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Corporate Social Responsibility – Volunteerism or Voluntourism?

Charity organizations need volunteers to sustain their efforts. The life-blood of charity organizations are its donors and its volunteers.

However, with the advent of convenient and affordable travel a new breed of volunteers have emerged – who are more volun-tourists rather than volunteers.

What is the essential difference between a volunteer and a volun-tourist?

A volunteer’s main desire is to help the needy.

A tourist’s main desire is to see and experience something new.

A real volunteer often sees and experiences something new but this is not his primary reason for helping. It is a bonus.

A volun-tourist is excited before his trip, during his trip and shortly after his trip (when he is recounting his experiences).

A real volunteer is excited before his trip, during his trip, shortly after his trip (when he is recounting his experiences) AND long after the trip as he remembers the needs of the people whom he has met on his trip. He realizes that what he did on his trip was really “a drop in the ocean” and that the trip was more “an eye-opener” that helped him to see how he could continue to help these poor people.

A real volunteer desires to continue helping these poor people by telling others of their needs, collecting clothes or books for them, sending funds to help them. His desire to help them did not end when the excitement of the trip ended.

A real volunteer wants to help in whatever way he can – whether on the trip or after.

Are you a real volunteer?

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Corporate Social Responsibility – sending company staff to visit the poor

In the last few years, there has been an increase in corporate social responsibility. More companies are sending their staff to visit and help the poor. This is good. However, before staff members are sent on such trips, it might be good to prepare them with some of the following advice:

1.Ignorance may insult

It is good to find out a little more about the recipient group before deciding to hand out freebies to them. For example, a well-meaning group of people went to help teach English to some teenagers in a poor country. These teenagers were poor in English but were not poor.

The group brought some cheap gifts and made the teenagers fight over these cheap gifts. Needless to say, the teenagers were insulted and were not receptive to the English training.

2.Help may hurt

It is common for company staff to go to a poor community and help build some infrastructure (eg. classroom). The well-intentioned team diligently goes about their job while the whole village watches them. The villagers are usually not allowed to help or even to touch the tools of the team. Though the village has now received a new classroom, the villagers have been made to feel “useless” and “untrustworthy” to even touch the tools.

3.Foreign help is often not sustainable.

The classroom that the foreigners built will eventually need repairs. However, as the locals did not have a hand in it, they do not feel a sense of ownership of the classroom. Often such projects quickly fall into disrepair – as the locals wait for the foreigners to return to repair it. Charity work must be sustainable.

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Invisible Asian urban communities!

All over Asia there are invisible communities. Some make themselves “invisible” because they don’t want to be bullied by stronger communities. This is one of the reasons why many of the so-called hill-tribes in Asia choose to live in the less hospitable hills away from the populated plains. Some others make themselves “invisible” because they aren’t supposed to be there in the first place. These are the illegal migrants. Others are “invisible” only because we locals don’t want to acknowledge their presence.

In large Asian cities, such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong, there are hundreds of thousands of legal and illegal foreigners. On work-days they are usually spread out throughout the city wherever there is work to be done. On the weekends (especially on Sunday) they gather in their unofficially designated parts of the city to meet their fellow-countrymen, eat their favourite foods, buy dvd’s in their language, remit their money, share information about job opportunities, etc. Though these “foreign enclaves” are usually within the busiest parts of the city, and are bustling with thousands of foreign-looking people busily cramming a week’s activities into a few hours, these communities are effectively “invisible” to the locals.

Several months ago I brought a local Kuala Lumpur resident to visit a community center that we run for migrants in the heart of Kuala Lumpur. We parked the car several blocks from the center and walked to the center. As we were walking through the throngs of foreigners, he kept remarking “Wow! I didn’t know there are so many foreigners in KL!!” As a matter of fact, he had never, ever been to that part of KL!

When we finally arrived at our Goducate community center he was shocked to see so many foreigners in it. His remark “This is AMAZING!” To me the amazing part is that tens of thousands of foreigners in the busiest part of a city are usually invisible to the locals.

The likeliest reason for their “invisibility” to us locals is that we don’t really want to know them. We see them constantly around us around our homes and workplaces doing useful work. We know that they are necessary to our lives and economy. But we really don’t want to know more than this because to do so will uncover too many problems that they face.

But Goducate wants to know more about the problems that they face. And in its own little way Goducate wants to help them.

Yes, these invisible urban Asian communities of Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Nepalis, Ibans, Myanmese, Vietnamese, Indonesians, Filipinos, etc. desperately need help!