International volunteering
[4] Formal overseas volunteering can be traced back over one hundred years to when the British Red Cross set up the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) scheme in 1909.
[7] Up to the mid-20th century overseas volunteering projects were mainly undertaken by people with direct connections to a particular cause and were considered more as short term in nature.
[9][10][11] These services and that of the U.S. Peace Corps, established in 1961 during the Kennedy administration, paved the way for broader recognition of overseas volunteering in later years.
[13][4] In the late 20th century, there was also a notable emergence of medical international volunteering in response to the lack of qualified healthcare personnel in developing countries.
The growing interest in international volunteering was facilitated, in part, by globalization as it fostered cross-cultural exchange, collaboration, and networking among all parties involved.
It also played a pivotal role in the increased sense of global connectivity and awareness of health disparities and humanitarian needs.
[14] This change was brought about by an increased presence of non-communicable diseases rooted in unhealthy diets, substance abuse, physical inactivity, and exposure to unclean and hazardous energy sources.
[15] For-profit travel companies have also increasingly been offering paid-for volunteering opportunities, this growth coincided with the increasing number of young people taking gap years and has been termed volunteer tourism and voluntourism to denote shorter-term voluntary work that is not necessarily the sole purpose of the trip.
[15] Shorter-term voluntourism is therefore appealing to many, as it is targeted at travellers who want to make a positive change in the world, while still providing a touristic experience.
[33] On the other hand, many of the most prominent international volunteer cooperation organizations (IVCOs) – especially those funded by governments – have minimal educational and skill requirements.
[23] The present structures of international volunteering are also often aimed at impacts on a local, community scale which is sharply in contrast with the macro-political government strategies of the colonial era.
Frances Brown and Derek Hall write that this creates a neo-colonial narrative; they say the volunteer perspective is framed around the idea that Westerners with minimal experience can effect change in the Global South, just by nature of being from the West.
[41] Volunteering abroad has tended to be associated with international development and bridging the divide between the rich and poor worlds.
[42] Certain data has encouraged researchers to propose a conceptual structure of volunteers’, classifying them as shallow, intermediate, and deep.
[44] Essentially, it is a form of international traveling to resource poor settings, with a primary purpose of volunteering and serving the host community.
[45] Ideally, voluntourism activities are conducted by non-profit organizations for the purpose of societal good, and poses a chance for volunteers to help and benefit others in an unconventional setting with their skills.
[46] Participants are often young adults (ages 15–30), the length of the trip is often categorized as short term (under three months),[45] and the volunteering is regularly packaged with adventure and travel activities.
Voluntourism has undergone intense scrutiny over the course of the 2000s, and an increasing number of academic papers question volunteer tourists' motivations and experiences.
According to National Public Radio, it is one of the most rapid growing trends in modern travel, with more than 1.6 million volunteer-tourists spending around two billion dollars each year.
[45][1] According to a study done by Rebecca Tiessen, the motivations identified by the participants generally fit under the category of personal growth (e.g. skill development, cross-cultural understanding, career choice, etc.
Volunteer-sending organizations, such as Free The Children's Me to We trips, the British company Projects-abroad, and AIESEC, have been critiqued as furthering the aforementioned neo-colonial narrative to youth.
[55] As a consequence, children in these communities may become dependent and commodified when volunteers are constantly arriving and departing every couple weeks.
The rhetoric of such volunteer-sending organizations has also been argued to inform a "consumer-capitalist"[60][61] culture that plays to the wants and needs of the privileged North, at the disadvantage of the Global South.
