people and places

While many have celebrated the merging of service to others and development with tourism, some critics have emerged, and correctly so. Things can get complicated when for profit businesses get involved in eco or community based projects. Some  operators sell a smoke and mirrors volunteer placement, talking vaguely about money into communities, obscuring the details, and making the volunteer feel uncomfortable about asking pointed questions – Too often volunteers are told money goes into the community, only to  find out…

Read More Read More

There’s been a huge increase in the number of chat rooms about responsible travel and volunteering. Even a perfunctory trawl through the mass of news and views now available shows that one of the biggest surprises to many volunteers is how little of the money they paid, to the organisation that marketed and arranged their placement, actually reaches the country they are volunteering in – never mind the community with whom they work. Many people researching volunteer opportunities firstly question…

Read More Read More