The PEPY Team Journal

A Skeptical Look at Voluntourism

03.11.09

The South China Morning Post recently featured an article about voluntourism claiming "Combining volunteer work with travel can be enriching but there are caveats". This article includes quotes from us at PEPY Tours, some other friends of ours working voluntourism and development. We think it's worth a read so we copied it here for you all below.

From the South China Morning Post:

Take the higher road

Combining volunteer work with travel can be enriching but there are caveats

Nick Walton
Oct 30, 2009

Earlier this year, would-be teacher Candy Soo Suan Chiew spent a week of her holiday in Brazil tutoring slum children in English. Keen to get more out of her trip by doing volunteer work, she surfed the internet and found the Two Brothers Foundation, a non-profit group running educational programmes in Rocinha, the largest favela in Rio de Janeiro.

The 26-year-old signed up for a week, to lend a hand with scheduled activities including dance and English classes and to help to organise the foundation's library of donated books.

"This experience was more rewarding because I interacted with local children and it allowed me to see what life in Rocinha is like," Soo says.

An increasing number of travellers are combining their holiday plans with volunteer work. In response, travel agencies, hotels and non-profit groups now offer a range of "voluntourism" options.

However, the boom has also stirred considerable debate among travellers and within the NGO community.

VolTra is among the most recent entrants in the field. Set up by eight Hongkongers in June, it gives travellers on a tight schedule a chance to join short work camps that help communities abroad in areas such as environmental protection and agriculture. Applicants have access to more than 3,000 such camps through VolTra's partnership with the Network for Voluntary Development in Asia (NVDA), an alliance of 22 NGOs.

Ten people have been accepted; each will pay a HK$1,750 fee in addition to their airfares and insurance. About 70 per cent of the fee goes to NVDA to fund the work camps, while the remainder is used to support VolTra, including its efforts to organise similar camps in Hong Kong.

"Work camps are an inspiring experience worth sharing," says VolTra chairman Bird Tang Wai-wing. "My time [volunteering in Mongolia] had a huge impact on me and widened my horizons."

Lynsey Devon, of voluntourism operator Imaginative Traveller, says volunteering used to be reserved for people with plenty of time, but now "there is increased opportunity for clients to book shorter breaks, sandwiching a volunteer programme with a holiday".

"The tours are easy for people to get involved with as there are no specific skills involved and, of course, there is a feel-good factor involved," says Devon, citing examples such as feeding and playing with pandas at a conservation centre on the mainland, and caring for rescued leopards, lions and cheetahs at a Namibian game reserve.

Hotels are also getting in on the act. The Ritz-Carlton group, for instance, began organising Give Back Getaways as guests increasingly inquired about opportunities to volunteer.

Sue Stephenson, vice-president of group's Community Footprints initiative, cites successful pilot schemes rescuing sea turtle eggs in Cancun, and in post-hurricane construction in New Orleans. This kind of involvement undoubtedly adds depth to guests' visits, she says.

Travellers may benefit from the volunteer experience, but what about the communities they're meant to be helping?

David Clemmons, founder of Voluntourism.org, a website covering the fast-growing travel sector, reckons the responsibility rests with host NGOs to ensure both local communities and visitors gain from the process. The benefits of voluntourism are in direct proportion to how well the group co-ordinates with locals, he says.

Saundra Schimmelpfennig, a former director of the Thailand-based Disaster Tracking Recovery Assistance Centre which monitored the work of more than 200 aid groups in the country after the 2004 tsunami, urges caution when signing up for such schemes.

"There are a lot of groups that develop voluntourism projects not because there is a real need for the aid they are providing or because it's the best way to meet the actual need, but because they are attractive to donors," says Schimmelpfennig, who writes a blog on the impact of aid called Good Intentions Are Not Enough.

"Many people promote voluntourism as a way of learning about the world, but there are other ways to do that."

Eco-tourism and language-immersion schemes, for instance, allow locals to earn a living as guides and teachers rather than accept foreign largesse, she says.

Although Daniela Papi runs a voluntourism organisation in Cambodia called PEPY (Protect the Earth, Protect Yourself), she says hosting a volunteer, skilled or not, can take time away from an organisation's core mission.

Learning from its mistakes, PEPY, an educational NGO funded partly through adventure and volunteer tours, makes it clear that guests are paying a fee for a facilitated visit and donating money to ensure that the projects they see are maintained by local people.

Papi says the impact a tourist volunteer makes depends on how the programme is designed and whether visitors can be integrated into ongoing work without disrupting the long-term goals of a project.

The problem is the goal of making money often overtakes that of responsibly supporting development and operators start selling tours without a thought for the latter, she says.

Cambodia is awash with organisations where visitors can "volunteer" with or without payment, Papi says, and some take away much more than they give.

Cate Downman, an English-language teacher based in Seoul, regularly volunteers with small non-fee charging groups that need help or donations.

In Siem Reap, she helped an orphanage called the Cambodian Poor Children's Support Organisation, which houses 25 children aged between three and 16 and relies on donations from volunteers. "I taught the children basic English and have since been donating funds and helping out via the Web."

But some volunteers offer only time and skills and nothing else, leaving the organisation obligated to house and feed them, taking money and resources away from charitable uses, Downman says.

Even when volunteers are donating funds or materials, Papi takes issue with orphanages that encourage visitors to "teach English" for a few weeks or months. This exposes children to a disruptive succession of strangers, sometimes unskilled and unsupervised, she says.

These orphanages wind up investing more time with visitors who bring in money instead of seeking other funding streams to employ a local teacher who can give the children the required continuity in the classroom, Papi says.

Schimmelpfennig is particularly disturbed by what she sees as a trend of "hug-an-orphan" vacations.

"Although foreign volunteers may feel that spending their time playing and interacting with orphans is a great way to give back, in the long run it may do more harm than good."

The children need a stable home and a continuous relationship with their caregivers, and an orphanage that regularly allows strangers to interact with children is doing the opposite, she says. "While some volunteers may continue to correspond with the orphanage after they leave, few are willing or able to maintain a stable emotional bond with the children."

Despite such scepticism, VolTra marketing director Helen Kwok defends its short trips, which average 14 days, as meaningful contributions. "Work-campers contribute to the community so as to gain friendship, inspiration and an extraordinary experience. A programme's length does not necessarily affect its quality."

Dave Aabo, founder of Waves for Development, a group that encourages visitors who come to Lobitos in northern Peru for surfing to help teach English, business skills and environmental awareness, agrees. "The Waves educational surf programmes are ongoing. This means before volunteers arrive and after they leave, the local youth are still benefiting.

"The cultural exchange, diverse background and specific skills offered by each volunteer are unique and beneficial when appropriately leveraged," Aabo says.

Schimmelpfennig suggests that it's generally better if volunteers are tapped when they have skills to fulfil a need the local people can't meet, and even then the scheme should aim to build the capacity of the community to do things for themselves.

For instance, if a charity wants to increase local knowledge of environmental principles, it would be more sustainable if locals were trained and then paid to teach it themselves rather than bring in a stream of volunteers, she says.

No system is perfect, but Papi urges consumers and voluntourism operators to educate themselves about effective development practices, and to start asking questions and demanding responsible volunteer opportunities.

Voluntourism checklist

Daniela Papi, co-founder of PEPY, an educational NGO based in Cambodia, suggests some questions travellers should ask before signing up for a voluntourism scheme:

Is the travel company transparent about how much of your tour fee is going to the programmes you are supporting? Is their marketing consistent with the itinerary offered? A tour company can be responsible even if none of the funding goes to support projects, as long as they make it clear from the start and the programme is designed responsibly.
How does the travel company choose the programmes it supports? How is your time and any additional support offered by the company allocated and what monitoring do they do on the impact of these programmes? How is the local community or NGO partner involved in the planning?
Is the programme designed to help empower people to be able to improve their own lives, or is it just a band-aid for a larger problem? Is community ownership built into the project plan?
Beyond volunteer interaction and donations, how does the voluntourism operator choose its hotel or travel partners and how do they work together to support the local economy and improve the overall impact of their tours?

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PEPY on the Impact of NGO's and Voluntourism

28.10.09

PEPY Journal

Adventure couple Dave and Deb have climbed, paddled, hiked and biked their way through 5 continents. As they discover the world, their goal is to teach the world about other cultures and raise awareness of social issues and how globalization is affecting traditional ways of life. This month, they have connected with PEPY founder Daniela Papi to talk about the impact of NGO's and Voluntourism.

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You Are Brilliant and the Earth is Hiring!

28.10.09

PEPY Journal

Lacking some inspiration in your life? Read this amazing speech delivered by Paul Hawken during his commencement address at the University of Portland.

"When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food, but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

Disclosure: Our Bike-to-School Program is NOT “Sustainable”

27.10.09

Some people have asked us if our Bike-to-School Program is “sustainable." Clearly, the answer is no! The program will not be continued once we leave, so why did we start it? Is it causing more harm than good? What are the plans moving forward?

Read on to learn why we started this program, why we are continuing it for a bit longer, and how we plan to improve it into something we believe in even more.

Our hope is to find the time to write out these program analysis for more programs in the future, so keep on the lookout!

PEPY's Program: Bike-to-School Program

Program Overview: PEPY provides bicycles to students who are graduating from 6th grade as an incentive for parents to allow their children to stay in school through this point and to provide a means of accessing secondary school. Students must also attend monthly PEPY workshops as well as complete the government's final exam which allows students to enroll in grade 7. If there are students who attend school and the PEPY programs but do not pass the test, PEPY funds a teacher to be a tutor for the summer and the government allows them to retake the test.

Stopping, Continuing, or Redeveloping: Redeveloping

Internal Program Rating: This program is most likely our least sustainable program, both in the community’s ability to continue the program when PEPY eventually leaves the area and in the program’s ability to improve the capacity of the local community to solve their own problems.

Problem: In the areas where we work, most families have only one or more bicycles and the wealthier families have a motorbike. There are two families within the center of Chanleas Dai that have a truck. As many families have only one bike, the parents often need to take the bike to get into the fields. With an average of XXXXX (MARYANN IS THIS SOMETHING YOU KNOW THE ANSWER TO? IF NOT – CAN WE SAY AN ESTIMATED AVERAGE OF 5 CHILDREN?) children, there is sometimes a need for different kids to go to different schools based on their grade. When students go to primary school, it is typically either only in the morning or only in the evening. When they move on to grade 7 in the lower secondary school, students typically need a bike dedicated just to them as they have to be in school for the full day. A bicycle can be about 2x the monthly income of a family living in Chanleas Dai. Broken bicycles or the lack of a bicycle is often the reason given by students who have dropped out of school or have taken a long break.

Program Goals: Increased attendance. Increased duration of education. Increased enrollment in and completion of both primary school and lower secondary school.

Some Factors Considered Before Implementation: We considered the fact that families might sell the bikes or use them for purposes other than sending their kids to school. As primary school completion -- which earns the student the bike -- is one of the program goals, the program will still be deemed successful even if the bike is used for other purposes, as having the child finish grade 6 is a higher level of education than over 50% of people in the commune will achieve. We considered the impact on the local economy; there are no bike shops in the commune, but there are at least two in the nearest town on the main road in the district. We considered buying the bikes from there, but the quality was much lower than those in the city. This is something we can and should revisit for the final years of BTSP implementation. We considered the fact that children and families might move to this village to be able to qualify for this program. As we have seen this already on a small scale, we are changing this program for its final two years to the junior high school, as this will diminish this problem in part. (see below)

Alternatives: Nearly every NGO working in government primary school education in Cambodia has some sort of “scholarship program”. The government even took over one of those programs this year, which is a big step for the sustainability of this type of program. Most of these scholarship programs include these components:

a bicycle
non-formal “fees” paid directly to teachers (these are fees the teacher charges for “extra classes” or to be allowed to take a test and anyone who doesn’t pay them isn’t able to pass. In this way, “free” Cambodian public school is not really free at all.)
a uniform
school materials
some of the more damaging programs also pay parents to allow their kids to stay in school

As other PEPY programs provide for uniforms/school materials and PEPY’s Teacher Award Program removes the non-formal fees, PEPY is in effect providing a scholarship opportunity to all students willing to stay in school. Another issue we have seen in the area, is the lack of transparency available for these NGO groups to choose the right recipients and from what we have seen, they often do not. By making the program accessible to all, motivation becomes a determinant, but we recognize it also means that kids in lower grades who would be in need of such support are not able to access it.

Another alternative is to focus on connecting the community to job opportunities requiring education. By making education more valued in the community by drawing direct correlations between increased education and the ability to access higher paying jobs, incentive programs will not be necessary as the incentive will be in the value of the education itself. We very much agree with this, and we are currently pursuing this avenue as well, connecting the community to scholarship programs alternate jobs, hiring local staff to manage PEPY programs, and looking for partners to help bring industry and additional jobs into the local areas.

Success: Since the program started, we have seen nearly 1000% increase in 7th grade completion in the community due in part to the BTSP. There are other factors as well, and we are working to strengthen those factors and phase out the less sustainable BTSP, but in the meantime, we believe it is part of the reason Chanleas Dai’s secondary school has over double the amount of students staying on through secondary school than projected by local government officials.

Future Plans: When we started this program, we committed to it for a 6 year period and we have done the program for four years. We will continue to run this program for two more years, but are changing it to a JHS based program rather than a primary school program. The difference is slight, but now that we are working more with the JHS, we find it more equitable to provide bikes to all entering 7th graders who can keep the bike for perpetuity as their own once they complete grade 7 rather than providing the bike to only one primary school’s 6th grade.

The main way we are improving this program is by phasing it out and replacing it with our Bike Repair Clubs. These clubs will provide skills (both technical skills and leadership opportunities) for JHS students who will then work in small groups to repair bikes in their own school as well as surrounding primary schools. This means that students of all ages who are registered in school can benefit from having their bike repaired. It will also involve a mico-lending aspect. If students do not have the $1.50 needed to buy a new bike tube, then they will be able to put $0.13 down each week until they pay it back. One of the problems we were trying to address with the BTSP in the first place was that students would drop out of school if they didn’t have the funds to repair the broken bikes. In this way, the family does not need to wait until they have saved up to fix their child’s bike but can instead opt to pay back for the repair step by step while their child is still able to attend school. Plus, we can support kids in the lower grades where the highest drop-out rates typically are seen.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on our analysis of this program’s “sustainability”. We hope to find the time to do more program analysis like this one, so keep checking back!

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Reminder: If any of YOU, who are reading this post, have traveled with us, or are interested in development, have any questions about our work/decisions or have ideas for how we can further improve our work, we’d be happy to hear them. Feel free to write us an email or add comments/questions below. Remember, KEEN will provide a pair of their fabulous socks each month to someone who writes a comment on our Team Journal! Help us generate more discussions on these topics we feel passionate about, share your ideas to help make us a better organization, and have a chance to have cool socks to keep your feet warm this winter! Or, come help us do all of these things IN Cambodia (where you won’t need the socks anyway, but might want their sandals!)

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Is “Sustainability” Development’s Atlantis?

27.10.09

PEPY Journal

By: Daniela Papi, Executive Director

What is this “sustainability” you speak of? I do not think it means what you think it means. This word is used so often now in development that it seems to have taken on a huge range of meanings. Are we all spending too much time looking for an imaginary lost city and too little time focusing on other goals that increase the impact of our programs? Has “sustainability” turned into the Holy Grail of development -- promising that once you find it, your program can live forever? And perhaps the most important questions are, how is sustainability even possible and should it always be our goal?

Like any overused word, the answer to these questions depends largely on how we define it. “Financial sustainability” is something people involved in any type of business can understand. A business can be financially sustainable if the money coming in is equal to or higher than the money going out, and if the timing of those transactions matches up to allow the group to continue operating. By this definition, sustainability would be the same for an NGO’s micro-loan program as it would for a Swiss bank.

“Financial sustainability” focuses on one variable -- money -- so it is easier to measure than sustainability in NGOs. Merely taking into account financial factors in order to rate an NGO’s overall sustainability is too limiting. Likewise, rating NGOs only by looking at their overhead to program budget is not a successful way to rank the “best” NGOs. Both of these disregard the main reason NGOs (should) have been started in the first place: the “impact” of their work. (Note: For further disucssion of financial sustainability and how this relates to social ventures check out this posting).

For our own purposes of understanding the impact of our programs at PEPY and creating future plans of action, we needed to do two things: 1) decide how to measure the “sustainability” of our programs, and 2) decide if/when “sustainability” defined as such should indeed be a main goal for each program we offer.

In order to facilitate this discussion with our staff, I drew this diagram on the wall to help us rank and measure the “sustainability” of each program. It looks at two factors: financial sustainability as a factor of program cost and local purchasing power, and impact continuity as a factor of human capacity building. The latter is implemented with regards to the skills, knowledge, connections and ideas invested in people and systems in the area in order to be better equipped to tackle problems.

Note: We picked Human Capacity Building as our impact assessment factor alongside the financial factor, as we would like PEPY’s future programs to be focused on changing human attitudes and actions rather than improving access to material needs. If we were working on programs in disaster relief, programs aimed at providing infrastructure, or were working to give “things” to people to improve their livelihoods, the two factors might have been 1) money needed for upkeep of the items and 2) the ability for those items to increase the potential for greater resource access in the future. The thought process, however, would remain the same. Social ventures and non-profits are different than companies because the goals are not primarily profit-driven. In order to measure sustainability we must look at both factors: financial sustainability and the other areas of impact in which we are looking to effect change.

human capacity building, relative cost to beneficiaries

The first line measures human capacity building. On the far left, there is little to no investment in the skills, abilities or knowledge of the local consumers. On the far right, the people affected by the program have increased abilities, skills and knowledge due to the program. The acquired skills would be applicable for solving similar problems on their own in the future.

The second line measures the cost to the communities the program is meant to support. On the far right, programs require significant external resources. The local communities (be those governments, villages or NGO partners) involved cannot afford these programs on their own. On the far left, the costs are very low and might be deemed “affordable” both in time and money costs by local consumers of the product/service/idea.

How do we use this at PEPY?

We set two goals for PEPY’s programs as means for us to rate, adjust and design our current and future programs. We made our first goal a high level of human capacity building, as the impact of the program would be sustained through the people affected . This would occur even if the program were not financially sustainable. The second goal was to develop programs with very little financial costs that might continue after PEPY leaves.

We pretended that PEPY was ending all programs in three years. If that were to happen, we looked at what might happen to each of our programs. We rated each program along these two lines and decided if they had the potential to:

Be financially sustainable without PEPY (i.e. monthly teacher meetings of teachers from each grade might continue even after PEPY stopped coordinating the dates)
Create a lasting impact via human capacity building that will continue after the program ends (i.e. PEPY-sponsored weekly teacher training sessions from paid experts would stop, but the ability of teachers to be better at their jobs would continue)
Provide access to physical resources but have little impact on increasing skills, knowledge, or positive changes in actions

After evaluating each program, we decided to focus our future goals on programs that fell into groups i and ii and either stop or redesign any programs that fell into category iii.

Program Potential

program potential

We then looked at the extremes of the combinations of low/high costs and low/high human capacity building and came up with these combinations:

Option A: The program is not financially sustainable nor is the impact of the program improving the capacity of people to solve similar problems on their own.

Costs = High
Human Capacity Building = Low

Costs (financial or time) in this category are typically higher than people can afford. This is because the item/service is not valued as much, or the ”giving problem” has already taken root: people are waiting for the item or program to be provided to them for free rather than spending their own money or time on these items or services. It is likely that one or more of these things are true. It could also be assumed that the community would have found a way to purchase the good/service on their own. These programs provide little to no improvements in human capacity, effect little to no improvement in the ability of communities to tackle similar problems on their own in the future, and the costs are too high for the programs to be continued by the programs' constituents once the NGO stops.

Programs that might fall into this category: Disaster relief item distribution, building schools or other buildings, giving away books/school materials/food/wells, and PEPY’s Bike-to-School Program (click here for our analysis of the sustainability of this program) (LINK TO THE SEPARATE ARTICLE ON THE BTSP)

Option B: Financial sustainability possible but little human development.

Costs = Low
Human Capacity Building = Low

Programs in this category with a low human capacity building factor typically involve providing things or services for free or at a very low cost. If the item/service is being sold at actual market costs, then this seems like a perfect opportunity for sustainability. Local business people learn how to make/offer this service, their costs of entry into the market are low and the products are affordable to the target market. If the items are being sold at lower than their actual costs -- especially if these things are done with an item or service that already has a low cost to the community -- this program might destroy the local economy in this field and discourage others to provide this on their own.

Programs that might fall into this category: PEPY’s water filter sales program, micro-finance programs that provide loans but not training and human development around the topic, etc.

Option C: The impact of the programs is sustainable.

Costs = High
Human Capacity Building = High

The program costs are likely too high for the community to continue the same action on their own, but the ability of the people involved in the local system to complete their job roles or to solve similar future problems on their own is increased. These programs cause improvements in human capacity and will make future actions more successful, even if the NGO programs stop.

Programs that might fall into this category: Resource intensive trainings, study-trips, supplemental education programs.

Option D: The program can be sustained without outside support and increases capacity within the people and systems left behind once the program finishes.

Costs = Low
Human Capacity Building = High

The program costs are low and the idea or concept being introduced is something that, after training and integration into the communities’ practices, can be continued by the constituents it is meant to support. These programs cause improvements in human capacity and the ability of the people affected to continue the programs on their own. They make future actions more successful, even if the NGO program stops.

Programs that might fall into this category: education and training courses that people are willing to pay the full value of, trainings or planned learning sessions that involve collaboration and the creation of systems but do not cost money, true social ventures, which focus on human development.

sustainability, impact, change

This does not mean that we don’t think school buildings are necessary, nor does it mean we will never construct a school building again. Instead, it means that we want to focus on human capacity building. We recognize that in order to have the most impact towards achieving our goals of making sure that high quality education is accessible in rural Cambodia, we need to focus on building up the skills and systems that provide that education.

If we follow this path, “sustainability” will come to us in two forms once PEPY stops: programs that can continue operating without NGO support, and programs that empower people to continue to make those changes themselves. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this!

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