A Personal Account of Voluntourism in Rural Kenya, and the Realities of Development Aid
Sophia Ceccucci, External Affairs
October 20, 2020
“Another white privileged teenager off to try to save the world” is what many people imagine when they hear about somebody they know venturing off into the developing world to engage in ‘voluntourism’. As I reflect on my current knowledge about voluntourism, I cannot say I disagree. As a “privileged white teenager” who actually went “off to try to save the world”, I’d like to tell you about the weight these words actually carry.
Voluntourism is a combination of the words ‘volunteering’ and ‘tourism’. It is a growing phenomenon where people from Northern industrialized nations travel to a developing country for a short period of time, stay in a rural area under the watchful eye of a company or charity based in the Global North, and “help” with a development initiative. It is necessary to put the word “help” between quotation marks because such development initiatives are often projects that young people do not have adequate experience in. Some examples include building classrooms, teaching young children English, or visiting an orphanage. Oftentimes, people go on voluntourism trips for their own benefit. Whether it be an opportunity to enhance the resume or just for some light-hearted enjoyment, the initial motive is not typically to help these developing communities improve their livelihoods.
On my voluntourism trip to a rural Kenyan village, Mwangaza, we were given the task of building a kitchen for a local school. In addition to building, we visited a hospital, a grade school, an all-girls high school, a farm, and a business centre. Moreover, we participated in a “water-walk” with local women, which included helping these women collect water from a nearby source. I immediately found the plethora of facilities that Me to We provided for the community of Mwangaza to be problematic because it had assumed complete control of every facet a person needs for survival - food from the farm, water from the water source, health from the hospital, education from the schools, and business from the business centre. This made the community entirely dependent on this company. The community was provided with everything they needed to ‘develop’, and the only stipulation was that they were to accommodate visitors from the Global North that pay this company large sums of money to ‘help out’ in these communities.
Voluntourism is notoriously problematic because of its neocolonial nature. Neocolonialism is the use of economic, political, or cultural pressures by developed countries and institutions to control or influence other developing countries and their institutions. It is the modern version of colonialism. The purpose of neocolonialism is to assert dominance and exploit various Global South countries for their resources. Companies or charities that offer voluntourism use cultural and financial pressure to control and influence these communities in the Global South into following their ideas of development. Voluntourism does nothing to tackle the larger societal issues going on in these parts of the world. The programming often acts as a band-aid for larger issues, but actually does nothing to substantially help these communities.
Despite all of the other activities we participated in while we visited rural Kenya, the main purpose of my voluntourism trip was to help local people build a kitchen for a grade school that would provide the students with lunch during school hours. We learned that much of Kenya is facing serious food insecurity due to a drought, and that children were often required to stay home from school to find a job so they could help support their families. The kitchen we were building would not solve the larger issue of Kenya’s drought; it would merely facilitate people in the community adapt to the conditions of this drought. Even though we were educated about why we were helping to build a kitchen, the project itself was, to say the least, insufficient.
We were merely a group of high school students with no prior knowledge or experience in construction, and we were working with the community members who had built the other buildings in the school’s compound. The people who were leading the build were our group leaders sent by Me to We not people living in the community with construction experience. We helped build the kitchen for a couple of days during our two week stay, but we made no legitimate progress. When our group wasn’t working on the kitchen, the locals were prohibited from working on it. This was because the initiative from the company was about youth providing aid in a global context, not local people working to make their own community a better place. This meant that the kitchen would take months to build, take the effort of several tour groups, and the problems associated with not having food provided at school would persist for months longer than they needed to. The company could have hired only community members to build the kitchen which would have, in turn, developed the community’s economy.
Looking at this build from a development standpoint allows the problems stemming from neocolonialism to emerge. First, as I had mentioned before, none of us had construction experience, making us absolute liabilities on the build site. The company’s influence in the community allowed for the use of outside labour that was unsafe for the voluntourism group, the community members, and the actual structure of the building. The company would rather make money through a voluntourism trip than hire local tradespeople to build something for their community. Therefore, this company is exploiting a crucial development for this community for a profit.
Second, the people leading the project were from the company and lived in the Global North, not the community. This means that the company decided what materials to use and the timeline for the project; yet the project was for the people, and took place in the community. The project directors were also not well versed in construction; they did not adequately explain instructions to us at all, nor were they involved with the construction. The community members had to take on the task of educating youth from the Global North about construction and the expectations for the day. They were also the ones doing most of the productive work on the build, yet they had absolutely no say in the implementation of the project. I also have no knowledge as to whether they were paid or not.
While I was physically building, I would get fatigued very quickly, and the group leaders would encourage water breaks. I was tasked with making the re-bar, which was part of the foundation of the building. When my hands got tired, my group leaders would provide me with gloves and snacks. The group leaders did not remind the locals to take breaks, or provide them with gloves, snacks, and water. On another day, it started to pour rain and some of our group members went back to camp to stay dry. Our group leaders brought those of us who stayed to help special water-wicking blankets, but they “did not have enough” for the locals who were helping us. It was clear that their priorities were taking care of the people who paid to be there, not the people who were actually doing most of the work on the school.
Even though my group arrived in Kenya with innocent intentions, we were still participating in a facet of development that is very problematic. People may feel good about going on a voluntourism trip because they are educating themselves about poverty and Global South relations. I would challenge those of you thinking about going on such a trip to ask yourself, “what can I learn by going on this trip that I cannot learn from a book?”, and “what would I learn from this trip that I can’t learn by just visiting this country and contributing to their economic development?”.