I got back from work late last night, and when I arrived home was very happy to find that Thursday’s article concerning the Questionable Ethics behind the Voluntourism Industry had sparked a little bit of debate. Scott Pralinsky of the Casa Milagro Foundation in Costa Rica, wrote a response on his blog called “Are We Ethical?”. His response was also supported through a comment by his friend Colin of Banana Azul in Costa Rica.

Scott runs a Voluntourism Company in Costa Rica that helps prospective volunteers find compatible local volunteer projects to participate in. Both Scott, Colin, and other advocates for “Voluntourism Broker Companies” contend that their service is a necessary one, to be able to match non-language speaking travelers with responsible, well-coordinated, local volunteer projects. There is a lot of work that goes into analyzing each and every volunteer project, determining which are the most prevalent needs, and assuring that projects are capable of receiving and maintaining volunteers. They have also found that the majority of costumers that participate in their program “could not find their way out of the San Jose airport [on their own]” and thus voluntourism companies are a great way to tap into the market of “less savvy” travelers and provide them with the resources necessary to take advantage of more responsible forms of travel – volunteering.

I do not argue their points. Having worked for a non-profit in Ecuador (that accepts volunteers) for the last two years I understand that, in general the international development community is EXTREMELY unorganized, inefficient, and at times incompetent. I do not disagree that there should be some system in place to evaluate and rate local volunteer projects, to ensure that foreign volunteers and donors alike, invest their time and money to the most needing organizations. Currently, it is the volunteer companies that take on this very important role. What I do NOT like about this system is that whether it’s through profits or just a bad business model, the only way that volunteer companies seem capable of fulfilling this position is by inflating volunteer costs by 2-10 times (see first article). The result of this price inflation (which I have seen first hand) is fewer people volunteer, and even more detrimental to our projects is they volunteer for a significantly shorter period of time.

Gap year students from England are a great example. They usually spend 9-12 months after high school traveling, and do volunteer work during that time. They are not rich, but they do have tons of time which could be devoted to long-term volunteering (extremely valuable). Unfortunately they also usually organize their volunteer experience with a voluntourism company, and consequentially can only afford to volunteer for 4-6 weeks (in my opinion the bare minimum for being effective in any social volunteer project).

Both Scott and Colin point out that the voluntourism business is far from profitable, and Scott’s company is actually still operating at an annual loss. In my opinion, this doesn’t matter. If a voluntourism company has to charge 2-10 times the actual cost of living and volunteering, and still struggles to make a profit, that doesn’t represent righteousness, it represents a bad business model.

Now, I don’t mean to attack voluntourism companies, and as I said in my first article, I DO NOT actually believe them to be unethical. The fact is they arose out of necessity in the international development field. As Scott and Colin have shown, there are thousands of people out there that would like to volunteer their time in developing nations, but if there is no volunteer company to guide them, where would they start?

Well, I believe a new system needs to develop to replace the inefficiency that voluntourism companies currently place on the development community. Scott said that one of the biggest costs facing his company is the annual analysis of Costa Rica’s needs and volunteer projects. However, is his company the only one analyzing Costa Rica’s development and needs? Absolutely not! I can guarantee that there are at least a dozen other surveys completed in the exact same way every year in Costa Rica, each one spending a significant amount of money to do accomplish the exact same task as the others. Why not coordinate with other non-profits working in Costa Rica, pool resources, and create one comprehensive annual analysis of the country’s situation. In fact why can’t we put something like this together on a more global scale. Like a very well funded and resourced Idealist.org. It’s not as if this work isn’t already being done, it is just being done in an extremely disconnected and uncoordinated way. With an internationally published ranking system, prospective volunteers could get online, look up volunteer projects in their country of interest, view international rankings and recommendations for each project, then coordinate with the local institution itself to organize their time in a much less costly manner. For those volunteers that don’t want to do the extra organization, or who want added support both before and during their time in-country, they could choose to pay more and organize their project through a voluntourism company. In this way, prospective volunteers at least have a choice, and are not misled into believing the only way they can volunteer is by paying inflated voluntourism fees.

Please feel free to add your comments and thoughts to this debate

More on this debate:

• My first article questioning the ethics behind the Voluntourism Industry
• Scott Pralinsky’s response

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