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12 Reasons Not to Volunteer Abroad

credits and disclaimer

These are the most common reasons I see for people wanting to volunteer abroad.

And they are NOT good reasons.

In addition to listing the reasons, I note why the reasons aren't ethical, appropriate, and may even do harm. After the lists, there's info on what are appropriate, not harmful reasons to volunteer abroad.

12 Reasons NOT to Volunteer Abroad

You want to spend a few days or weeks “doing good.”

There are zero communities in poor countries wishing that people from rich countries would come build schools for them, or dig wells for them, or hold their children, for a few days or weeks. In a few days or a few weeks, you are going to have is a cultural experience that benefits YOU - but you aren't going to change anyone's life in the community you are visiting.

Only skilled volunteers who stay at site for months (a full year is best - two even better) and dedicate time and effort to cultivating relationships and building trust actually succeed at anything meaningful, long-term, for a local community. People who spend just a week or two "helping" very often are taking local paid job opportunities away from local people - who would very much like to build their own schools, dig their own wells, care for any child who is orphaned (and most are NOT orphans, BTW), etc. And there are NO credible, ethical nonprofits that bring in unskilled foreigners to work with wildlife. NONE. More about the harm of orphanage voluntourism (& wildlife voluntourism as well).

If you aren’t ready to spend six months or a year onsite, and if you don’t have expertise that cannot be found in the area where you want to go, be a tourist instead. transire benefaciendo: "to travel along while doing good." Being a tourist in a poor area DOES REAL GOOD: paying for accommodations, local food and local guides employs local people. Blogging about the experience and sharing photos, with links to places you stayed and contacts for guides, encourages more people to visit and spend money - money that goes DIRECTLY to local people.
You want to “find yourself” or “figure things out.”

Volunteering abroad is NOT for people who are facing an existential crisis. Volunteering abroad is not a substitute for therapy for yourself. Credible programs that are locally driven - where local people have identified the priorities and are the people you work with - do not have the time nor the capabilities nor the priority to give you meaning to your life. They need you to be focused, to put your feelings aside and to get the tasks done. Expecting a volunteering abroad gig to meet your spiritual needs is, quite frankly, arrogant.

If, in the end, volunteering abroad does help you “find yourself”, great - but remember that is not the priority for volunteering abroad, that projects at credible programs are not designed with that as a priority. First comes what local people want and need.
You are depressed and need a pick me up.

Picture a scene where someone would say this:

"These are some recent college graduates from Canada. They have very little work experience, don't speak your language, and have no training in any of the things you have identified as needing most, like maternal health care, elementary school education, farm-to-market chains, etc. However, they are all chronically-depressed and they'd like to pay with your kids every day, take photos, post them to instagram, etc. It would really cheer them up. Okay?"

No one would say, "Yes, here are my kids! Have fun!" to such a group.

Volunteering abroad is NOT for people who are facing mental health issues. It is not for people who need to “recover” from divorce, a death, getting fired, or any other crisis. Again, volunteering abroad is not a substitute for therapy. Credible programs that are locally driven - where local people have identified the priorities and are the people you work with - do not have the time nor the capabilities nor the priority to address your mental health issues. Expecting a volunteering abroad gig to help you overcome a personal tragedy or mental health issue is not only arrogant, it’s dangerous. If, in the end, volunteering abroad does help you, great - but remember that is not the priority for volunteering abroad.

Here's more about volunteering to help your own mental health.
You are bored.

Picture the scene:

"Hey, there are some people here from the USA, and they are really bored, so they thought coming to your village and doing work that you would really prefer to do yourself, and be paid for, like building a school or a well, or caring for children who have lost their families to HIV or natural disasters or civil war, would be fun."

For all the reasons that have already been stated, this is a really bad reason to want to volunteer abroad. It is an insult to communities in need of outside expertise.
You have failed previously & are looking for success.

I'm sorry you didn't do well in school, I'm sorry that all of your jobs have ended poorly, but volunteering abroad is not for people who are looking for success when they haven't been able to find it elsewhere. People in developing countries need people who have successfully done things in their own community, successfully, and that could do the same internationally, in a different community.
You think it will help you get into a “great” university.

There are zero poor communities anywhere in the world saying, “Gosh, I wish some inexperienced university student who has never lived in a low infrastructure environment, doesn’t speak our local language and have never done in their own communities what they want to do abroad would come here and “help” us - and I hope the experience helps them get into Yale!"
You want to jazz up your Instagram or other social media profile.

This is one of the worst reasons ever to volunteer. People living in poverty are not your props. Neither are at-risk children anywhere.

Can you post photos to your social media from an experience abroad! Sure, as long as you have people's permission, including all of the parents of the children you want to photograph.
You think it will look great on your resume.

Sure, it might look interesting to potential employers to see that you worked abroad. However, the best volunteers are those committed to sustainable development and have a real, needed expertise to offer local people, not those concerned most about career development.
You never lived abroad during university.

Then go live abroad. Spend money and soak up all the local culture you want. Hire local guides. Eat in local restaurants. Take lots of photos. But the priority in credible volunteering abroad is what local people need. They need someone that will take the assignment with the utmost seriousness and that will always put the needs of the community to be served FIRST.
You want to learn another language.

Credible volunteering programs send volunteers who already can work in a local language. They require candidates to pass a test to prove it, and often conduct part of the interview in that language, just to be sure. You would be better off taking an immersion class or traveling long-term in a country that speaks the language you want to learn.

If you want to go abroad to learn a language, pay to go to a language school that's abroad.
You Want to Change the World.

You aren’t going to change the world in two weeks abroad. You aren’t in a month abroad. You probably aren’t going to change even one life in two weeks abroad - unless you do something harmful.

Having a a real, meaningful, sustainable impact on just one local community takes a lot of time. If you don't understand that, if you don't respect that, don't try to volunteer abroad.

It’s a colonialist perspective, a supremicist perspective, to think that you, because you are from a privileged country, a country that has benefited from the stolen wealth of other countries, know what’s best for a poor community, that you can solve problems they have struggled with for decades, even centuries - problems that, often, have their roots in the exploitation of YOUR country.

Your partnership will be welcomed. Your support for locally-driven projects will be welcomed. Your work abroad - for many months, even years, not for just a week or two - can make a sustainable difference. Your respectful collaboration with many others could, indeed, change the world.
You Believe A Change in Attitude or Work Ethics Elsewhere Is What's Needed.

If you think people are poor because of how they think, or that they are lazy, or that they don't know how to work hard, please don't volunteer abroad. People are not poor because they aren't willing to work, or they aren't willing to work harder. They aren't poor because they haven't converted to your religion. They live in poverty because of a myriad of historical and systemic reasons that cannot be solved by a volunteer from abroad. When communities are transformed from chronic poverty to basic economic and societal stability - and, yes, this DOES happen - it's because of a systemic, long-term approach by MANY people, one that involves local people themselves, employs local people themselves, in every step of the process.

Again, it’s a colonialist perspective, a supremicist perspective, to think that you, because you are from a privileged country, a country that has benefited from the stolen wealth of other countries, know what’s best for a poor community, that you can solve problems they have struggled with for decades, even centuries - problems that, often, have their roots in the exploitation of YOUR country.

If you want to delve into why these are bad, even harmful reasons to volunteer abroad, see:

An added issue around the ethics of people wanting to go "volunteer" for a few weeks abroad is a growing interest by people in developing countries (in Africa, South America and parts of Asia) to do what they see people - mostly white people from privileged countries do: go to other countries and volunteer and post fabulous, exciting photos to Instagram. Why shouldn't someone from Egypt not have the same international volunteering and travel opportunities as an unskilled but plucky person from Canada? If an unskilled foreign volunteer can go to Kenya and build a school in a high poverty area, or cradle orphan babies, or interact with wildlife, why can't someone with little or no expertise from Kenya go to the USA and build a school in a high poverty area, or cradle orphan babies, or interact with wildlife?

Do note, however, that credible organizations like the United Nations Volunteers programme actively recruits highly skilled people who live in in developing countries (in Africa, South America and parts of Asia) to be UN Volunteers - there are far more UNVs from developing countries than from privileged countries.

Really, all of these are bad reasons to volunteer abroad?

Of course the reasons you want to volunteer abroad can include that you want to better understand cultures different than your own, or that you want to work for international development agencies and this could be a nice entry into learning more, or that you are excited about the opportunity to really challenge yourself in an international context. As long as you are coming from a place of respect for local people and seeing them as the drivers of what you are going to do, not the helpless recipients of your charity, you can enjoy those benefits.

And if, in your ethical, respectful, appropriate volunteering abroad, more people do start reading your blog or watching your YouTube channel, that's fine - as long as you are respecting local cultures, not posting images of children without parents' permission, aren't perpetuating racist stereotypes, etc.

Again, you partnership will be welcomed. Your support for locally-driven projects will be welcomed. Your work abroad - for many months, even years, not for just a week or two - can make a sustainable difference. Your respectful collaboration with many others could, indeed, change the world.

So, what are the good reasons?

Really, there's one primary reason to volunteer abroad: because you have an area of deep expertise you really do think could help abroad, an expertise you have gained in your own community or elsewhere in your own country, an expertise that is coupled with curiosity, an intense interest in another country, and a desire to collaborate with others.

Is it okay to have a sense of adventure that you think such an experience might satisfy? Sure! As long as you have expertise that's actually needed, you are ready to make a commitment longer than a a few weeks, and you always remember: the priority is what local people want and need, in local people being in control of the process, and local skills being built.

Even Respectful Voluntourism Abroad, where you pay for a "volunteering" experience in another country for just a few weeks, requires some expertise (as opposed to non-respectful, not credible voluntourism that is just about the voluntourism organization making money).

So, volunteering abroad is only for the privileged?

No.

First, let me say it again: credible organizations like the United Nations Volunteers programme actively recruit highly skilled people who live in in developing countries (in Africa, South America and parts of Asia) to be UN Volunteers - there are far more UNVs from developing countries than from privileged countries.

Secondly: if you have skills and experience needed abroad, you are a great candidate for credible, long-term volunteering programs, regardless of where you went to university or what country you are from. If you have expertise that's needed, you can volunteer abroad in an ethical, community-focused program. Your options for such volunteering abroad are here, along with advice on how you can get the needed experience through work and volunteering in your own community.

Voluntourism - where people pay lots of money to go abroad for just a few weeks - is, indeed, for just the privileged who can afford to pay the fees to go. Traveling abroad is also only for the privileged who can afford to pay for all their travel, accommodations, visas, etc. - and who have a passport another country would find acceptable (not everyone has such a passport).

Why are you doing this?! Why are you saying this?!

Why am I doing this? Because I'm tired of seeing volunteering, locally or abroad, that's more focused on volunteers and their feelings and personal needs and ambitions than on the people and communities to be served. Because I'm tired of seeing local people excluded from decision-making and participation that is supposed to positively affect their lives. Because I'm tired of seeing the remnants of white colonialism and supremacy present in volunteering and other nonprofit/NGO activities. Because I really do want volunteers to help, not hurt.

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