Saeed Husain
Contributing Writer
Every year, thousands of people — mostly high school and college students — will travel across the world to engage in voluntourism, or its theological cousin, service trips. Touted as experiences that can positively impact the lives of who you help and your own, young adult trips account for a multi-billion dollar industry.
At face value, who can blame bright-eyed teenagers wanting to take part in what they think makes the world a better place. Haven’t these students been told countless times about the Third World, the Global South, the Underdeveloped World and Low-Middle-Income Countries? Have we not told them that people “over there” live in devastating poverty, and that it is only through their 18-year-old benevolence that “those people” can have a better chance at life?
At their very core, voluntourism and service trips emphatically fail to address the complex systems that espouse poverty and the structural racism that has both created and enabled our poor understanding of the people we wish to help. Week- to month-long trips that ultimately appear bent on generating poverty porn only proliferate these doubts.
Think about it, are we really qualified to build houses, teach English and provide medical advice? Would we build our own homes, or not visit a doctor when we fall ill? It’s a rather disgusting thought that we can be okay with providing mediocre and lackluster “service” to people, when we wouldn’t even be comfortable in those positions ourselves.
Now let’s look at some of the programs which we offer right here at the College. Wooster service trips in the past have cost $150 (West Virginia) and $1000 (Tijuana). Imagine if we donated that money directly to the communities so that we could empower them to rebuild homes. Would that not be a more effective way of helping? Rather than driving/flying a bunch of college students who might have little to no knowledge of the area for a week or so, we would be funding projects in a much more efficient manner.
The people at Wooster who work behind organizing these service trips are truly wonderful and have no malevolent intentions when they leave for them, yet one would argue that service in the community alone would be much more powerful and meaningful. Several student groups, APEX and the Center for Diversity and Inclusion are involved in making Wooster a terrific community. If we focused our attention solely on issues such as solving food insecurity in Wayne County, or abolishing the prisons that are literally just down the road, we would be creating a much larger and more positive impact.
The response to this piece might be that voluntourism and service trips are ways to make compassionate global citizens. However, is this not also feeding into a Western saviour complex, saying that “those” people “over there” need our physical help, otherwise they would not be able to build their own homes? If the aim is to make a compassionate global citizen, does one really need to go all the way to WV and Tijuana? We must critically ask ourselves if we are truly wishing to help people and make a difference in our world, or are we continuing to keep intact hierarchies and give ourselves a misplaced sense of pride.
I can understand the desire to travel to new places, meet different people, and open your mind to various thoughts and ideas. There are still plenty of ways to do that. Practice sustainable tourism, educate yourself about the complex issues of poverty, racism and imperialism and ultimately go to places as a learner, not as a saviour.
Trust me, there are plenty of other Instagrammable moments in life.
