Learning and Volunteering Abroad for Development

Unpacking Host Organization and Volunteer Rationales

Rebecca Tiessen

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138746961
• eBook ISBN: 9781351709408
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Developmental Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Learning/volunteer abroad programmes provide opportunities for cross-cultural understanding, partnership-building, and cooperative development, but there are also significant structural challenges and inequality of opportunity issues that result from these partnerships between host organizations in the Global South and learning/volunteer abroad for development (LVA4D) participants from the Global North. Learning and Volunteering Abroad for Development aims to unpack the complex benefits and disadvantages of learning/volunteer abroad programmes, using insights from the volunteers who travel abroad and the communities who host them.

Based on empirical research within both volunteer and host communities, this book provides students and scholars with an alternative framework for a more careful and nuanced analysis of international volunteering programmes, highlighting ways to improve critical reflection, development outcomes, and intercultural competence.

Supported by a website with additional learning resources, this book is an integral resource for senior undergraduate and graduate students interested in going abroad, as well as for scholars or development professionals who are leading or researching such programmes.

1
Learning/Volunteer Abroad for Development (LVA4D) Starts with Unpacking

Introduction

Volunteer abroad programmes provide opportunities for cross-cultural exchange and knowledge-sharing for all individuals involved. For sojourners who take part in learning/volunteer abroad programmes, these placements also offer occasions for education, adventure, travel, personal growth, and skills/career-building. Furthermore, in the context of international development and global studies, volunteer programmes may be designed such that volunteers facilitate development partnerships and are able to contribute to development assistance. Host partners (the individuals who receive the volunteers and facilitate their volunteer placements in the partner countries) may see value in receiving international volunteers for personal, professional, and/or cooperative development reasons. This book explores in greater detail the rationales for participation in learning/volunteer abroad programmes from the perspectives of the individuals who go abroad and also the people who receive them. In addition to the individual roles and perspectives of the host organization staff and volunteers, this book examines those insights in the corresponding contexts of structural inequalities and desires for cooperative development, cross-cultural understanding, and international solidarity.

Throughout the book, I ‘unpack’ the rationales for participation in LVA4D programmes with examples emerging from interviews conducted in Canada and in seven countries in the Global South.¹ I situate the desires and aspirations of these study participants within the broader international development debates concerning partnership-building, cooperative development, international solidarity, and global citizenship. In this introductory chapter I outline some of the academic contributions to understanding development cooperation and return to these debates and frames of analysis throughout the chapters of the book to situate the empirical findings within the broader question: How do host organizations and international volunteers make sense of (unpack) and rationalize their participation in learning/volunteer abroad for development (LVA4D) programmes?

The development debates explored throughout the book include post-colonial critiques that question the role of North–South volunteerism in perpetuating inequality and reinforcing ‘Othering’, and more normative analyses of the value of international volunteering in support of international development priorities such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or in the promotion of human capabilities (Nussbaum, 2011; Sen, 1999). Palacios (2010) argues that the success of volunteer abroad programmes depends on a distancing from development aid discourse and calls instead for the careful use of a volunteering language. However, international volunteering can foster international development outcomes through the dedication of committed volunteers. Host organizations and international volunteers alike see important development cooperation outcomes emerging from LVA4D programmes. However, ongoing challenges stemming from structural inequalities, expectations, as well as practical limitations of these programmes highlight important areas for improvement. For example, tackling negative or problematic attitudes of volunteers, charity-oriented approaches of development delivery (including helping imperatives and paternalistic approaches), and broader systemic issues (such as neo-colonialism and/or neo-imperialism) are central to improving learning/volunteer abroad programmes for both international volunteers and the host organization staff. Conducting interviews with volunteers and volunteer-receiving staff provides important insights into overlapping and distinct rationales for participation in these programmes. Some of these rationales must be examined in light of the critical scholarship on neo-colonial practice and/or neo-imperial motivations. However, other findings from the interviews point to goals of solidarity and mutual benefits, including commitments to cross-cultural understanding and international development outcomes. In particular, these rationales highlight a deep desire for intercultural engagement and interpersonal connections. There are also many practical reasons identified for participating in these programmes that highlight structural inequalities such as the perceived benefits of having a foreign volunteer working in a host organization for donor and/or community credibility for the organization’s work. These diverse rationales are often overlapping in nature and need to be examined in relation to the active agency of the individuals involved in these programmes as they make carefully constructed decisions about the kind of participation they wish to have and how they negotiate structural inequalities in doing so. Heron (2015), furthermore, concludes that “it is also our responsibility to not impose these frames of interpretation [post-colonialism] on peoples in the global South, but rather to recognize that alternative views are operating” (p. 90). There is a need, then, for careful listening to what our host country partners have to tell us and how they themselves frame and interpret these experiences with international learners/volunteers.

Unpacking privilege as a starting point

Answering questions pertaining to why people participate in learning/volunteer abroad programmes necessitates an analysis of who can participate and in what capacity (by travelling abroad to volunteer or by hosting international volunteers). An important starting point for understanding why individuals participate, therefore, is an understanding of the privilege(s) accorded to those in the Global North. Deeper analysis of privilege is given below. The ‘invisible knapsack’ and ‘unpacking’ metaphors are useful in the deconstruction of volunteer privilege and to explore inequality of opportunity in the context of international development debates.

In 1989, Peggy McIntosh’s article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” offered an important critique of privilege focusing on both male privilege and white privilege. Her analysis sheds light on the privilege accorded to some groups – a privilege that often determines and maintains the disadvantage of others. McIntosh (1989) employed the metaphor of the invisible knapsack to convey the idea that those who hold privilege carry around that privilege wherever they go, even if they are not conscious of it. For volunteer abroad programmes, the knapsack – or backpack – is a fitting image given the nature of mobility associated with those who are able to volunteer abroad. It can also be symbolic of the heavy load – or burden – of host communities who work tirelessly to support and accommodate international volunteers. Throughout the book, white privilege is examined alongside other privileges accorded to those who can take time off from work or school to travel (time); the freedom to travel and cross national borders often without the need for visas (mobility); relative wealth enabling a select group of individuals to purchase passports, airline tickets, and often expensive volunteer abroad excursions or travel packages (affluence); and a particular status resulting in a combination of the above privileges as well as access to post-secondary education and/or work experience that enables young Northerners to travel abroad as ‘development experts’ (position). Thus, privileges are rooted in individual opportunities stemming from one’s positionality that are not shared equally within and across countries. These privileges are often mirrored in the structural inequalities at the global level and they reinforce social, political, and economic capital, which facilitate the opportunities available to some, but not most, people in this world. Thus, while individual privilege is enacted on the personal level, it is also reflected in the structures that facilitate those privileges. Examples of the factors that facilitate this include the nature of aid funding allocated to LVA4D placements, access to travel visas, and access to student loans, travel bursaries, and other financial awards. The volunteer abroad opportunities for those who already have individual privileges further build their capital, thus conferring even greater privilege and opportunity to international volunteers.

The analysis of gender- and race-related privileges articulated by McIntosh are examined alongside the privileges accorded through other forms of opportunity and advantage, such as the privilege of striving for global citizenship status as well as those privileges corresponding to time, mobility, affluence, and position (noted above). Such privileges are intimately connected to the broad range of rationales for participation in volunteer abroad programmes, and can be understood through an analysis of important theoretical contributions within the field of International Development Studies.

McIntosh’s employment of the invisible knapsack remains important now, more than 25 years later, in the context of LVA4D programmes, particularly for understanding privilege in relation to how participation in LVA4D is rationalized by international volunteers from the Global North. However, the rationales for participation in volunteer abroad (by hosting international volunteers) are less well understood. Throughout this book, I examine the rationales for participation in LVA4D as expressed through the transcripts of host country participants, and in connection with the Canadian volunteer interview responses.

Throughout this book, Peggy McIntosh’s work is extended to unpacking additional forms of privilege, perceptions of privilege, access to privileges, and how such inequalities arising from privilege may be rationalized to ourselves and to others. The ‘invisible backpack’ is thus a physically and metaphorically significant aspect of what we carry with us in our communities and around the world, including the rationales we use to make sense of privilege in relation to our decisions and our rationalizations to take part in LVA4D programmes. An exercise in unpacking rationales enables a deconstruction of assumptions and taken-for-granted notions of why we do what we do, what we perceive to be the benefits of our contributions as volunteers and partners in LVA4D, and how our actions can reinforce or diminish outcomes that perpetuate inequality.

However, the analysis of privilege(s), motivations, and rationales has limited value if: (1) it does not lead to a thoughtful reflection and evaluation of LVA4D programmes that can ultimately contribute to improved programming; and (2) it offers little more than naval-gazing for those who engage in the reflection process. Critical reflection or hyper-reflexivity can therefore be of great value but must also coincide with carefully coordinated action for social change (Langdon and Agyeyomah, 2014). Similarly, critical analysis of volunteer abroad programmes must take into consideration the motivations and deeper rationales for participation as expressed by host country staff and community partners for the purpose of transforming LVA4D programmes such that positive outcomes are maximized and negative impacts are eliminated. The concluding chapter returns to these points with some insights into effective practices drawing on the experiences of LVA4D participants.

Making sense of North–South volunteering as one component of international volunteering practice

North–South volunteering takes many different forms and comprises diverse time frames, which are examined in greater detail in Chapter 2. In this book, the focus of analysis is medium-term (3–6 months) volunteer placements as part of broader international development initiatives (or LVA4D). Studies documenting the contributions of national and international volunteering offer a much more expansive frame for examining the impacts of volunteers. For example, the Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) report Valuing Volunteering, in collaboration with the Institute of Development Studies in the United Kingdom, documents the diverse and significant ways that volunteering can contribute to poverty reduction and sustainable development (VSO, 2015). The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) Programme calls for increased volunteer participation to realize the SDGs, which are designed to facilitate development programming between 2015 and 2030. These studies remind us that there is immense potential for – and existing practise of – international (South–South) volunteering for sustainable development (a new vision that is distinct from old-school colonial practices centred on North–South relations). There are volunteer cooperation organizations – of the not-for-profit variety, in particular – that have made a focus on the SDGs a priority. Such organizations situate these commitments in the context of a new paradigm of ‘everyone’s development’ and mutual learning and in terms of a global commitment rather than a donor imperative to offer solutions to development ‘problems’ elsewhere. Yet there is a large and growing sector of for-profit volunteer-sending organizations that continue to position the often privileged international volunteer as the ‘helper’ or ‘solution-provider’ in relation to those characterized as needing help, charity, and/ or development. While the for-profit sector providing international volunteering opportunities is a substantial part of the volunteer abroad community, it is not the focus of this book.

Situating the contributions of this book in the larger literatures

A vast collection of reflections and analyses on international volunteering and voluntourism is now available. Newspaper articles, op-eds, blog posts, documentaries, stories, and academic scholarship cover a range of perspectives and diverse analyses of the rationales for – and (to a lesser extent) impacts of – volunteer abroad programmes. Such discussions and debates are elaborated throughout this book and serve as reminders of the importance of careful empirical research. What sets this book apart from other reflections on volunteer abroad programmes is the focus on the rationales for participation in relation to critical and normative development scholarship. The analysis is specific to a particular sub-sector of volunteer abroad programmes which I term medium-term (3–6 months) LVA4D, particularly those programmes aimed at preparing students and recent graduates for careers in international development contexts. The participants in LVA4D programmes from the Global North may be trained in International Development Studies and/or are preparing to work in international development in some capacity (perhaps as aid workers, engineers, or nurses) whether as a temporary or life-long career goal. Study participants from the Global South (host organization staff and host community members) are directly involved in international development work through aid programming initiatives to address poverty and inequality in their own country.

The contribution of an analysis of rationales to the literature

In this book, a range of rationales for participation in LVA4D programmes are examined from the perspectives of the participants from the Global North, as well as the recipients of these volunteers in the volunteer-receiving organizations and communities in the Global South. More specifically, I examine the rationales and experiences of LVA4D participants in the context of broader international development debates. These rationales are the basis for Chapters 3 through 6 and enable a deeper reflection on core motivations such as cross-cultural understanding, skills development and career training, personal growth, travel and adventure, and helping obligations. By situating the rationales for participation in LVA4D programmes in the broader debates within International Development Studies and the volunteer abroad literature, this book underscores the value of unpacking rationales for improved practice in LVA4D programmes. These debates highlight volunteer privilege and inequality of opportunity, as well as the significance of learning and mutual understanding for ‘global citizenship’ and global competence.

To set the stage for a deeper and more nuanced analysis of the rationales for participation in LVA4D, this book begins by examining several motivations for LVA4D identified by the study participants. In Chapter 2, a comprehensive and quantitative assessment of motivations identified by the study participants is provided. The most prevalent motivations for participation in LVA4D as identified by the Canadian participants include: cross-cultural understanding, skills development and career preparation, personal growth, travel and adventure, and helping obligations. The host country participants provided a number of their own motivations for participation in these programmes, including: interpersonal connections and cross-cultural exposure, helping hands and small contributions, fresh perspectives, sharing of specific skills, and real or perceived credibility (to donors and the broader community) brought by the presence of foreign staff. These motivations can be analysed in a number of ways reflecting both positive and negative outcomes as identified by both the Canadian participants and the host organization staff. Yet, the expression of rationales attached to these motivations provides a deeper analysis of the justifications for taking part in these LVA4D programmes. The rationales include cross-cultural desires that can contribute to solidaristic values and connections; human capabilities-oriented claims expressed in terms of carefully calculated decisions to host or not host international volunteers; capital gains – whether cultural, political, economic, or social capital; helping desires that are expressed in both individualistic and community-oriented ways; and global citizenship identities that encapsulate many of the previous rationales in distinct and overlapping ways. As such, the rationales provide a more complex and nuanced consideration of the motivations expressed by the participants by highlighting agency, power, and structural inequalities. The study participants are discussed in greater depth in Chapter 2. The qualitative and open-ended interviews with Canadian youth and host country participants enabled the participants to elaborate and provide nuance in their reflections and thereby to explore a deeper set of perspectives, beyond what quantitative surveys can normally provide.

Throughout this book the research study on LVA4D is situated within the broader literature and debates on volunteering abroad and development. One of the major sets of debates and analyses begins with reflection on motivations for participation in international volunteerism. While many of the motivations for participation from participants in the Global North stem from well-meaning individuals with good intentions, the motivations are often articulated as egoistic or self-oriented, with many references to the extrinsic rewards obtained by the Northern participants (Tiessen, 2012).

The reasons for participation in volunteer abroad programmes, from the perspective of volunteer-receiving organization staff, is less well known as fewer studies have documented their experiences and rationales for participation. Scholarship by Perold et al. (2012) offers one example of the small body of literature exploring host country perspectives. Other studies include a collection edited by Marianne Larsen titled International Service Learning: Engaging Host Communities (2015). In this collection, a selection of authors examine the impact of international service learning (ISL) in the Global South. Studies focusing more exclusively on the experience of international volunteering include work by Benjamin Lough, such as: Global Partners for Sustainable Development: The Added Value of Singapore International Foundation Volunteers (2016), Participatory Research on the Contributions of International Volunteerism in Kenya: Provisional Results (2012b), and Measuring and Conveying the Added Value of International Volunteering (2013). This contemporary scholarship builds on a small but growing sample of literature offering insights into the host community and host organization perspectives of the impacts of learning/volunteer abroad programmes (see Illich, 1968; Crabtree, 2008; Grusky, 2000; Ogden, 2008). For much of the scholarship on learning/volunteer abroad or ISL, the focus has been divided between the research and literature on student/volunteer experiences and host country evaluations. A particular limitation of this literature is the lack of connections between these experiences between students/volunteers and the hosts/partners.

An important contribution of this book is therefore the bridging of these bodies of literature by bringing together and simultaneously reflecting on host country and Canadian volunteer perspectives on motivations and rationales for participation in volunteer abroad programmes. The analysis of the rationales from the perspectives of the participants themselves provides a richer agency-oriented framework for evaluating the successes and challenges of volunteer abroad programmes (see Tiessen, Lough and Cheung, forthcoming). Throughout the book, I attach significant value to the voices and views of the particip...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Learning/volunteer abroad for development (LVA4D) starts with unpacking
• 2 An overview of the diverse volunteer abroad options, trends, and motivations
• 3 LVA4D and cross-cultural engagement
• 4 Skills development and testing a career choice: Capital accumulation and perceived benefits
• 5 It's all about the timing: A 'place' for adventure and travel
• 6 Having an 'impact' and other helping narratives
• 7 Conclusion: Understanding rationales and the possibilities for effective practices in volunteer abroad programmes
• Bibliography
• Index