Joblessness is still on the rise, retirement funds are still declining, and the economy is still uncertain. At times like these, it helps to put things into perspective. In 2007, the per-capita gross domestic product in Haiti was $612, compared to $45,047 in the United States. In Sudan, it was $1,442. Nepal? Only $419. When you look at it like that, the United States economy is cushy indeed.
Counting their blessings isn’t what motivates most travelers; many Coloradans volunteer abroad from the sheer goodness of heart and with a deep desire to make life better for those in true dire straits. The University of Colorado is number two among institutions providing Peace Corps volunteers for 2009, and sister city organizations in Colorado now number three dozen—and that doesn’t count sister schools, sister hospitals, and sister what-have-yous. Even high schools are sending their students abroad to do good works; Vail Mountain School’s program, “Ethically Engaged Youth,” hopes to teach and inspire students while they’re serving—and because EEY has pre- and post-trip components, it offers depth of experience.

If you’ve never traveled abroad to volunteer, be assured that it’s a rich and rewarding experience, but not without its complexities and nuances. Volunteers aren’t always welcomed with open arms; often, they’re greeted with skepticism or resentment, regarded with suspicion, even hostility. Dangers are real. But so is the warm, glowing feeling at the end of the day, when you watch a group of cheering villagers gather around the well you’ve helped build. If you’re considering volunteering abroad, here’s what you need to know.

Making a better world
Volunteer tourism can create a lasting shift for host communities abroad. Clean water flows, new schools open, and specialty medical services save lives. There are intangible benefits; a mother visiting a health clinic in a refugee camp in Soroti, Uganda, told volunteer Beverly Lyne, “Just seeing you here makes us know that we’ve not been forgotten.” Lyne, a community health nurse, helped establish the clinic, which is now run through an in-country group with backing from International Midwife Assistance, headquartered in Boulder.

The volunteers benefit just as much. There’s nothing like living elsewhere to become a truer believer that it’s a small world after all. Attitudes toward materialism, resource allocation, human rights, and much more can change—and global citizens are made through that alchemy.

Susan Skog, a Fort Collins author, just released The Give-Back Solution: Create A Better World With Your Time, Talents, and Travel (Whether You Have $10 or $10,000) (2009, Sourcebooks). “I’m hearing from people every week who are remaking their lives around service,” she says. “There’s such a surge in people wanting to give back, especially young people. Teenagers are totally on fire with the idea that they can make the world a better place.”

She and her 14-year-old son traveled to Thailand for a service trip. For teens, she says, an opportunity to offer help to those in obvious need may be the first time that they feel powerful. “They see themselves as change agents,” she says. “They are then ready to make a difference.”

Volunteering internationally also gives you the chance to meet people from around the globe—not only the natives of your destination, but also other volunteers. How often do we work side by side with Swedes, Cubans, and Scotsmen? And you’ll probably start using resources more wisely. Skog, for instance, recently downsized her family home, halving their original 3500 square feet of living space.

Joe Barrera, head of a Colorado Springs’ sister city – its “sister” is Nuevas Casas Grandes, in Chihuahua, Mexico – points out the importance and satisfaction of building relationships with people, not institutions. He has visited his “sister” several times, and its representatives have come to Colorado Springs as well.

When Barrera travels to Nueva Casas Grandes, it’s usually behind the wheel of a fire truck or a school bus; they’ve sent eight large vehicles over the years. “We saw what they had for firefighting, and it was almost nothing,” he says. Gifts of art have flowed the other way, but it’s the exchange of friendship, not goods, that matters, says Barrera.

Exchange seems to be the key word in all volunteer endeavors, even though the economic disparity between the volunteers and their hosts can be extreme. In exchange for service, volunteers learn about resourcefulness and ingenuity—and experience new cultures and global friendships.

Possible pitfalls – and how to avoid them.
Rewarding though it can be, international altruism can be a tricky endeavor, one that’s especially fraught with the danger of unwittingly offending hosts. If volunteers act out of paternalism; if they consume scarce resources in the host community; or if they carry a negative message--“Your school isn't nice enough, your park isn't clean enough, your diet isn't nutritious enough, your traditions aren’t good enough; adopt mine instead"--they can cause harm.

That potential for harm may be hard to see as a volunteer, but anthropologists are studying it, and are developing a train of thought called “Critical Development Theory” that questions the value of many forms of foreign aid. Much of the literature is about broad-based international aid, the kind that filters through large organizations such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) or the Children’s Fund, for instance. These programs are faulted as forms of neo-colonialism, or for poor program design or fraud.

In Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009) author Dambisa Moyo points out that 30 years of aid to independent African countries has hindered development—not helped it. The aid is an inherently lopsided power relationship, and is based on giving, more giving, and still more giving.

Lyne, the community health nurse from Boulder who has worked extensively in Nicaragua and now in Uganda, says that even on the person-to-person scale of volunteer tourism, “We are sometimes part of developing a beggar culture. It gets bigger and bigger and bigger: buy me a cow, send my child to school, build me an oven.” It’s not always easy to avoid looking like a walking ATM.

Conversely, some local communities are offended that outsiders think they need help. Paula Palmer, now a Colorado resident, lived in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, for 20 years. She recalls a time, years ago, when a group of well-meaning visitors to Puerto Viejo called a meeting and essentially told the community “Now we’re going to show you how to start doing ecotourism.” The community already hosted visitors on organic farms, took them out in the Atlantic Ocean, and showed them how cacao is grown and chocolate is made.

Finally, an indigenous leader stood and offered a gentle rebuke: “We’re happy to bring tourists into our community. We think they come because they are interested in learning about our people, our rainforest, our ocean, and we’re happy to show them. We have been doing it naturally, and we are the teachers of ecotourism. And, we don’t know how you can help us, other than improving our English.”

Which brings up a key question: when does volunteerism become slum tourism, or voyeurism? Since the movie, Slumdog Millionaire became this year’s Academy Awards best picture winner, slum tours in Mumbai have become a land-office business. Half-day “reality tours” are available in Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, all over the world. The tours may mean nothing to the slumdweller, if there is no cooperative plan that benefits the community. Or the tours may have a net negative impact in terms of eroding community values and personal self-worth, as camera-laden outsiders gawk.

Volunteering: doing it right
Visiting a foreign country to volunteer is much like visiting anyone’s home. Essentially, you’ll follow the same rules as any good houseguest: wait to be invited, behave graciously, be polite, and leave when you’re asked.

Waiting to be invited is key. Palmer recalls getting a letter from a young North American woman who wanted to come to Puerto Viejo to volunteer. For three months. With no knowledge of the Spanish language. And no vocation. Paula’s organization wrote back, politely declining; the woman showed up anyway. She was a burden, not a help.

The same goes for organizations. For that reason, Engineers Without Borders (EWB)--a Longmont-based non-profit organization that sends engineers and engineering students abroad to assist on appropriate technology projects--operates only by invitation. “We don’t recruit for projects,” say Cathy Leslie, executive director. “Rather, they approach us. “  

After being invited, and before taking any action, EWB also does a “needs assessment,” a critical step in volunteering. In needs assessment, the goal is to learn what the community feels it needs, what resources are at hand, including skills, time and relationships, and ways volunteers and community members can work together to fill those needs. The assessment is systematic, community-wide, and begun with open-ended questions such as “Tell us what it’s like to live here.”

Trust is also key. “The greatest responsibility lies in the middle-man organizations, the bridges,” says Palmer. “They must make sure that trusting relationships are in place before volunteers, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, arrive on the scene.” An in-country counterpart is essential as well: a non-profit organization, a government agency, a sponsoring church.

A very clear understanding of expectations for both sides must also be articulated; things can go wrong otherwise. As just one example, if the hosts are expecting goods, and the volunteers have been instructed not to make gifts to individuals—a very common trip norm—then feelings can be hurt, and misunderstanding can put a pall over future exchanges.

In fact, if there’s one piece of advice that all international travelers, whether volunteers or not, must hear and heed, it is to be respectful of local customs and cultures. That includes learning at least a few phrases in the community’s language, dressing appropriately, and knowing what’s polite and what’s not. Don’t think you can rely on common sense to navigate cultural nuances; in Yemen, for instance, showing any irritation with details or bureaucracy is considered a major insult, and can lead to a lawsuit. It’s crucial to learn about cultural specifics; a good place to start is at the U.S. State Department’s website on country-specific information (travel.state.gov/travel).

Finally, remember that corruption is commonplace the world over; it is the sending organization’s job to minimize it. Lyne’s Ugandan clinic, when under previous management, experienced employee theft more than once and threats to the safety of whistleblowers. So, checks and balances are essential. It helps to remember that workplace theft by North Americans is not unheard of either; Bernie Madoff comes to mind.

Individual differences.
For the volunteer, consistency and commitment are key. We can’t all be Paul Farmer, the doctor from the U.S. who has lived and worked in Haiti for many years, and is the subject of Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder (Random House, 2003). But spending an afternoon bringing games and songs to an orphanage won’t have a lasting effect on the orphans, fun as it may be.
A volunteer’s impact increases with the length of the stay, the strength of his or her language skills (French works in parts of Africa, Spanish in most of Latin America, and English will get you through much of Asia), and the nature of other skills that can be tapped. Do you know anything about raising chickens, making solar stoves, or teaching literacy? If not, expect to dig trenches and make adobe bricks. And, even if you do know how to raise chickens, be prepared to find out that yours is not the only way to do it.
The most important advance work a volunteer can do is to find the right sponsoring organization. This takes due diligence; some questions to ask:

– How long has the organization had a relationship with the host community, and what is its substance?
– Will there be someone on site who knows the community intimately and is available to the volunteers?
– Do the group’s policies reflect the host community’s input?
– What training is required for volunteers?
– How does the group avoid the Santa Claus syndrome, or disrespectful behavior?
– How does the host community benefit from the volunteer tourism?
– How are the benefits distributed throughout the community?
– Are former volunteers willing to talk?

Even with the best organization, and the best intentions, volunteers must still expect some gaffs, or at least some surprises. Lyne, who had more than 20 years of international work to her credit, says that when it came time to move the clinic in Soroti from one building to another, “Getting people organized was one of those cultural a-hahs. These guys have no idea how to load a truck, and it was unbelievably hard.” Call it a cultural misunderstanding.

No harm done, though. After the move was complete, the community gathered for a ceremony to offer blessings and promote healing. That was a moment when cross-cultural understanding truly worked.

Freelance writer Wendy Underhill also pens the “Enlightened Tourist” column for Nexus.