On Voluntourism

*Note: This piece is one of hopefully several that I intend to write about a recent trip to Costa Rica, each discussing specific aspects or themes or whatnot. This one centers around voluntourism, my thoughts and experiences.*

    Back in June, I began to have serious misgivings about my summer plans: namely, an environmental service trip to Costa Rica. A beautiful country, a chance to practice Spanish, and the opportunity to make a difference in protecting the environment and the oceans--it sounded like everything I could want. But as my takeoff date grew closer, I started to resent locking myself into what I feared would be exactly the sort of do-gooder trip that I myself was known to mockingly refer to as a ‘white savior’ program.

    I didn't want to be a savior. I wanted to do something besides sign petitions and read articles,or sit in a nonprofit office making up Twitter newsflashes to encourage other people to sign those petitions or read those articles. One of my favorite observations by Noam Chomsky, which I'm liable to quote or paraphrase in any situation, is that in the US, people will ask him frequently ‘What should we do?’, while in countries we might relegate to the ‘oppressed’ bin, people don't ask him what to do--they tell him what they're already doing. That half-step between knowledge and action is one that I've always felt eludes me, and I hoped this upcoming trip would be a concrete antidote to that feeling of uselessnesss.

    But by the same token, I didn't want to be one of those privileged white kids who swoops down on a so-called third world country and returns home to put on their resume that they have Helped People. The closer I got to leaving for Costa Rica, the more wary I became about this voluntourism gig.

    Ambling through the airports the day I left, I relaxed into the feeling of travel and rootlessness, consoling myself that no matter how this trip ended up, I was sure to have some fascinating experiences and at least sate my wanderlust for a couple of weeks. This mellow attitude lasted all the way to Costa Rica, and I let myself be swept up in admiring my surroundings, making small talk with the other kids in the program, and trying to determine what I could anticipate for our activities in the coming days.

    I had imagined the people who would sign up for an environmental work trip to be kindred spirits, globally aware or concerned kids who were invested in discussing problems and making a difference. Sometime before the trip began, I had gotten a sinking feeling that maybe my anticipations had been misguided or over-optimistic. I conceded quickly that most of the kids who signed up were generally well-intentioned towards the ‘service’ component of the program but weren’t explicitly environmentalists. At one point, we each declared our reasons for joining this trip, and I was disappointed that several people said ‘surfing,’ and that some were only there because their relatives had sent them, or because they needed community service hours and thought Costa Rica would be a cool place to get them.

    I’ve had mixed feelings on schools having mandatory community service requirements (which my school does not): on one hand, there could be benefits to ensuring that everyone must break out of the little bubble from which they likely hail, in order to do some volunteering that they probably would never have engaged in otherwise, and it might enlighten such kids as to the value of the necessary and hopefully meaningful work they are doing; on the other hand, ‘forcing’ kids to ‘perform’ community service makes it seem like a pointless duty, a grudgingly fulfilled obligation, or an opportunity to ‘perform’ good deeds, as if there should be an audience on hand to applaud you for your actions (or your acting/playacting, perhaps, as you assume the role of a do-gooder who may do good not even out of a desire to feel helpful but a desire to accrue enough service points to go to college). My main quibble with requiring community service hours is that by framing it as something mandatory and inescapable, something to be endured and withstood, it will produce more of the second type of response than the first. The perceived nature of community service--something to be dreaded or groaned over--is what I think pushes kids who haven’t racked up the hours to search for more ‘enjoyable’ ways to get them, such as heading for a tropical country in which they can hope to work on their tans, go surfing, and have a vacation at the same time as they help some poor people over there.

    This assessment may be unduly harsh, and I do realize that if a school--like mine--does not require community service, then students may not ever do any. And I admit that I have partaken in fewer local volunteering efforts than I should or could have, to be able to stand on my high horse and call everyone out. But I think the markers are as follows for judging whether community service is effective and not detrimental (or just useless) within the communities supposedly being served: who is getting more out of it? Are the presumably fairly privileged kids who show up to ‘serve’ benefiting more--in terms of school credits, college application brownie points, or self-righteousness--than the people to whose aid they are presumably coming? Do we, as the ones on a service trip, give back as much as we get out of it?

    Judging by the code-of-conduct lecture we received, I think the program I joined has had its share of problematic experiences with the local community, and we are aware that we are treading a line between helpful and not-altogether-welcome. And the leaders did try to make it clear: we were not there to save or help poor little people here--we were there to learn and work because our interests align. As far as these programs go, this one was certainly aware of the pitfalls and preconceptions of a ‘service’ trip, regardless of the attitudes or motives of its participants. This program was also cognizant of the problematic aspects of the tourism industry, and actively avoids contributing to them, emphasizing sustainable ecotourism as an alternative. We talked about development and economics and the damage such ‘development’ has done to Costa Rica. And it was reiterated frequently that ‘service’ to others or the environment does not just consist of two weeks of enlivened thinking and the community service hours you get for them: to make a difference, you must use what you’ve learned to take action back at home, so that voluntourism may not only succeed in the local communities it aspires to support, but also may act as a stepping-off point towards a life of being an engaged, thoughtful, and powerful global citizen. Cynical as I am, I am not sure who will follow through with more environmentally aware personal habits or with larger-scale activism, but I was glad that the message was emphasized.

Something else I noticed is that one of the criteria for sustainable tourism listed by the program leaders was that it helps ‘promote democracy and human rights in local communities.’ That alone was the criterion I believe the program meets in perhaps only a limited capacity. Supporting local economies and not aiding in the destruction of people’s livelihoods and water rights could be construed as promoting human rights, but to me that criterion sounded like more than that: ‘promote,’ rather than just ‘don’t trample,’ implies more direct involvement or investment in politics and advocacy. The environmental work we support in this community may help foster democratic action and cooperative processes, but whether my program can actually say it locally promotes human rights and democracy--as in the end, its position here is a little tenuous, it did not originate as a project of the local community, and its contributions do not necessarily affect the political climate--still seems like an open question. However, the stricter the better, most likely, for criteria of what is acceptable in terms of tourism and what is crossing the line. That my program fulfilled so many is very commendable, I would say. The effort to present the program as apolitical or nonpartisan may be what gives me pause with that one criterion, since it seems to me that an apolitical stance (not that it was especially apolitical, except perhaps nominally) hinders--I would think, logically--political agency.

I was concerned at first that for all development was criticized and we were made to think about what the natural world is worth, climate change didn’t enter the discussion. We spoke of preserving Costa Rica’s incredible biodiversity for future generations, but didn’t mention that it may be lost even if we curtail the tourism industry and maintain or expand the national parks. I supposed the idea was to come at environmental issues sideways--or again, appear apolitical--and not scare anyone off by going straight to climate change, but it felt like an awfully large part of the equation is missing. Conservation is not enough, if what we are struggling to conserve now will be underwater at the end of this century.

Later, the leaders did mention climate change, if briefly. They also said that usually people spent much more time on the environmental discussions and such, but my group didn’t have that vibe and more just wanted to have fun. The leaders and the conversations I had with them made all the difference in this program, though, and the presentations or videos we saw were on the whole excellent. We discussed them less than we could have, unfortunately--a handful of the kids weren’t inclined to pay attention and some thought the videos were boring. What alternate universe, I wrote at the time, do these kids live in that they think this is not a burden whose responsibility they bear, a literally trashed world which they will inherit?

Despite the distances we'd all traveled to get to Costa Rica, I had the impression that many of us hadn’t really left the US in terms of mentality, and were comfortable to apply with impunity the same rules and cultural framework that work for us back home. My group received a hefty dose of lectures for breaking or misusing things or for being messy or rude; part of me wanted to declare that collective punishment is a war crime and besides, it won't change the mindset of kids who clearly don't care how their actions reflect on the whole group, but partly I just felt aggravated and guilty, even though I wasn't involved in the incidents. The day we left, the mentors were not in the best of moods on account of our group having broken a bed as a final destructive coup de grace, but the perpetrators and others alike would only complain about the unfairness of how terrible and angry everyone was, since breaking the bed had been an accident. By the end of two weeks of having your careless behavior criticized, an ‘accident’ is no longer a good excuse. I hated the word disrespectful for years, thanks to its overuse by patronizing or hypocritical elementary school teachers, but that was honestly all that could be applied here. At the base level, we were really there to be helpful and respectful--by my aforementioned litmus test, we should have been trying to give back to the community at least as much as we were getting, and being culturally insensitive or just generally rude or careless means you risk sabotaging that fragile balance between a person who does good in the world and an obliviously detrimental "do-gooder." Actions that may feel insignificant aren’t. Your things, your actions, the very environment here--it's not disposable. Not that a comfortably affluent US suburb or what-have-you is disposable, but what might be a no-brainer or have little significance there has more of an impact here. You are not special, not exempt from the ways of the locals just because you're not one. You don't live here, but other people do. Respect that. Respect them.

Midway through the program, I was concerned that many of my fellow voluntourists wouldn’t take away anything much deeper than that they had fun here. The number of times I heard lines like “Honestly, I just don’t give a shit about [politics, community service]” or “I really don’t feel like protecting the Pacific today”--it makes me fear for my generation. If a program as impressive as this one, which I thought genuinely tried to conduct a voluntourism trip with authenticity and respect, still can’t open people’s eyes, are those eyes doomed to stay shuttered forever? I suppose that the people who are going to be real change makers and battle to mend what is wrong in the world won’t have needed to go on expensive exposure-and-help programs in order to learn how. There was a man interviewing people in the program about our voluntourism experiences, particularly the experiences of kids who already went on one of these programs, and it was a little disturbing to me how little they were inspired to try to effect change at home after their experiences. They may have--probably had--learned a lot and returned home more aware, but the work they'd done while on their trips didn't translate to activism at home. A greater understanding of the world does not equate to action. If not actual apathy, informed citizens can still wrap themselves in alarming inertia.

One of the most uplifting moments of the trip, however, came shortly after my consternation about its lack of lasting impact. Near the end of the program, the people from the voluntourism survey interviewed us in groups about what we'd learned and what we planned to do about it, and I found myself honestly impressed with the detail and depth of the responses--clearly the plastic-in-the-oceans videos and all did get through. Kids remembered specific phrases--‘gill nets,’ ‘bycatch’--and statistics. Cynically, I have to wonder how long this awareness and concern will last, but I am heartened that it surfaced at all, given how flippantly I had been writing people off as flitty and shallow. Just goes to show me--I judge too quickly sometimes, too pessimistically.

I resolved, again, that I could talk the talk all I like, but I had to keep up the concrete action after the trip ended--run beach cleanups or an ocean awareness club, or just involve myself more in local environmental activism. I can’t know what the other kids will take away as lasting lessons from this program, but on that last plane flight home, I scrawled furiously in my notebook, brimming with the energy and knowledge and appreciation and desperation I accrued in Costa Rica. I intend to use it. When I left, I said I will come back, but before I do, I have work to do in the here and the now. The future is terrifying, but the present is still a gift. It is.