, well-run organizations want to maximize their ROI. The volunteers usually fundraise for donations or pay out of their own pocket to go on these trips. Essentially, these funds are revenue for the organization. That revenue must then be invested into their business, as their purpose is not to make a profit (hence non-profit), but rather, accomplish their goals to make the world a better place in their specific way. As such, a good organization will get tourists who are qualified to do the work that needs to be done.

The organization with whom I volunteer has multiple programs in medicine, agriculture, construction, education, and local skills training (for local professionals for the above categories). They ensure that the people who are volunteering are qualified to do their work. For example, for my most recent excursion, I couldn't stay the entire camp, so they asked me to run some sessions with local teachers instead, since I had so much experience volunteering to teach their kids. I prepared some lessons and explained to the teachers that I was not a professional teacher like they were, and that my teaching wisdom and experience only consisted of basic theory and volunteer experience. I made it clear that I was not qualified to teach them about teaching. Instead, I focused on professional skills that I brought over from the corporate world. We had sessions on conflict resolution and negotiation tactics using concepts developed by Max Bazerman at Harvard, the Behavioral Change Stairway Model at the FBI, and discussions about conflicting cultural worldviews and personalities, the basics of which are taught in many corporate seminars. I also focused on leadership styles, motivation tactics, and decision-making strategies. My sessions were very well-received and I received lots of thanks from the teachers, as well as a round of applause at the end of my time there.

This organization never asked me to do anything like surgery, building repair, etc. They did ask me to help out with some computer stuff now and then. For their medicine, agriculture, and construction programs, they made sure to bring in only qualified people. Full stop. The organization had a relationship with the local government and had gained respect of the local government because they did things properly. That's the way it should be. When you're a non-profit, don't do anything that will waste the scarce dollars you have been given.

Secondly, it's true that your impact in these countries is small. But it's like the story of the kid who saved the one starfish. The man comes along and asks the boy why he saved that starfish, what difference does it make in the face of so many starfish dying on the beach? The boy thinks and says, "Well, it made a difference for that one." I still keep in touch with the kids I've taught. The Internet is wonderful today and makes this easier than ever, except in those locations where the situation is so dire that you take Bill Gates's attitude of choosing to fight the malaria over getting the Internet up and running. Overall, I know that the kids are impacted on an individual basis because they keep in touch with me, still call me Teacher, and talk with me about things. The people in these communities appreciate that someone took their time and money to go and help them, if what was provided was helpful. Again, that goes back to the organization making sure that the money and effort is being spent in a way that maximizes ROI. It's the same in business. You don't tell a recruiter to do the bookkeeping, you get a bookkeeper or accountant for that. It just makes sense.

Thirdly, these trips have value in that they work as vision trips. A percentage of volunteers will go on these trips and have their eyes open and their thinking changed in such a way that their life goals change. Those people are the ones who will go into this work full-time and throw away the nice cushy jobs in the first world. Those people are also often the ones who can afford to do it because they've been working nice cushy jobs in the first world for a while, so they have the savings to make it happen for some time until outside donations can take over in terms of funding everything. If these trips don't happen, a huge recruiting channel for these organizations for long-term workers completely disappears. These organizations prefer that these trips be available for people from every generation because you don't know where you'll find the people who will have the switch turned on inside themselves, and you don't know which people will have which kinds of support networks that would be willing to help fund this lifestyle. This third factor is possibly the most important reason why these trips are a good thing.

The goal to have a locally-run operation staffed by locals is an important one. But it takes time to get there, and these trips are a part of the process to get there.

edit: clarification

I lived in short-term accommodation in Cape Town, South Africa for just over two years. The vast majority of my housemates were wealthy European girls "volunteering" or on an "internship" in "Africa", between 1-3 months at a time.

While none of them were bad people, in reality, it was a holiday for the majority of them. They were too young to have any real life skills or lessons to share or communicate. Those that did were simply not around for long enough to have any real impact. They all spent more time and money on sight-seeing, partying and South Africa's beaches than anything else.

This was an acceptable relationship for the organisations concerned because they were receiving money, but nobody had any illusions about whether there was meant to be a more productive relationship. The reality is, in these cases, it would have been more productive to just donate the money for the plane ticket, bars and sight-seeing directly to the organisation - but why would somebody do that when they can get a story to tell, and make themselves sound like mini-Mother Theresas? Let's face it, it's harder trying to get people to give you money if you give them nothing in return.

As I see it, the author of the article appears to be challenging people to ask themselves if they fit in the category you fall into (somebody with something to really offer), or the category I've described (somebody who naively thinks they can help; or somebody effectively going on holiday to an impoverished area in such a way that makes them feels less guilty about being rich while giving them a moral-superiority card to play when they're back home) - because there is a real social cost to this latter sort of self-serving volunteering.

Thinking about it, I see now that OP is focusing on the quality of the volunteer, while I am focusing on the quality of the organization. Perhaps OP and I are simply not even on the same page for commentary then, though we appear to be in the same book.

"I have volunteered regularly to run children's summer English camps in rural China."

Right, so in that case you do actually have a valuable skill that very few, if any locals possess: English fluency. That's quite a bit different from voluntourists that are just contributing unskilled construction labor that any able-bodied local would be able to provide.

Good article but why did she have to bring race into it? This had absolutely nothing to do with race. The problem was that unskilled people were volunteering to do skilled work. They should be volunteering to do work they have the skills for.

>It slows down positive growth

If we ignore race, this model of 'aid' (at this particular stage of development) seems to hinder growth and can not lead to self-sustained communities. Think about this: I could teach somebody how to plant seeds and provide for a whole village, which will eventually lead to a better economy, or I could just buy everybody lunch for a week and wait for somebody else to do the same after me. The latter (which happens in a lot of these programs) is simply interfering with their progress by taking away jobs from the community, which would made progress had you not interfered.

The better solution is guiding and teaching nations how to improve and there are plenty of organizations that do this and have a much more positive effect. Why can't these nations develop like other nations (in similar climates) have done in the past? Nothing wrong with a helping hand but charity like this isn't a long-term solution.

This has some good points, but it seems (from my experience) that this applies to some degree to a lot of nonprofits. The volunteers actual contribution is minimal, but the nonprofits allow and even encourage it, because it encourages engagement and donations by the volunteers.

I thought there would surely be reference to this Onion article:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/6day-visit-to-rural-african...

I don't remember where I read it, but someone famous once said "for most people the best way to do good is to make a lot of money and then give it away" (or something to that effect). I couldn't agree more.

If by "do good" you mean "give money to whoever has their hand stuck out the furthest."

Those aren't necessarily people in need who will use the money for some good purpose, often they are in a special parasitic class of professional beggars and con artists.

Hopefully the point is to do more than show off that you are rich and generous.

I assume he means donating to worthy charities rather than actually putting money in people's hands.

Perhaps putting money is people's hands is what is needed?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/23/214210692/the-char...

Still, it is helpful to have someone, whose job is to discriminate between the "special parasitic class of professional beggars and con artists" and people actually in need.

late reply. It doesn't necessarily mean donating to charities, but if you want to directly hand out money then you'd have to do some due diligence (not so different from doing due diligence on charities).

It'd also be helpful to put my comment in context. The article is talking about voluntourism, where the destination is often the developing part of the world. Having just been to Vietnam for 2 months (and volunteered there for a month), I can tell you that it's not difficult to just go on the street and find people in need.

Wages there is also so low that, in many cases, the cost of voluntourism can more than pay for local qualified individuals who can do your work better than you can. (Unless the position requires specific skills that is hard to find locally. Note that the ability to speak English doesn't count).

So if your goal is solely "make the world a better place", then skip the voluntourism and just donate your money. That said, if you want the experience, then by all means do whatever you want to do. It just may not be the most effective thing you can do to help.

I have seen, heard of and have been invited to participate in these trips. Some are NGOs, some are religious groups.

Yeah, looking at it from the perspective she wrote, it seems ridiculous. It is an "industry", wrapped in a non-profit, save-the-world PR shroud, that caters to educated, Westerners who can afford to travel overseas. People feel good when they do good. Whether they other side perceives it as good, sometimes it is not clear.

One can ask, is it better if these "unskilled" people never left home? Maybe even with all the seeming waste and incompetence, it keeps people engaged. I suspect most of them would not have just taken the money for that plane ticket, and handed that check to a NGO that knows better how to spend it, and could build 10 libraries for all that money. But I am afraid it is either "send the volunteers and keep them engaged somehow" vs "don't send the volunteers at all and say goodbye to that money and resources".

People like to help others, people like to tell stories, like to have adventures. These trips cater to that aspect. Do people in Africa feel better knowing that foreigners want to come in and at least try to slap a brick on top of another even if they don't know how? I see a lot of criticism of this here, and rationally I agree, but I also feel there is a bit more too it and I personally am on the fence whether this is good thing or not.

The OP suggests that their presence is actually detrimental, not just useless.

If so, then, yes, it would be better for them just to stay home, even though only a fraction of the money that people would have spent on their own trips will be donated outright.

It seems likely to me.

It is comfortable and positive to think along the lines of "If even one Westerner gets more engaged, it's a success!" but why would Westerner 'engagement' be the metric of success? It's not about the Westerners.

> Do people in Africa feel better knowing that foreigners want to come in and at least try to slap a brick on top of another even if they don't know how?

The answer to this isn't really unknown or unknowable: No, hardly anyone feels that way. Why would you feel better because a foreigner is coming and fucking shit up while you have to pretend you believe they're helping because they have so much more power than you?

> The OP suggests that their presence is actually detrimental, not just useless.

Yeah I read that and I don't 100% agree, still mostly agree but maybe just 80%.

> "If even one Westerner gets more engaged, it's a success!

Not a success but better overall maybe if they just stayed home.

> It's not about the Westerners.

That is the big problem, and I think I talk about it as well (kind of snarky) how it is an industry that caters to Westerner's needs. However I am not convinced yet that not engaging them and not bothering is yet better.

> but why would Westerner 'engagement' be the metric of success?

It isn't the only metric of success. But even if it is, the answer could simply be because they have more resources and money to help in the future. Maybe 50 out 100 will end up being hippies living in the van down by the river, smoking pot and telling cool travel to Africa stories. But maybe 10 will actually come back and do something more positive next time.

It is also not black and white. Either come and "fuck shit up" as you put it or "come and rescue the country completely from disaster". There is a lot of in-between.

There are groups of skilled professional, namely doctors that go on specific missions to do one specific thing -- fix cleft palates, do eye exams and so on. Do they do more damage? Quite the opposite. There is a lot of in between. Sometimes there are skilled local professionals and they do work together. Sometimes money comes with the silly unskilled white college kid labor and well maybe the white college kids get to play soccer with the village kids while the local skilled labor build the schools.

> Why would you feel better because a foreigner is coming and fucking shit up

Well I do have a story for you. I grew up on a country were American volunteers also felt the need to come and "teach us" and "work with us". Nowhere near the situation in Africa. Nevertheless, I remember kids in our school chasing down Americans just to look at them as if they were from Mars or something. Rumors were how they distributed chewing gum and candy. I never got the candy I was too shy. Well now I live here in US, can buy tons of candy, and looking back, it just feels so stupid to do that. But I am glad they came and didn't just stay home. At worst, it was worth for a nice lifetime feel good moment for 10 year old boy.

Yes, there is a lot of in-between.

There's also a big difference based on which side of the "no effect" zero point you're on. At least be marginally useful; if not, stay home.

I agree with almost all of your post in terms of business and how NGOs operate.

However, I'm going to offer a more cynical opinion on why people go to developing countries. I disagree that people who go there are somehow doing it because of moral reasons or because doing good makes them feel good.

It has become a trend - to go to Uganda and post statuses on facebook about how you are in Uganda helping poor, oppressed people.

I think recognizing that you are not really helping them by the virtue of being American/white/christian requires a lot of critical thinking these days, which most of those late teen girls do not possess.

I have first hand witnessed 100s of americans coming to visit(not an african country), strutting around like they're kings of the universe, not communicating with locals, not learning the language, not even TRYING to learn something. Posting messages on facebook about how they love, love, love the country, without ever speaking to a local.

They're just there so that 1) They can fill in their resume with volunteer/study abroad experience 2) To feed their own ago about how they're multicultural and risk-takers 3) for others to think that they're multicultural and risk takers.

Obviously, my post is very biased, but seriously, some people didn't even know how much they paid for flight tickets and board. Those are (sometimes) the kind of people that go and try to help impoverished communities.(I'm cross referencing, because the people I met had gone to African countries as well).

>It has become a trend - to go to Uganda and post statuses on facebook about how you are in Uganda helping poor, oppressed people.

This was satirized in The Onion.

6-Day Visit To Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman’s Facebook Profile Picture

http://www.theonion.com/articles/6day-visit-to-rural-african...

"Raising awareness" is such bullshit. It's a lie people tell themselves so they can feel good sitting in an air conditioned office earning a good wage running a "social media campaign" and never getting their hands dirty or having to meet any of the people they're "helping".

http://metro.co.uk/2010/09/21/bono-under-fire-over-one-chari...

But not getting their hands dirty is exactly what the author is recommending.

The number one way to help people in the 3rd world is find hungry competent entrepreneurs in the country and ask them about their problems.

This sounds like a great approach to the problem but how would one go about finding those people? Were you thinking SME level or street vendor level?

Sounds like step one: solve the meta-problem. Be the one who finds those people, so you can inform others who want to find them.

I appreciate the issue. Having found a source of cubic meters of free fresh bread weekly, finding a charity willing & able to take it proved a significant problem. Just cataloging available/interested charities & entrepreneurs, and advertising the list, would be very helpful.

What were the difficulties in getting charities taking the bread? I mean, were they logistical problems? Were they worried about some increased risk or was it simply a case of bad admin?

I can't speak for those charities, but I have experience with helping run an animal shelter. Some things to keep in mind with donations like this:

  * What's the bread's shelf life?
  * Will there always be X amount of bread? How much notice will the charity have if it's no longer available?
  * Will the bread be delivered, or does the charity need to find a volunteer to pick it up?
  * What are the costs of disposing of unused bread? Will the extra bread take up enough space in the dumpster to overflow and incur charges?
  * Is someone going to throw a tantrum/cause bad publicity if they find out we're not using all the bread?
  * What's the bread's nutritional content? Is it consistent?

Offers like that are always appreciated, and it means so much to know people think of the needy when an opportunity like that presents itself. But in a lot of cases it's easier and better to buy it commercially. The same things that make my Facebook friends turn up their noses at grocery store bread (preservatives, vitamin enrichment, and every loaf looking the same like it came off an assembly line) make it perfect for a charity.

Remember: I was/am dealing with 2-4 cubic meters of perishable bread once per week.

One place (public food pantry) couldn't distribute it for 3 days (good fresh artisan bread starts molding within 6 days, and pastries & baguettes stale within 3; recipients probably wouldn't eat theirs all within 2 days of receipt).

One place (women's shelter) wouldn't distribute it to the members/occupants (were teaching self-reliance, probably including making own bread). They'd sell it, making distribution 1-2 steps removed from assuring me what was actually happening to it.

Two places weren't always open when I could drop it off. Both planned and unplanned closures are problematic.

2-3 places wouldn't take it because items weren't individually packaged (I get it loose in large boxes/bags). Some kind of food safety rule applied in their case. Also, if they're not sure where it came from, they won't take it (I'm just some anonymous guy, not connected with the bakery nor charity).

Other charities don't know how long items will be in storage, so it must be packaged & shelf-stable for months/years.

By sheer chance (traffic rerouted past an accident scene) I found my current distributor, a food pantry which distributes it 12 hours after I get it. All they know is some guy shows up Monday morning with bushels of breadstuffs.

Mileage & waiting is also a problem. Takes me about an hour to pick it up, and another half hour to drop it off - most of the above taking longer, already straining the limits of my schedule.

And that doesn't get into the issues of actually handing out each individual piece, which is why I take it all somewhere for a single drop off, and don't try to hand it all out myself.

Oh, and some weeks no usable charity is open, and I end up with a ridiculous amount of bread I have no idea what to do with.

> THE PROBLEM WITH LITTLE WHITE GIRLS

After a year in East Africa, that was one of the things I noticed here: they always come in pairs of 20-year-old white girls. Except for South East Asia, many more young men there.

> $3000 bought us a week at an orphanage

That can actually cause children being obducted or "borrowed" to staff orphanages for white Voluntourists.

> Our mission while at the orphanage was to build a library.

And another 10 African carpenters who lost a job to those white Santa-Clauses.

> have a camp run and executed by Dominicans

Good luck. I have never seen any organization actually run locally. Sure, it often looks like it is, but if you digg a little deeper, you always find at least one Westener (or local who lived half their life in the West) making sure that people actually do things and not just spend the money and idle. But there maybe one such organization, somewhere, I just haven't found it yet.

Read further on they didn't lose their jobs, their hours just got shifted temporarily.

> Turns out that we, a group of highly educated private boarding school students were so bad at the most basic construction work that each night the men had to take down the structurally unsound bricks we had laid and rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up in the morning, we would be unaware of our failure.

See? It all comes out in a wash in the end.

Something which everyone so far has failed to mention is corruption. Tanzania is hardly the model of democracy. Putting some foreigners into the mix brings some extra certainty on how the money gets spent, even if the foreigners have their own perverse incentives.

I am good at raising money, training volunteers, collecting items, coordinating programs, and telling stories. I am flexible, creative, and able to think on my feet. On paper I am, by most people's standards, highly qualified to do international aid.

Perhaps I'm missing something, but I don't think it immediately follows the author is "highly qualified to do international aid" at all from that description alone. Shouldn't one require a profession of some sorts to be "highly qualified" in anything, perhaps? I would assume she is college educated: shouldn't a university education have qualified her as a professional in some field already?

Ivan Illich had some good words to say on this topic:

http://www.swaraj.org/illich_hell.htm

Regarding the OP's >"Sadly, taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign. It’s detrimental." I'm not sure that's true as you will still generally be bringing money to the country either in donations to the good cause or in the way that all tourists do by spending at local bars, souvenir shops and the like.

I'm not sure I'm morally okay with economies driven primarily by tourism. Nothing I can back up with reasoning or data, but whenever I think about it, I get the same gut reaction I do when I see a code smell.

Well, if the theories that some very poor economies just require a "push start" to get out of the poverty trap are right, then maybe tourism can do the job.

Whilst cruising the Caribbean, I noticed that local economies may have been severely harmed by tourism. Dependent on highly concentrated tourist areas, the "push start" amounts more to a "push over": cash flow is so concentrated it can't get thru most of the local economy, like trying to satiate the thirsty with a firehose.

A lot of cities rely on tourism because it is so cheap to invest verses the amount of money it brings in. If you have good weather and beaches it might be the only natural resource you can exploit.

>I'm not sure I'm morally okay with economies driven primarily by tourism. //

Is that just in places where the tourists are far richer than the indigenous population or is that as a general rule?

That is a large part of it, but it's not all of it. While it's a legitimate service to provide food and lodging to travelers–even if those travelers happen to be there primarily to see your cultural offerings–it bothers me that there are services directed towards showing them off pseudo-educationally.

It's... you learn enough to think you've learned something, when all you've really learned is a superficial, well-packaged veneer. If the point is to have something to do while being on vacation, that's fine... but why pretend? It doesn't really help that things are often designed to be entertainment. Is it really a good thing to put your culture on as a show? Sure, there's satire, but satire isn't satire when the audience doesn't actually know what you're satirizing.

(Also, isn't the income differential a fundamental part of a tourism economy? I mean, in Seattle's Pioneer Square, we've got random little gold mining shops and see-the-underground tours, which I'm also uneasy with... but that's not a tourism economy. I'd estimate a good 50% of people who work in this neighborhood are in tech; others are nightclub stuff; and a noted above-average complement of food people; etc. There's a tourism industry here, yes, but it's not a tourism economy.)

Like I said, it's more feeling than reasoning.

Thanks for expanded on your feelings.

I have the same feeling of unease, but what about when the alternative is poverty, which I think is often the case?

Yeah, I'm not exactly going to Take A Stand against it or anything. I understand that The World Is Not Perfect and Someone Has To Do The Dirty Jobs and all of that. But I'm very uncomfortable with seeing a tourism economy promoted or justified.

Policy band-aids aren't inherently bad. But if it's still the same band-aid a hundred years later... that's not the "push start" icebraining is talking about. (And we're not a hundred years later yet, so I'm not saying there's definitely a problem or anything.)

Voluntary work is not amateur work

I can't stress this enough, if you want to earn money you find something you are good at and society thinks is worth something. If you want to help someone you find something you are good at and people need. Maximize your impact by specializing in what you are good at and outsourcing that in which you are not.

I loved this article. Really hits at the problem we're trying to solve. We find these 6 questions helpful to ask if you should (or shouldn't) volunteer your skills overseas: blog.movingworlds.org/6-questions-to-ask-yourself-before-volunteering-overseas/

Even though voluntourist may not be the most useful addition to a team, I imagine the money that is spent to travel and spend time in the volunteer country also helps the local economy a great deal. An unintended benefit but nevertheless helpful.

Wanna help some poor people? Give them money. In most cases, that's what they need, not your good will, not your clumsy efforts. Unless you have a very particular and highly-developed skill that's in high demand, just give money.

The absolute worst thing is when the voluntourists don't speak the native language and stick out visually like a black man in Sweden.

> stick out visually like a black man in Sweden

You haven't been to Sweden lately. Demographics have changed. A snapshot from Sergels square, Stockholm : http://thegambia.nu/files/2012/06/IMG_0514.jpg

I expected a treatise on Voluntaryism and I have to say that I got really far into the article before realizing I read the title wrong.

I read it as "Why I stopped being a voyeurist" and thought it would be an article on finding morals.

It was radically different.

It's pretty simple stuff where locals work for $10 per day, your labour contribution is only $10 per day for unskilled labour. IE helping orphans, cute animals, quick bouts of teaching etc

As a libertarian I'm big on spending heaps of money on localised products(With low resource costs) while visiting these countries instead, I make an effort to do stuff that normally I might be stingy on. I figure the money trickles through the economy while encouraging local business.

I also donate because it also has relevance, but if you want to help a community while having a great experience, just pay for it.

Agreed, your biggest advantage is your western salary. Why visit a village in a developing country and work like a local, contributing $3/day worth of labor? That's $1,000 for a year of work. Why not stay home, earn $50,000, and donate $10,000 to the village? They can spend that money to employ 10 local residents.

You just made 10x the difference by staying home, and you could probably contribute a few thousand dollars to your personal savings as well.

Yeah, seriously, go to a local food pantry, they'll be glad for the help

Or maybe rather do equivalent amount of overtime at work and use the additional money to hire a bunch of highschoolers to help.

Suggestion: Panera Bread gives away (to charity) all the bread they have at the end of each day (their "Dough-Nation" program). Find a food pantry, find out when they're open, tell a Panera store you want to take their leftovers there. Both groups will appreciate you for it, especially if you're reliable: Panera doesn't want to throw hundreds of $$$ of good food away, and the pantry can probably use as much as they can get. Be reliable to both. Just transporting otherwise-discarded food from store A to charity B can make a big difference; takes about an hour a week, easy to do, is a needed activity few know is available.

I'm sure other stores will do something similar.

A lot of place literally just need to man-power to lift boxes around and help distribute food to clients.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com