Volunteer Tourism – needs to go viral, not parasitic

Missionvale, South Africa Photo: Una Shannon, volunteer with People and Places

At the last view, 415 people had watched the debate which took place at the World Travel Market in London in November 2012 on volunteering tourism on YouTube. Not exactly viral. However, if you are one of the million people who are thinking about using your valuable holiday time and money to volunteer next year, I highly recommend taking an hour of your time to watch this panel discussion about one of the fastest growing sectors of tourism which, to date, is still unregulated. Also, you could then prove one major player in the industry wrong. Richard Oliver, Chief Executive of Year Out Group, an association of leading gap year providers, responsible for sending 24000 young people abroad during 2011, claims that ‘For the volunteer, research and planning is essential …. and I have to say that young people don’t do it very well…. I am routinely disappointed that parents don’t get involved at least to take a discreet interest in what their children are doing…when things go wrong, parents are the first to jump on the bandwagon’ .

Year Out Group does not organise volunteering tours per se. They represent other organisations which do, and there is indeed a wealth of information on their site for volunteers to sift through, including a long list of questions that you should ask a gap year or volunteering holiday provider in order to get a clear picture of the work you will be getting involved with. There is also a Code of Conduct and Year Out Group’s members must ‘provide annual confirmation that they continue to meet these criteria’.

The criteria which volunteering holidays must meet in order to feature on Year Out Group’s site include guarantees on financial security for their clients, accurate websites and literature, professional support and welfare which ensure that all programmes are vetted and monitored by member organisations and that security and safety procedures are in place (all of which are basic legal requirements anyway, surely?). As well as this, member organisations agree to adhere to ethical considerations, albeit down at the lower end of the Code’s List of priorities. These include protecting the environment, respecting local culture, benefitting local communities, conserving natural resources and monitoring pollution.

Una Shannon, volunteer in Missionvale with People and Places

All great on paper, but with no actual obligatory regulation, bar the British Safety Standard  BS8848 for group activities which may not apply to certain volunteering holidays anyway, the thing which ‘routinely disappointed’ me was not the fact that parents didn’t do their job, but that Year Out Group which represents all these volunteering holidays doesn’t  do thorough checks on their babies. According to Oliver, “Ethical issues are important but with so many activities in so many countries it has not been possible for Year Out Group to audit and we therefore do require the individual volunteer to do a considerable amount of research and planning for themselves to check out the organisation and to check out the individual project”.

Oliver goes on to emphasise that the young  internet generation is only interested in “instant response”, and “this doesn’t work for international volunteering” and that as a result these volunteers are, again, ‘routinely disappointed’ and that ‘the provider is disappointed too because they’d like to be able to help but can’t’. And yet, somehow it is acceptable for volunteering associations, of which there must be many around the world at this stage,  to use the internet to promote thousands of volunteering opportunities, so many in fact that they don’t have time to audit and who claim that the best auditors are the volunteers. But hey, when in doubt – blame the parents.

Another of the key speakers, Paul Miedema of Calabash Tours, an organisation working in urban townships of the slums of Port Elizabeth in South Africa does not blame the parents however. He goes to the core of the matter by waking tourists and tourism providers up to his reality saying, “I am pretty annoyed at some of the volunteer tourism practices taking place…it seems to be the belief that we can be the play thing of people that come from the north and come and play with us in the south, have a wonderful experience and go home…. some of us are then left to pick up the pieces”. As Miedema points out, it is a lot more complex than that, and with a big boom in volunteering tourism happening worldwide at the moment “everyone is scrambling around looking around for projects, because that is what they need to sell’. He stresses the need for well-structured community centred volunteer experiences with deep insight into the local context, adding “We need to go about it the other way round, in my view. What are the needs  of the local people is the starting point” and stresses that volunteering holidays “are not about selling a beach package. A lot of the work I do is about bringing people to people….creating a shared humanity’.

Fairtrade in Tourism South Africa, of which Calabash Tours is a member

There is a clear contrast in outlooks here. Year Out Group is very volunteer centred, emphasising the CV credits that a young person gets for volunteering, assuring parents on their website that “Volunteering in a community overseas helps to develop valuable life skills, which can set young people apart when applying for universities and jobs” and which “enable young people to develop their soft skills, broaden their education and develop a wider perspective on life.”  Whereas Miedema talks about Calabash’s process with much more of a community focus although not denying the importance of volunteer safety; “It is our responsibility to educate the communities about what the potential risks of this are, so that they can agree to do this as a community. What are the rights of children or vulnerable adults within these communities?”

Miedema also points out that in October 2012 a US volunteering organisation Peace Corps volunteer was imprisoned for fifteen years for sexually abusing children in an AIDS centre for pre-school age children in South Africa. “This is happening more than we want to admit”, says Calabash, “ It is our dirty little secret and it’s time we open that up and talk about it and talk honestly about that, and talk about the risk to volunteers but also to the communities”. And with a passioned plea, Miedema sums up by saying “Too much of what I see around me benefits only the volunteer… If you can’t do it in your own country, why do you come and do it in mine? If you are eighteen years old can you teach English here in a class? Can you work with children here in England without a CRB screening? Why do you want to do it in my country? Just because we are vulnerable? Just because we are in need? If you can’t do it at home, I don’t want you to come and do it with us.”

And so with a growth sector comes grave concerns.  Sallie Grayson, co-founder of UK organisation People and Places, which was awarded the Best Volunteering Company at the Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards in 2009, is equally frustrated with the desperate need for change in the industry, saying that ‘The big boys need to stand up and take responsibility of what is going on in the volunteering market” in her presentation. People and Places’ rules are simple and clear when it comes to volunteering holidays : They take their time to match volunteer skills with specific community led projects and these are always projects which already exist, and are not volunteer dependent; they carry out criminal record checks and work closely with all their project providers in situ to ensure that the volunteer role is genuinely necessary; they guarantee to her volunteers that their role is not simply a money making exercise which may, in the worst scenario, put a local person out of a job and, they are totally transparent about the percentage of the volunteer’s  money which ends up in the community. And so consequently, she has serious doubts about volunteering organisations which offer discounted, last minute trips due to the fact that serious project and volunteer liaison is simply not possible in such a short time.

There has been no major expose of the volunteering industry within the media to date, with the exception of a superb documentary People and Power:  Cambodia’s Orphans Business by Al Jazeera on child trafficking in Cambodia  in May 2012 (see below).  You can watch this on You Tube too, and interestingly it has had over 30,000 hits so far, although considering the fact that it exposes the vast profits being made by US volunteering organisation Projects Abroad, as well as its shabby practices in terms of fundamental child protection, informed consent in the community, transparency and project supervision, this film  should be viral by now. But nothing is viral yet in volunteering tourism yet, it would seem, as so much of what really goes on is being kept under wraps. It is time to get the message spreading, volunteers speaking about their experiences, governments reacting and acting, and the media talking. That way, we can get the responsible volunteering message viral, and in so doing, stop the industry from becoming totally parasitic.

For more information see Better Volunteering and Better Child Protection as well as the ongoing work of the International Tourism Partnership and Tourism Concern. There are also some very interesting comments in response to this post below, and in particular those from the team producing the voluntourism documentary, Hope was here, which you can find more about, including its superb trailer,  if you click here.

People of the year 2009

donkey-trekking
Donkey trekking with Itinerance in Mercantour National Park, France

I once had an editor who told me that I shouldn’t write about people in travel. “Holidaymakers only want to know about the place, not the people. They’re irrelevant to travel articles”, he told me. However, writing about beaches and budget airlines, is not really my bag, as regular readers will know by now. People who create incredible places to stay or things to do, and also care deeply for their local environment, community and climate change, sell a holiday to me just as much as any piece of ‘beach lit’. And 2009 has definitely been a year about people in tourism.

 

 

 

Those who survived this worldwide recession without compromising their principles of responsible tourism merit huge recognition in my book. Some even dared to set up new businesses this year, such as Tripbod (tripbod.com), which puts travellers in touch with local guides before they travel. For a small fee, you get email contact with carefully selected local guides, who give you all the inside, finger-on-the-pulse information on the place you plan to visit. Tripbod works with an ethical ethos, and sources ‘bods’ who think the same way as they do, and top bods they are too, in my book.

 

One organisation which nearly lost its battle for survival in 2009, was Tourism Concern (tourismconcern.org.uk) a charity which has been fighting for human rights in tourism for twenty years. They put out an international appeal for rescue funding, and have managed to see their way into 2010, when the appeal will continue. Taking on tourism multinationals over employment conditions, governments on indigenous land ownership issues, as well as equal access to basic resources such as water, so often usurped for tourism purposes, its role in protecting people affected by tourism is invaluable.

 

Many thanks also for all the lovely feedback during the year, such as the two women who travelled to Africa with People and Places (travel-peopleandplaces.co.uk), which won Best Volunteering Organisation at this year’s Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards. These readers had great volunteering experiences, and felt as if they had made a genuinely positive contribution to the communities they visited. People and Places won this award because they not only offer a sustainable, transparent approach to volunteering holidays (they are externally audited), but they actively campaign for an end to the many cases of bad practice in the sector. Such as lack of consultancy with local communities, no police checks, abandoning volunteers in situ and, very importantly, where the volunteer’s money is actually going at the end of the day. People and Places gets what ‘voluntourism’ is about and, if you are thinking of giving time and money to people who need it, they are the people to call.

 

But my ‘People of the Year’ award goes to the Kieffer family in France. They run a walking holiday company in the Mercantour region of France, called Itinerance, They sent us off into the Lower Alps earlier this year, walking from gite to gite with a donkey to carry our bags. They bring hundreds of visitors to their spot in the Alps every year, teaching chlldren about the joys of nature, bringing money to many rural villages, sharing their love of slowtravel and slowfood, and running one of the most exemplary ethical tourism businesses I have come across (itinerance.net). So, bah humbug to that editor, he was wrong. It’s people like this who are creating a truly ethical tourism industry, and ensuring that travel is still one of the most exhilarating, eye-opening ways to spend our precious time.

 

An edited version of this article was first published in The Irish Times, 2 January 2010

 


 

 

 

 

 

For women with a sense of adventure

coasteering_optHaving an adventure on holiday is such a subjective notion. The skydivers who recently completed the first ever parachute jump over Mount Everest spent 15 years planning and $24000 each to get their adventure kicks. Personally, I am a bit less extreme. My first big travel adventure was in my early twenties, when I went backpacking alone to Australia, and had the time of my life. Just discovering the joys of solitude was an adventure in itself. And I didn’t even go near a bungy rope. Rainforests yes, shark cage diving, no thanks mate.  But that’s just me, for whom, now pushing middle age, just getting away from the children for a weekend is an adventure. Here are some of my favourites for all those non-skydiving adventurous women out there:

1.                  Coasteering is not some sort of pub game you play with beer mats on a girls’ night out. But it does involve wearing a lot of rubber, and it is about as daring as I get these days. Decked from head to toe in the thickest wetsuits possible, plus helmets and buoyancy aids, coasteering is, basically, all about chucking yourself into deep water from rocky heights. No ropes, just scrambling up rock faces, with the supervision of qualified adventure instructors, and then jump. And swim. Climb up somewhere else, jump in again, and swim. Or, as one instructor put it, “all those things your mother wouldn’t let you do in the sea when you were a child”. This has to be one of the best ways to get to know the UK’s only coastal National Park, the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, in South Wales.  Warm up in an eco-lodge at the end of the day, lap up homemade food, plenty of local ale, and head out for a bit of cave swimming the next day. It all happens so close to Ireland, you could almost coasteer your way there, just 9kms from Fishguard ferry port, with daily sailings from Rosslare (see www.stenaline.co.uk).

www.preseliventure.co.uk, Tel: + 44 (0) 1348 837709, Preseli Venture, Parcynole Fach,
Mathry,
Pembrokeshire, SA62 5HN, UK. 2 day coasteering weekends from £189 sterling, including two nights’ accommodation at the  Preseli Venture Eco Adventure Lodge, all meals, two half day coasteers and a half day hike, equipment and qualified instruction.

2.                  Back on much drier land, weaving rugs with women from the Berber tribes on the Plains of Marrakech is one of the most adventurous holidays I have ever taken. It is a women only holiday, due to the cultural morocco-062_optsensitivities of working closely with Muslim women. But there is nothing of the ‘knitting circle’ about this break, where you start off your trip shopping with a local guide in Marrakech. Then head up to the weavers in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains for weaving, eating fine local food, and chatting about different lifestyles and life experiences during the day, and out to the coastal fishing port of Essaouira at nighttime. Unlike other girly trips to, say New York, the only seabreezes you’ll get on this one are real ones off the Atlantic. But you are guaranteed to laugh just as much, learn so much more and take the adventure of a lifetime (and small rug) away with you. This company also offers cooking and painting holidays in Morocco.

www.ingridwagner.com,
Tel: +44 (0)1830 540 047 / +44 (0)191 565 3627, Ingrid Wagner Real World Journeys, Studio 5, The Stone Barn, Kirkharle Courtyard, Kirkharle, Northumberland, NE19 2PE, UK, Eight day weaving holiday €1196 approx (£925) including flights from UK.

3.                  The multi-taskers among us will just love Delphi Mountain Resort in Connemara. They have so many activities on offer, you need a spreadsheet to prepare your trip. Get down and dirty during the day, as instructors guide you up mountains, teach you to take on the Atlantic surf, have you jumping off the pier to swim to your kayak (all wetsuits provided), or simply send you off on a quiet bike ride across the Delphi Valley. Perfect for a hen party, as you can chill out at their natural spa afterwards, with seaweed baths and hydrotherapy pool, and eat for Ireland in their excellent restaurant afterwards. Choose from luxury four-star accommodation, or budget bunk rooms. If you get out there and make the most of every activity they lay on for you, all you will want to do is fall into bed at the end of the day anyway.  Delphi is quite simply divine, rain or shine.Delphi Mountain Resort, Leenane, Connemara, County Galway.  Rooms from  €40-€300 per night including breakfast. Mid-week spa breaks from €99 per person per night for luxury room and breakfast, use of thermal suite and free seaweed bath. Activities from €25.

www.delphimountainresort.com, Tel: +353 (0) 95 42223,

4.                  Jim Kennedy of Atlantic Sea Kayaking takes people kayaking off the Atlantic Coast off West Cork in summer, and then to Mexico’s Baja Peninsula in Winter. You still have time to sample West Cork, where Jim works closely with one of the Ireland’s leading Whale Watching companies, Whale Watch West Cork, well into winter. Swap Atlantic for Pacific for a January boost, where you not only learn all the kayaking skills you need, but also snorkel, hike, fish, visit local fishing villages, go whale-watching and discover mangroves by kayak. Oh, and just to add to the adventure, you camp on the Island of Espiritu Santo, an uninhabited volcanic Island about 5 miles from the mainland, the perfect base for paddling from one white sandy beach to another.

www.atlanticseakayaking.com, Tel: +353 (0) 28 210 58,
Atlantic Sea Kayaking, The Abbey, Skibbereen, West Cork. Half-day kayaking trips in West Cork from €50 per person. 12-day Mexico kayaking trip (for beginners and more advanced) from  €1450 per person sharing, not including flights.

5.                  If you associate Crete with drunken hen nights and all night clubbing, think again. Crete is also famous among geologists and conservationists for its superb gorges, leading down to empty beaches and aquamarine waters. Especially if you travel out of hen season. In April and May, it is a pure flower fest, as botanists and nature lovers flock from all around the world to see the Crete burst to life with abundant wild and rare flowers. You can travel with Pure Crete, who has been bringing walkers and flower lovers here for over twenty years.  Staying in locally-owned villas, you will be guided across the high plains, to the snowcapped peaks of the White Mountains, down through the Imbros Gorge, past orchid meadows at Spili, to one of many sandy coves. Experts Dr. Stephen Waters and Clive Daws tell you all you need to know about the 150 endemic species of flowers and orchids, as you walk from one side of Crete to another, watching it come alive with colour.   www.purecrete.com, Tel: +44 (0) 845 070 1571 Pure Crete, Bolney Place, Cowfold Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, RH17 5QT, UK.  Crete in Bloom package €920 approx (£715) including accommodation, air fare from UK (including Belfast), expert guides and excursions.

6.                  I found that climbing to the top of a sixty foot oak tree was the best natural way to deal with an ever-growing fear of heights. Recreational tree climbing is big in US, but still pretty unheard of in this part of the world. catherine-climbingI loved it; the solace at the top of an ancient oak is like nothing else, not to mention the child-like glee at having got yourself up there. Safely harnessed and helmeted, you are carefully guided up by arborist Paul McCathie, using the usual climbing techniques of ropes and carabiner clips. He is on the Isle of Wight, one of the UK’s most underrated beauty spots. The Mighty Oak Tree Climbing Company in Cornwall take it one step further and lets you sleep up there, using tree boats, specially-designed four cornered hammocks safely suspended up in the branches. An early morning breakfast is sent up to you as you swing serenely to the sound of the Cornish dawn chorus, www.mighty-oak.co.uk,  00-44 (0) 1983 563 573. 2.5 hour session €45 approx (£35.00) for adults, €32 approx. (£25.00) for children aged 8-16.
 
www.mighty-oak.co.uk, Tel: +44 (0) 7890 698 651. Prices for tree camping from €180 approx(£140) per person for groups of 2-5 climbers, including instruction, climbing, equipment, dinner, and breakfast.


www.goodleaf.co.uk, Tel:  00-44-0797 0033 209

7.                  You won’t get much more adventurous than some of the women who head off to volunteer for a holiday. Most volunteering organisations find that the majority of their clients are women. It feels like a safe way to travel alone, for example, as you plan your trip in advance with an agency, which then guides you and offers support while you are abroad. You can travel the world cheaply by volunteering through WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms). Wwoofers stay with farming families, offering a maximum of five hours a day of labour, while your hosts provide you with clean warm accommodation and all your food. If you want to make a more generous contribution to communities in need of help in the developing world, you could spend an extended trip volunteering abroad. One of the most highly-regarded ethical volunteering companies, People and Places, set up by, yes, two women, allocate you to one of their many life-changing projects, according to your skills and interests, in Africa, India or Indonesia. For further information on volunteering, see also www.comhlamh.orgTel +44 (0) 8700 460 479 www.wwoof.org.

www.travel-peopleandplaces.co.uk,

8.                  Riding out on the ranch is no longer the macho City Slickers holiday that it used to be. Celebrity ranchers like Nicole Kidman and Julia Roberts have turned the traditional huntin’-fishin’-shootin’ ranching image into something not only a bit sexier but also more sustainable. Take a break on a ranch in the America’s ‘Wild West, and you can not only improve your  riding skills, drive herds out to the prairies or do sunset cattle roundups, or but also go hikin’- bikin’ and raftin’ as well as swimmin’ and hot tubbin’. You don’t have to ride a horse like Nicole either, as they welcome beginners too.UK airports, full board, accommodation and activities).

www.ranchrider.com, Tel:  +44 (0) 1509 618811.7 nights from £1395 (approx € 1640, including flights from many

9.                  If dancing in the church hall is the nearest you have got to learning Salsa, then how about taking on the real thing in Havana, Cuba, where Salsa is the national dance, and the cha-cha-cha still oozes from every brick of the city’s famous pastel coloured buildings. There is yoga in the morning, dancing in the afternoon, and excursions to see the real thing in the evenings, as well talks and outings to teach you more about this fascinating country’s culture and history. Ideal for women traveling alone, as you are allocated a local dance partner during your afternoon dance sessions. 

www.responsibletravel.com, Tel: 44 (0)1273 600030 10 days from £895 (approx. €1051) excluding flights, but  including  shared accommodation, breakfast, Salsa dance classes with local dance partner, history talks and excursions

10.              Need a bit of cryotherapy? Who doesn’t from time to time? You need to the Aquacity Resort in Poprad, Slovakia, where cryotherapy is the completely mad act of entering a room at -120˚C, wearing nothing but woolen shorts, mittens, socks, a headband to protect your ears, and a paper mask (not really a romantic break, then), walking around for two minutes, and then going back into the warmth of a gym for a vigorous warm-up. The Slovakians call this “kick starting the body into self-healing and regeneration”. Or therapy to make you cry, more like it. If you survive this adventure, you can spend the rest of your stay enjoying the biggest geothermally heated waterpark you will ever see, heated by nature through all the seasons.  Or warm up in one of many scented steam rooms, followed by a quick cool down in cold fountains. This aqua-haven is powered by a natural geothermal spring, at the foot of the High Tatras Mountain Range, which provides the resort’s dramatic backdrop. Choose from 3 and 4 star onsite hotel accomodation, or self-catering apartments.

www.aquacityresort.com, + 421 52 7851 111, AquaCity Poprad, Sportova 1397/1, 058 01 Poprad, Slovak Republic, to choose hotel, or book a package with www.dreamslovakia.sk, with four nights’ accomodation at Aquacity’s 3-star hotel, breakfast and dinner, and full use of the water facilities, including one Cryotherapy session, from €420 pp, flights not included.

(This article was first published in The Irish Times, 08 August 2009)