Volunteers travel with the best of intentions, but that doesn\u2019t prevent the worst of consequences.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s according to research by Emily Crain-Castle, an international studies major and a McNair scholar at UWM. She spent the summer conducting research that examines the impact of the volunteer industry on developing nations. While her work is still ongoing, she\u2019s uncovered some chilling facts: When young people go abroad to volunteer, they\u2019re often harming more than they\u2019re helping.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy research question was, what factors influence the impact on communities during an international volunteer program? I looked into medical volunteering, missionaries, people that are going on spring break,\u201d Crain-Castle said. \u201cVolunteer tourism is a multibillion-dollar industry. People are making tons of money on this, but I\u2019ve found not many individuals in the U.S. are looking at this in academia.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a McNair scholar, Crain-Castle conducted her research over the summer under the guidance of Paru Shah, an associate professor of political science. UWM\u2019s Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement program prepare undergraduate students for doctoral studies. McNair participants are either first-generation college students with financial need, or members of a group that is traditionally underrepresented in graduate education, and have shown strong academic potential.<\/p>\n
Crain-Castle found that every year, thousands of people from developed nations travel to lend their time and talents at places like medical clinics, orphanages, and schools in developing nations \u2013 places such as Africa, South America and southeast Asia. While they often travel with the desire to make a positive impact on the world, she says that their efforts can many times harm the area where they volunteer.<\/p>\n
Her research over the summer identified four key areas of negative impact:<\/p>\n
\u201cFor instance, we as westerners bring things like donated shoes or clothing into these countries, but they actually take away from the (local) economy. People won\u2019t buy clothes or shoes locally and support business owners,\u201d Crain-Castle said.<\/p>\n
Or, she said, people volunteering to do work for free may displace local workers who would have been hired to perform the job instead.<\/p>\n
Training for volunteers varies wildly depending on which organization they travel through. Many times, volunteers will lack cultural understanding about the area they\u2019re visiting.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe believe different things and we go about things differently,\u201d Crain-Castle said. \u201cGoing with that mindset into a community and not having that education, we could end up doing things the wrong way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Worse yet, some volunteers aren\u2019t qualified in the areas where they\u2019re trying to serve \u2013 as medical practitioners or counselors, for example. Crain-Castle points to the story of Renee Bach, who founded a medical clinic in Uganda and was later accused of performing clinical procedures on children, despite the fact that she is not a doctor.<\/p>\n
Crain-Castle worries that volunteer tourism sets up underdeveloped nations to be dependent on other countries\u2019 goodwill. She calls it a new kind of colonization, less violent but still reminiscent of the way global empires exploited their colonies for resources.<\/p>\n
Race and ethnicity are undeniable factors at play when it comes to the volunteer industry. Most volunteer abroad opportunities are in countries where the majority of citizens are non-white.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look up volunteer (opportunities), you\u2019ll always see a white person at the center of it. It\u2019s a marketing strategy,\u201d Crain-Castle said. She worries that these messages perpetuate racial stereotypes.<\/p>\n
These are only preliminary findings. Crain-Castle\u2019s research was hampered because little work has been done in this area. There are no formal numbers and no statistics. She\u2019s had to rely on narratives and interviews from locals who have interacted with volunteers.<\/p>\n
This semester, \u201cI hope to create a survey and use it here, in some form, or work with a nonprofit organization that is doing this work. Data would be collected and we\u2019d go to host communities and ask, how do you feel about this work being done? Do you like it? Is it benefitting you?\u201d Crain-Castle said. \u201cI can\u2019t really do that since I\u2019m here and have a lot of barriers, geographically.\u201d<\/p>\n
She\u2019s also corresponding with Benjamin Lough, an associate professor of social work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He\u2019s conducting a 15-country study to determine the impact of local volunteering on community resiliency, and Crain-Castle hopes to study his data to inform her own research.
\nBefore anyone gets the wrong idea, Crain-Castle recognizes that many of the countries working with volunteers do need help to do things like create accessible medical care or build infrastructure. Just, she asks, be aware of volunteering\u2019s impact.<\/p>\n
\u201cEducate yourself on the country, the people, their history. I think people need to step back and realize that you\u2019re just an individual within in a larger context,\u201d she said. \u201cDon\u2019t have a big ego going into it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People who travel to developing nations to try to do good oftentimes have the opposite effect, according to research by UWM international studies major Emily Crain-Castle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":785,"featured_media":77613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[174,175],"tags":[],"section":[246,247],"display_categories":[115,116],"related-coverage":[],"uwmnews-feed":[158,160],"class_list":["post-77612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-research","section-business-world-affairs","section-politics-social-science","display_categories-top-story-secondary","display_categories-top-story-section","uwmnews-feed-letters-science","uwmnews-feed-social-science"],"yoast_head":"\n