Dear volunteers in Africa: don’t come to help until you’ve asked yourselves these four questions

Some recent studies suggest that volunteer work can sometimes do more harm than good. It has been linked todamage to local economiesand thetreatment of vulnerable children as commodities. Furthermore, it canperpetuate harmful stereotypesabout the so-called “Third World” and foster neocolonialist attitudes.

I don't recommendvoluntourism. But if you're considering visiting our continent as a volunteer, think about these four questions before planning your trip.

Would you go abroad to volunteer if you didn't have a camera?

This question is a way of paraphrasing a poem by Nayyirah Waheed. It is “a matter of appropriation.” This question forces travelers to reflect on their motives.

Are your motives pure? Are you going abroad to help others, or just to look good in front of others? Do you really want to help people, or just post a photo of yourself helping on Facebook? Do you want to put your skills to work for a community, or just pad your résumé?

Watch out forthe “savior complex”when you volunteer. It’s the idea that you, as the only (and probably underqualified) foreigner, can save an entire community. This kind of savior complex is condescending, since it implies that you’re a hero who’s going to help a bunch of useless people.

Do you share the agency's values and goals?

Even if you’re convinced that your intentions are sincere, you need to make sure that the organization you’re working with has the right values. Volunteering is a booming industry, which means that some organizations profit at the expense of others’ poverty and hardships. Many NGOs are genuinely committed to the well-being of their communities, while others—such as those working withfraudulent orphanages—are not.

If you want to do your part for the world, you should support an ethical volunteer agency or organization. Don’t be afraid to get to know volunteer agencies up close before donating to them.

Ask yourself the following:

How much money does the agency keep, and how much goes toward travel and accommodation expenses for the charity? If the agency isn't transparent about this, ask why.

Do you usestereotypesto promote your business?

Do they encourage initiatives to emerge from the communities themselves, or do outsiders decide what is best for them?

If they offer opportunities to work with children, do they screen volunteers to ensure they have no history of abuse? If not, do you think they truly care about the children they claim to help?

If the agency acts ethically, it won't mind answering these questions.

Will the consequences be more harmful than beneficial?

Be realistic about the impact of your work.Studiesshow that working with displaced children—especially orphans—is not suitable for a volunteer. Children in vulnerable situations need to develop stable, long-term relationships—a task that is impossible for volunteers who are only there for a few months at most. Thepsychological effectsof feeling abandoned by a volunteer are far-reaching. Make sure you know in advance what impact you want to have when you try to “help.”

Do you have enough confidence in yourself to do this job in your own country?

It is important to undertake projects that match your skills, not just your desires. For example, a very popular activity among volunteers is building structures. These can be houses, libraries, schools, or other buildings needed by the community. The problem is that many volunteers lack both the skills and the experience to do this. As a result, they build unsafe structures that pose a danger to the communities.

As Pippa Biddle wrote afterher own experiencesas a volunteer: “Our mission at the orphanage was to build a library. It turns out that we—a group of students from a private school—were terrible at even the most basic construction, so every night the men would dismantle the bricks we had so precariously laid to rebuild the structure so that, when we woke up, we didn’t know it had been a failure.”

You should choose volunteer work that matches your skills and abilities, not just what you’d like to do. Instead, offer to help local organizations with tasks for which you are actually qualified. If you’re skilled with websites, offer to build the NGO’s website. If you’re good at accounting, help with a business’s administrative tasks. And if you don’t have the skills to do a particular job, donate money so they can hire qualified local workers to do the work you can’t. This way, you support local businesses and ensure that the work is done properly.

If you don't have enough confidence in yourself to do a job in your own country, don't try to do it in another.

By Sian Ferguson

Source: Matador Network,Dear volunteers in Africa: please don’t come to help until you’ve asked yourself these four questions