This is a guest post written by Canadian student Meredith Brown.

I’ve been an explorer since the day I was born. Ever since a young age, my curiosity has always kept me on my toes. I questioned everything I got my hands on. Even the short weekend trips to national parks up in the northern part of my native Canada made me beam with excitement. I dragged my sister kilometers deep into the local ravine, sending my parents into cardiac arrest. I’ve gotten lost on three separate occasions in the biggest mountains in the world, too busy looking around to realize where I was.

I did no harm and no good. My explorations rarely affected anyone – other than my poor parents, of course. As I grew up, however, places outside of my home country intrigued me. So, when I heard of the various experiential trips my high school was offering, my parents struggled to get me to shut up about them. After lots of begging, they finally gave in. I had the privilege to embark on service trips to Thailand and Cambodia alongside several of my classmates. The opportunity to help people whom I believed needed my assistance made these trips much more meaningful and exciting for me.

Heading out on the plane to Cambodia, with a group of fellow high-schoolers all laden with gifts for our homestay families, we felt a sense of anticipation for how much their lives would change through our contribution. I guess I was excited to feel the same sense of fulfillment and pride I had felt after my journey to Thailand the previous year, as at the time I had believed my presence had a large impact on the recipients’ lives. However this time I came out of the trip challenging this “savior” mentality.

Our group of 17 students was thrown onto a small island in the Mekong River called Koh P’dao. The plan was to create two cement water tanks and a vegetable garden for a local family. As you might expect, as Canadians coming from privileged backgrounds, our experience mixing cement and hoeing dirt was . . . . minimal.

The project got off to a slow start. The local men tried to teach us the skills to make cement, as they have been doing this type of work on the island for years. Confused, we did our best to follow their instructions. The more I tried, I repeatedly failed – resulting in one of the locals giving a smile and fixing my mistake.

Basically, I was useless.

The following day we began to work on a vegetable garden for a family of six. This is when I seriously questioned why I was there. After hoeing the ground and planting seeds for a few hours, our group took a break to escape the harsh sun. I looked back at the progress we had made and felt a sense of pride. Like I had finally made a small difference. But, this feeling did not last long when I took a closer look at what the local women were doing.

They had begun to work in the garden and fix the seeds we had planted moments before. Our careless actions of simply placing the seeds on the dirt had resulted in the women putting in extra time and work. Work they could have done faster the first time around. They were sweating profusely, and they held their babies with them and they did not complain as the 17 of us sat in shade eating our snacks. I was ashamed.

Why were we here? Were we just entitled, privileged students coming to feel like we were making a difference? Were we actually selfish people?

These questions rang in my head throughout the rest of the trip, and upon touchdown in Canada. As I crawled into my warm, comfortable, and cozy bed, these thoughts couldn’t leave my mind. I decided to do more research into international volunteering in the hope of finding some answers.

The idea of having a negative impact while volunteering abroad is not new to Claire Bennett, the author of Learning Service. Of one trip in Cambodia with a group of Australian students, she recounted, “the project was a shambles, there wasn’t really a need for it, they were a burden on local resources, they offended the local community.” In the end, “those volunteers went home thinking they had helped some people and made a difference.”

Oh my god. Oh my god. I couldn’t help but think that this was not only just like my project in Cambodia, but the hundreds of trips that my school had sent groups on for the last 30 years. It was hard to understand because it was the first time I had heard anything like it.

My school had started the sign up for service projects to go back to Cambodia as well as seven other countries, and my fears of unethical voluntourism were not laid to rest. Bennett’s points were concerns I refuse to shove in a corner any longer. I wanted a solution.

Thankfully, upon reading Learning Service: The Essential Guide to Volunteering Abroad, I knew that there was hope for us as students to make a positive impact when we travel. This is a complicated and prolonged discussion, but it begins with getting one point clear. We are not saviors. We are not going to save a community over a two-week timeline. We are not on a rescue mission.

Instead, we must view these trips as a chance to learn about another culture. Invest ourselves into their lives. Show respect to local people. Open our eyes to a new world. If students come back from their projects with a new passion to change the world, then they will do just that. We do not have to travel thousands of miles away to make the difference we want to see.

I will be the first to say the concrete impact of my time in Cambodia was minimal. I am no longer embarrassed or ashamed to admit it. After months of reflection, I understand that the main difference I made occurred upon arriving home. The lessons and teachings I learned from my Khmer host family, the elders on the island and my trip guides have stuck with me until this day. It has inspired me to learn more about Cambodia and become an activist for human rights. One day, I hope to return and help make the change I wanted the first time around.

For now, I will continue to be an explorer. There is a lot left for me to learn and discover before I could ever call myself a savior.

Meredith Brown is an 18 year old student from a small town just outside of Toronto, Canada. She is currently attending Queen’s University studying business. She first became aware of the dangers of voluntourism on her service trip to Cambodia with her high school, Appleby College. It was here that she learned about why we all need to rethink service and question the purpose of our presence in other countries. The main photo shows her ad some classmates on the banks of the Mekong River on the island of Koh P’dao.

This is a guest post from Jonathan Brown, a high school teacher in the UK.

I was a teenager in England in the early 2000s. At that time I saw opportunities to volunteer abroad being advertised in schools, but I had little desire to do it myself. Most of my friends that travelled did so for more “conventional” reasons – seeing new landscapes, interacting with different cultures and having new experiences. I also might have been not that drawn to the idea as I was studying modules related  to International Development and had more of a nuanced understanding of the issues.

Even during the eight years that I have been a teacher, I have witnessed a surge in the trend of overseas volunteering. The reasons for this are complex and vary between individuals – for example I have seen students of faith volunteer internationally with their religious groups, driven by teachings about our obligation to help the less privileged. But far more frequently I think students undertake voluntourism projects as an alternative to the conventional travel my peers took 15 years prior.

I think the reason for this is that students these days don’t want to be seen “wasting” their time, which is the common stereotype about backpacking. This desire is driven by parents, travel companies, universities/employers, and by the education system in general, and while the motives between these different driving forces vary, the results are the same. As parents often are supporting the child financially during their time abroad, they want to feel as though their child is getting something in return, for example a new skill or attribute which could help them in the future. Another driving force is the competitive market of the travel companies, which have to keep diversifying their products and offer what that their client base demands. Increasingly, experiences like working with a community or building something is seen as more desirable or ‘authentic’, and looking at this cynically, are also travel products for which high prices can be charged. Then there are the pressures exerted by universities and employers about how students can build up their personal statements and CVs. We are at a stage where many students in their final years of school plan their lives and social activities around acquiring skills and experience that they hope will impress to a university or potential employer.

In many ways, this generation of young people are more connected to what is going on in the world than students of the past, largely due to their increased access to information via the internet and TV. This in turn has led to a far larger number of students with a real interest in global issues than I remember from my own school days. For example, when I studied World Development in 2006 there was one class of about 20 students, whereas at the same college just ten years later there were four classes of close to 100 students. There are also certain issues on which young people’s knowledge is on a par with or even surpasses that of adults – for example climate change, which is covered in both the science and geography curricula at school. Also the increase in awareness of the issue of ocean plastics since the latest David Attenborough documentary has been tenfold.

However whilst the number of those who take an interest in development issues has grown there are still some misunderstandings that are widely held, most of which revolve around the continent of Africa. In most students’ minds, “Africa” goes hand in hand with “poverty”. This is largely driven by the British media which heavily focuses on the issues and problems faced by the continent. This is the focus of almost all documentaries, charity fundraising and news reporting.

The other common misconception that students have is that being poor economically translates to being poor in all other senses. Almost all students have no understanding of being rich or poor in any other ways apart from monetarily, and most students believe that a lack of money directly translates to everything else in a country being poor (like health, education and general wellbeing). I think there is also a misconception that economic development directly correlates with happiness. Students often assume a very narrow definition of happiness, connected to material possessions, without considering that other communities and cultures might have different definitions.

The thing is, that instead of an education system that is responding to this need and to the global reality of the world being more interconnected, UK public education has been pushed to the brink. Over the last decade or so there has been a cultural shift in the school system towards one that is increasingly exam-focussed. And with this increased demand for grades is increased pressure on teachers’ time and resources. This means that teaching students about global issues has become of secondary importance and is often left entirely to the priorities of specific schools and teachers.

So here’s the situation. On one hand there are external pressures on young people to go abroad and “do something” for their futures and careers, along with their own motivations to take action on global injustice. On the other, I am worried that we have an education system that is not supporting the kind of learning that is required for students to make informed decisions about how to do this effectively. Most students who participate in the traditional “old school” form of voluntourism truly think they are helping. This may be naïve of them, but I genuinely think that the desire to participate in such programs is driven by a lack of education.

I am not against young people being motivated to volunteer, and I think it is important to give students ownership of their own choices. What is important, however, is that the student has access to the information needed to make an informed and educated decision. So if a student told me they were interested in some kind of voluntourism I would encourage them to research different types of travel and the pros and cons first. And if they then decide to participate in a voluntourism experience I would strongly encourage them to research the various companies, projects etc so that they make a considered choice. That’s where Learning Service comes in – the more knowledge and information young people can gain, the better. I do believe that a vast majority of students want to make better decisions but don’t know how.

Working with young people gives me great hope and optimism for the future. I don’t recall my own generation having either the same access to information about the wider world or the same passion to make a difference. However I have seen my students demonstrate inspiring idealism and real desire for change. This motivates me to give them the kind of education about global issues that they deserve.

Jonathan Brown has a BA and PGCE in Geography and a Masters in Education, Leadership, Policy and Development. He has worked as a teacher in schools and colleges in the UK since 2011.

This is a guest post by human rights campaigner Meg Lewis.

Earlier this month an orphanage tourism taskforce was launched in the UK by ABTA and Hope and Homes for Children. The taskforce aims to halt the trend of well-meaning international tourists from visiting and volunteering in orphanages across the globe. This follows legislation passed in Australia last year which recognises orphanage tourism as a form of modern-day slavery. At first glance, it can be difficult to understand how volunteering in orphanages could be so harmful that it can be classed as modern-day slavery, which is why it is important to look at what drives the industry and how it impacts children.

Volunteering in orphanages has become a staple of the modern gap year experience, promising tourists an opportunity to ‘give back’, have a meaningful experience and build connections in local communities. Visitors or volunteers bring donations, watch children’s cultural performances, play with children, teach informal English lessons or visit as part of tours or independent travel. Orphanage visits make up travel itineraries alongside trips to the zoo and cooking courses – despite it being highly unlikely that they would be able to visit children’s homes in their home country in order to play with and take selfies with children.

Lumos, a non-profit organisation working to end the institutionalisation of children, estimate that 80% of the children living in orphanages worldwide have at least one living parent. So, what is driving the rapid increase in the institutionalisation of children? Evidence points firmly towards the increase in voluntourism. It is estimated that the number of orphanages in Cambodia increased by 76% in a five-year period, coinciding with a 76% increase in tourist numbers. Despite decreasing numbers of actual orphans in Cambodia, as orphanages emerge, so to do children to fill them.

The idea of volunteering in an orphanage in the Global South may seem like a worthy cause. However, altruistic intentions can obscure the much darker reality. The potential for orphanages to produce profit has been exploited by entrepreneurs, corrupt officials and organised criminal gangs. The demand for orphans to fill profit-making orphanages drives orphan trafficking, the process through which children are removed from their family and fabricated as ‘paper orphans’ through the production of fraudulent papers such as identity documents and death certificates of parents. ‘Paper orphans’ are produced through exploitation of desperate families and trafficking of children. Inequalities such as poverty and limited access to healthcare and education push families to make challenging decisions. Parents place children in orphanages in the belief that they will have improved access to healthcare, food and education, whilst reducing the financial burden of care within the household. Recruiters actively coerce families by tricking or luring them into signing over parental rights under false pretences.

Numerous international agencies broker volunteer experiences at orphanages with varying levels of fees and requirements. This means that many orphanages are run as businesses, prioritising profit over child welfare. Volunteers and visitors do not need specific skills or qualifications, nor are they required to have criminal record checks or references. The exposure of children to unscreened and unqualified international volunteers increases their risk of abuse and exploitation.

The links between modern-day slavery become much clearer when looking at the roles that children are expected to play in order to maintain the industry, such as performing and begging from tourists. Children in orphanages are often tasked with raising money for their own care or generating profit for orphanage directors. By turning orphanages into tourist attractions, children are expected to perform a role for tourists, sharing scripted narratives of their histories. Care leavers interviewed in the documentary The Love you Give said that staff told them that should volunteers learn that they have living families, money will be withdrawn, and with it the child’s care. Some orphanages send children into tourist areas to hand out flyers and tout for business. This role includes working on the streets late at night in outdoor bars and drinking areas, where children are vulnerable to multiple risks. In many orphanages, children are expected to put on nightly dance or cultural performances for visiting tourists, without pay or remuneration.

Rather than working to eliminate global inequalities, Western tourists volunteering in orphanages in the Global South actually reinforce unequal social relations between the global North and South. Voluntourism is a virtuous act, only available to the privileged, who can afford to travel internationally and work for free. Recipients of voluntourism do not have access to virtuous volunteering opportunities and must remain passive beneficiaries of charity. The voluntourism industry not only exploits racialised and class division between volunteers and recipients, it requires and reinforces it.

There is an inherent tension between economic gain and child-centred policies. Profit making orphanages obstruct the development of child-centred solutions such as community-based and foster care models. Child welfare should be considered separately from tourism and capitalist motives and situated within cultural contexts. Many different organisations and individuals are complicit in the exploitation of children through orphanage tourism, including entrepreneurs who set up for-profit orphanages and criminal gangs trafficking vulnerable children. But it is demand from tourists which fuels the industry and it would be negligent to downplay the complicity of tourists supporting the industry, regardless of their intentions.

Heeding advice from activists and NGOs, governments are beginning to clamp down on orphanage tourism. In 2009, the UN General Assembly endorsed guidelines which state that residential care should only be considered as a last resort and committed to the elimination of large institutions, indicating a new global direction. In 2018, Australia became the first country to recognise orphanage trafficking as a specific form of modern-day slavery. Following in Australia’s footsteps, the UK Department for International Development explicitly stated that it would not fund orphanages or institutions earlier this year. Along with many NGOs and charities, I welcome DFID’s commitment not to fund orphanages or institutions, but this is the beginning of complex conversations around ethical volunteer tourism which concerns children. Marketing short-term opportunities to volunteer directly with children, treats them as commodities and markets them as tourist attractions. Unqualified and unscreened volunteers are not able to pay to volunteer with children in the UK, why then should it be acceptable for them to volunteer with children in other countries?

Meg is a human rights advocate, focussing on workers’ rights, children rights and LGBTQ rights. Her background includes working to end sexual exploitation of children and young people in the UK and working with marginalised groups in Cambodia. She is particularly interested in the intersection between development, tourism and human rights. The featured image shows Meg doing research in rural Cambodia.

I sat near the window, sipping coffee and observing the workers outside as they loaded all of the luggage onto the plane. I watched intently as a young man in an orange vest heaved my two overweight suitcases onto the conveyor belt. My eyes followed those big, blue suitcases all the way up the belt, until they finally settled into the belly of the plane. Then I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and rested my forehead on the dirty glass window. All I could do now was wait for my boarding group to be called.

At just 23 years old, I’d already done my fair share of being a tourist. Although we rarely went on far-off, exotic trips while growing up, my parents always took us on one or two beach vacations in the summer, and occasionally on a family ski retreat in the wintertime. But it wasn’t until my senior year of high school that I finally left North America; and, once I got my “adventuring” feet wet, I never looked back.

Over the course of four or five years, I hopped on flights to London, Italy, Ecuador, Mexico, and a few places in between. I had fallen in love with travel—it was so beautiful to immerse myself in another culture, to get out of my little, white, Georgia bubble and to see the world from a new perspective. Travel truly changed me: it widened my worldview, exposed me to new cultures, and increased my compassion. I even had the chance to live for extended periods in a couple of different Latin American countries, and it was those experiences that led me to this moment, where I sat alone in an airport, about to move to San José, Costa Rica for the next three years.

Sitting at the airport that day, watching my whole life being loaded onto the plane, I felt absolutely terrified. Yet, at the same time, I felt ready. I felt as if I knew what I was stepping into. I thought I knew exactly what to expect. Living in a place was just the same as traveling to a place, right?

Oh, if only I knew.

The moment I landed in San José, I went straight to the home of an incredibly wonderful host family, with whom I lived for the first six months of my journey. Predictably, the first few weeks felt like an exotic vacation. Everything was “new,” exciting,” and “adventurous.” But once the initial honeymoon was over, culture shock kicked into high gear pretty quickly. After the first few weeks, the frustration of not being able to communicate or get around freely was no longer “cute” or “exciting”; it was just exhausting. From the food to the routine to the accommodations of my new home, it all felt foreign.

When I tell people that I lived in Costa Rica, most of them respond with, Oh, that must have been incredible! It’s beautiful there! Well, yes, it is beautiful, but I wasn’t spending my days lounging on the beach or hiking through the mountains like a tourist. Instead, I was spending hours sitting at a bus stop in the middle of the city waiting for the crowded city bus to arrive. I was fumbling through conversations in Spanish with my host family, dealing with frequent blackouts and internet outages, trying to adjust to the new foods, and attempting to find my way to the grocery store without getting lost.

That’s the difference between life and travel: when you travel to a place, you get a glimpse of it. You maybe even get an authentic glimpse of it; but, then, after a week or two or three, you leave, and you don’t have to live in that reality anymore. When you live in a place, though, you can’t just leave when things get hard.

But the true beauty of living in a foreign culture is that you get the chance to know the place and the people for exactly who and what they are: real. You get to experience the good, the bad, and everything in between. You get to know the heart of a place and the culture within it. It’s not a holiday; it’s not something to consume and spit out after a week; it’s real life.

When I traveled during my college years, I had observed people. I watched their interactions, ate their food, faltered through conversations, and tried to engage with them. I even watched their habits and movements, often trying to copy them so as to avoid standing out as a tourist. But, no matter my good intentions, I never knew them, not intimately. I never experienced the daily routine of their lives. I never felt their hardships or shared in their joys. I never felt connected to the country or the people I was visiting. I was a tourist, an outsider, a temporary visitor, who was there to consume the experience for myself, and only for myself. And I certainly never knew, or even thought about, how my travel (whether service-oriented or simply for pleasure), actually affected the people around me.

But now here I was, living through the ups and downs of life with real people who had real struggles. I got to live in the reality that the majority of the world lives in: the reality that travel is a privilege and a luxury that most of the world does not get to enjoy, and that our privilege affects real people.

I had always felt that travel was something I was entitled to. Of course I should be able to travel and see the world, I thought. Of course I should get to go on exotic vacations and experience far-off destinations. It’s my right. Isn’t it?

GRACE WITH HER HOST MOTHER IN COSTA RICA

Yet, while I sat upstairs in my room in my host family’s home, scrolling through Instagram or planning my next vacation or trip back to the U.S., my Costa Rican family was downstairs trying to figure out where their next paycheck was going to come from. By living in their daily reality, I was able to look my entitlement straight in the eyes, and to get to know the faces of the people that that entitlement affected. I’ll always remember the excitement on my host mom’s face when I casually asked her if she wanted to go to the beach with me one day over a weekend. Her look of surprise and sheer joy is one I will not soon forget. Driving to the beach was a regular occurrence for me, but, for her, it meant money and planning and transportation, all of which did not come easily.

Slowly, I started to see tourism through the eyes of a Costa Rican. Sometimes the interaction with tourists was extremely positive: after all, tourism brought much-needed business, jobs, and dollars to local communities. And, in many cases, it fostered positive interaction between locals and foreigners, who were eager to learn about Costa Rican culture, cuisine, and daily life. Yet, many times the interactions were overwhelmingly negative, most notably in places where tourists overcrowded and overburdened natural areas, littered beautiful beaches, furthered the demand for illegal activity, like drugs and prostitution. In some places tourists overran local towns and turned them predominantly into “expat communities.”

I even found myself beginning to take this behavior personally. I remember driving to the beach for the day and seeing a big group of tourists on spring break, behaving obnoxiously and walking around like they owned the place, and I thought to myself, Ugh. Gringos. It was rather hypocritical, I know, but I felt as though I had adopted Costa Rica as mine, and I cared for the people deeply. It hurt me to see their home disrespected.

Over the three years, I saw the power that travel possesses. Tourism has a huge effect on the people and places that we visit, and that effect has the power to be negative and harmful, or it has the power to foster positive, impactful cultural exchanges and to spur healthy development of local communities. It all depends on how and why we are traveling, and how much we are willing to walk into an experience humbly, with an eagerness to learn, not to teach.

*          *          *

So, three years after that initial plane ride, I sat near the window of a different airport, watching the airplanes land amidst the backdrop of lush, green mountains. I sipped my [much stronger] coffee, and I watched the excited faces of the people disembarking from the airplane. I thought of the young girl who had moved to this place so long ago with good intentions and little clue. And I thought about the various ways that my three years in Costa Rica had opened my eyes to some difficult realities. Those three years transformed me, and forever changed the way that I live, love, and travel. I learned the hard way that the responsibility to travel respectfully and mindfully is both powerful and heavy. And, ultimately, the responsibility lies in our hands.

How will you carry that responsibility?

Grace Klopp is a writer, adventurer, former expat, and graduate student, currently pursuing her Master’s degree in International Community Development. She also serves as the Communications Intern for the Center for Responsible Travel, a policy-oriented research organization dedicated to increasing the positive global impact of responsible tourism. She is passionate about the power of responsible travel to develop local communities sustainably around the globe. When she’s not working or studying, you can find her at the beach with her family and a novel in hand! Follow along with her on her blog, or on Instagram @geographyofgrace.The main photo shows a view from the window of Grace’s bedroom in Costa Rica.

You can meet both Grace and Learning Service author Claire at the CREST World Tourism Forum in DC on 27^th September.

I walked into my first class and saw a room full of girls whose appearances closely resembled mine; dark hair, brown skin, and deep, energetic eyes.

I sat down at a table with some of them and didn’t say a word.

I noticed their eyes wandering around the room, anxiously waiting to meet their new American teacher.

I stood up, walked to the front of the class, and introduced myself. A wave of chattering that I couldn’t understand rushed throughout the room.

I went over to my coworker, and she told me the girls were expecting a blonde haired, green eyed woman. They were confused as to how I could be their teacher because I didn’t look “American”. This was in Morocco, but repeat this same scenario with details only slightly differing in both Nepal and Vietnam and this was the framework for my first days of class across countries during my post-high school gap year.

I had read about the concepts of “voluntourism” and the “white savior complex” in depth before I began traveling. However, this was the moment when I fully grasped their impact in local communities. I recognize that my experience as a brown Muslim woman who has done volunteer work in different countries provides a different perspective than what I had been used to hearing. I would often listen to inexperienced white Americans who had gone on mission trips or volunteered abroad reflecting upon their harmful experiences in countries portrayed as “exotic”, “impoverished”, and “in need of help”. However, this is not what occurred for me since our differences in identity created two very different realities for us.

When I was young, I thought light skin and straight hair was beautiful. Before the concept of “white savior” was even part of my vocabulary, I would read history books portraying the United States and other European powers as the ones who brought technology, education, and religion to other parts of the world. Teachers acknowledged slavery and war of course, but it wasn’t until I became older that they dissected and identified their lasting impacts on communities of color. My ancestor’s stories have been the ones buried and replaced with those of white intervention and the benefits of colonialism, causing me to have an empty connection with history unless I did my own research.

I remember going to the countries I was volunteering in, with the recognition that I was brown and many of my students were also brown. I wanted to show that success for them isn’t unattainable because they weren’t white and they didn’t come from a country of immense power, since my family didn’t either. I wanted to use my appearance as a method of empowerment, and my first interactions with all of my students showed how necessary this was. Yes, I am an American, but I am not the American that any of my students were expecting, and I am an American that none of them knew even existed.

AMBAR WITH SOME OF HER STUDENTS IN MOROCCO

So much of my work was listening, asking, and answering questions about myself and the communities I was in. As volunteers, we need to understand how crucial this is to build relationships in the communities we serve in. We cannot give them what they don’t ask for, we cannot provide off of empty promises, and we cannot expect to be of help just because of how we are perceived by the world. I recognize that we cannot be blind to taking advantage of our privileges of power and race when we travel to help.

Each person in the world has a unique set of skills and knowledge, and volunteers are special because they are the ones who are willing to offer what they have in the service of humanity. I have seen volunteers of every race, gender, and social status leave a sustainable and positive impact on the communities they served in. Imagine a diverse group of volunteers and the various skills and knowledge they each bring to the table if no two have the same experiences. There are many different ways to look at a problem, but also many different ways to solve it. This is how we should be shaping the way we look at ethical service.

I cannot say that I did everything perfectly as a volunteer. I had a lack of proper training, both culturally relevant and skill focused. I found myself in communities sometimes teaching what has already been taught, and I thought “If I wasn’t here, then someone else would be doing this worse than me, so they are lucky it’s me”, but this isn’t an excuse. It does, however, shed light on how volunteers find ourselves in places without the skills to effectively provide what is truly needed in communities. In situations like this, we can provide only what we know, which is often very limited, unsustainable, and can even be detrimental to the communities’ development.

I can simply state one difference between the mindset of a voluntourist and an ethical volunteer that I learned throughout traveling: I loved my students because I saw myself in them, not because I saw their lack of futures if it wasn’t for me.

Ambar Khawaja is a recipient of the 2018 Global Gap Year Fellowship through The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She recently finished her post-high school gap year, where she volunteered in three countries and traveled to eight others. Currently, she is a freshman at the university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and plans on studying international business with the hopes of opening an NGO.