International volunteering
International volunteering is when volunteers contribute their time to work for organisations or causes outside their home countries. International volunteering has a long association with international development or environment, with the aim of bringing benefits to host communities. It can include a range of services, from healthcare advancement to economic development to governance.
Trends show that international volunteering has become increasingly popular across many countries over the past few decades. International volunteering is a broad term which is used to capture multi-year, skilled placements as well as short term roles. The term voluntourism has become common to describe certain types of volunteering organised by governments, charities and travel agents.
History
On a large scale, workcamps after World War I and early missionary service were the first expressions of international service. Formal overseas volunteering can be traced back over one hundred years to when the British Red Cross set up the Voluntary Aid Detachment scheme in 1909. The VAD volunteers, as well as volunteers from many other national Red Cross organisations, worked in battlefields across Europe and the Middle East during World War I to treat soldiers and civilians regardless of the side they fought for. One of the most prominent organisations, Service Civil International, organised workcamps from 1920 on as a form of post-war reconciliation and was formally established in 1934.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. The more formal inception of international volunteering organisations can be linked to organisations such as Australian Volunteers International which formed in 1951, International Voluntary Services in 1953 in the United States, and Voluntary Services Overseas in 1958 the United Kingdom. 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. During the 1960s and 1970s a movement of volunteerism and study abroad programs became popular among university students and graduates and the United Nations launched the UN Volunteers programme for young professionals to take part in a long-term overseas programme.
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. This called for the employment of doctors and nurses in third-world countries, practicing Western medicine in non-Western environments. 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. Global health initiatives underwent a shift from disease-specific interventions to the advancement of internal healthcare systems. 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. At this time, The World Health Organization rapidly diverted energy to revitalizing efforts that would effectively bolster health systems. Volunteering with organizations such as Global Medical Brigades exemplified goals of the WHO and were increasingly sought after by undergraduate students, medical students, and healthcare professionals.
In recent years the accessibility of international volunteering for US Americans has increased significantly with many smaller charities connecting volunteers with non-governmental organisations in developing countries. About half of all international volunteering from the US takes place through faith-based organizations. 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. However, many opportunities medium- and long-term opportunities for skilled international volunteers remain, for example, the publicised role of volunteers in addressing the Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa. According to US Current Population Survey, the most common activities volunteers engage in abroad include tutoring or teaching, mentoring youth, engaging in general labor, and providing counseling, medical care, or protective services.
Limited Volunteer demographics
According to the 2022 State of the World’s Volunteerism Report, nearly 15 percent of the global working-age population volunteers each month, corresponding to approximately 862 million people.From the US, about one million people volunteer abroad each year—almost half for less than two weeks. 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. Volunteering appeals to a broad cross-section of society, but the majority of volunteers are in their twenties and thirties, potentially due to perceptions of volunteering abroad being a more risky activity. The average age of Voluntary Service Overseas volunteers, however, is 38, showing a broad range of participation across age groups. Recently there has been an increase in baby boomer volunteers. One possible explanation for the increase is that these people are transitioning into a new stage of life and their focus may shift toward finding activities that give their life new meaning. As with domestic volunteering, international volunteering is more common among those with a higher education and from higher income households.
Critiques and challenges
Certain critiques and challenges are associated with international volunteering.Outcomes
Measuring the outcomes of international volunteering is an ongoing challenge. Sometimes the costs invested in these partnerships are high. The intangible nature of impact and outcomes is hard to measure and research has been proposed in this area. Similarly, how to measure the success of a volunteer and the supporting organisation's performance is complicated. To allow volunteers to integrate properly into the community, it is essential that volunteers have some useful skills and are reasonably well-informed and trained before the placement. Shannon O'Donnell, a vocal critic of poorly designed international programs, contends that many volunteer organizations compromise the dignity of local populations—these programs often foster a cyclical dependency international volunteers within the communities the programs are designed to serve. Others have critiqued the mixing of models of volunteering designed for international understanding and those designed for social or economic development. Still others are concerned about its postcolonial and historical character, and the impacts this has on the identity of members of hosting communities.High costs
Related to the impact of international volunteering, the cost of having an international volunteer has been cited as another area of concern, especially costs for air tickets, allowances, insurance, training and logistics. Local staff do not require long-distance travel costs, although they do require payment, and the local organisations could put these funds into other activities; however, many volunteers pay these expenses personally. Some institutions provide scholarships for international volunteering.Still, volunteers are often cheaper than other forms of long-term technical assistance because they live and work under local conditions. Expatriates who work in the same capacity can be paid multiple times more than any allowances volunteers receive. The cost-benefit of international volunteers is hard to quantify, though studies have highlighted improvements in well-being and inter-cultural understanding in communities and schools as a result of international exchanges and volunteers.
Undermining local organizations
One consideration is that volunteers may dominate the local workplace, replace local employment, and undermine management and work culture especially in small organisations and schools. This is due to volunteers often being considered more highly educated than local staff, even if they do not often have much direct experience.Coming from a different culture can also lead to volunteers imposing their values on organisations. For example, different cultures have different ideas on whether it is more important to finish a project by a deadline, or to be active in the social life of the community, and a person who values punctuality may be annoyed that work stops for a funeral, while the person who values the community may be annoyed at the heartless-seeming person who wants to skip the funeral. Similarly, different cultures have different values about some business matters, with differing ideas about where the line is drawn between impermissible levels of nepotism and building valuable relationships and endorsements. Volunteers are often trained to respect the local working culture and ethics.
Since they report directly to local organisations, they can have their contracts terminated if they break any local regulations, which helps to reduce concerns of domination.