Throughout the 14 years I spent in the public school system, I would attend assemblies every year with various representatives for Non-Government Organizations giving presentations on what they were doing to help, how they were helping and how we can help. This was usually them asking for donations. Then at the end of their presentation they would sometimes hand out envelopes and ask us to go around and ask our friends, families or neighbours for money for whatever cause they were trying to raise. One prominent group that I remember showing up was Right-To-Play, they supposedly went around various developing countries and Africa teaching kids how to play games. Even at a young age, I questioned how going to countries that are often suffering from drought, disease or war to teach kids how to play soccer or something would help them. If not assemblies, I would see posters for meetings held by various third-party groups, churches or special classes on information meetings on where they were going and what they would do to apparently help. As I would learn about voluntourism in Globalization 1A03, my doubts on these group made sense. Voluntourism is where Westerners travel to various countries around the globe, where they were told that they would help people by building schools, wells or teach English. This, however, can be quite destructive to these communities. These methods were not sustainable and communities become reliant on aid for outsiders, children of these communities end up having troubles establishing relationships from other from voluntourists making relationships with them and leaving, and very little communication happened between the two parties, so the communities may not be getting the help that they really need. While voluntourism has good intentions, it’s not sustainable or effective in the long run for communities.
