Wilma Smith leans on her shovel and surveys her morning’s progress. She’s
standing in what used to be the bedroom of a house. The setting — in coconut
groves looking on to a white-sand beach — is idyllic, but the building is a
heap of rubble, and the only indication that this used to be a bedroom is
the flattened bed frame that Wilma has just unearthed.
A cockroach scuttles off and Wilma flinches; she’s a flinty Scot and hard work
doesn’t faze her. But the wildlife does. “A cockroach ran up the outside of
my trouser leg the other day,” she recalls. “If it had been on the inside,
I’d have been on the first plane home.”
The plane home still beckons, because this 48-year-old Aberdonian is coming to
the end of her two-week stint as a tsunami-relief volunteer in Sri Lanka,
working with eight others aged between 18 and 50. For these nine women (one
American, eight British), based at Kosgoda, a beach village, the daily
routine has consisted of mornings of back-breaking rubble clearance, and
afternoons teaching English and maths in a nearby refugee camp.
The women are exhausted and exhilarated. Many have never been in the tropics
before. None has experience of volunteering, and it has not only tested
their physical strength but also their ability to come up with lesson plans
with no professional help.
Moreover, they have had to cope with a big culture shock in their living
conditions. Shared bedrooms, one grubby bathroom and an unrelenting diet of
curry and rice may not be everyone’s idea of a break, and yet this is what
two friends in the group describe as “a different type of holiday”.
These women are part of an emerging travel sector that sits somewhere between
international aid and the holiday business. Whether you call this new sector
responsible travel, meaningful travel, volunteer travel, or “voluntourism”,
it is catching on.
In the past, voluntary work overseas required useful qualifications and a
commitment of up to two years. Today you can “volunteer” all over the world
for as little as two weeks and with no credentials other than a willingness
to pay.
The organisations offering this pay-as-you-go voluntourism are usually
charitably motivated companies making a business out of channelling public
sympathy. Most have had an internet presence for a few years but they have
been given impetus by the Asian tsunami. Even in the UK, Community Service
Volunteers reported a 45 per cent increase in applications during 2005.
For i-to-i, the organisation hosting Wilma and her colleagues, Sri Lanka is
just one of a worldwide portfolio of projects. Last year it sent more than
500 voluntourists to this tropical island.
Little surprise, then, that the travel business is keen to share in this
emerging market. This year Wilma and colleagues could choose to return to
Sri Lanka with the tour operator Imaginative Traveller, having booked a
house-building experience through the operator’s new brochure, Imaginative
Volunteers. And in March the first of a new kind of travel exhibition
will be held. One Life will deal specifically in life-changing, holistic
holidays for people seeking challenges overseas.
But not every destination welcomes voluntourists. Five years ago the tour
operator Explore Worldwide initiated litter-picking-by-felucca trips on the
Nile. The trips were oversubscribed but had to be curtailed after complaints
from the Egyptian tourist office that the destination was being portrayed as
a Third World country.
The fact that this growth industry is an unregulated area makes governments
nervous. Arriving in Sri Lanka with a new set of volunteers, I began to see
why. It’s debatable as to who will need more looking after: the weary
victims or the innocent volunteers.
The briefing session is led in a beach bar on the outskirts of Colombo by a
former British police officer — one of i-to-i’s country managers. Ram is
full of cautions about dress code, behaviour, hygiene and not going out
alone at night. He tells me afterwards that some people in the past have
come expecting a Club 18-30 experience, and ended up upsetting the locals.
“Some are brilliant,” he says, “but others . . . ”
In the case of the nine women at Kosgoda, nobody could criticise their
dedication and cultural sensitivity, but there is an undercurrent of doubt
about whether they are really making a difference.
The women are working under Dudley Perrera, a genial local man who lost his
livelihood when his house and turtle visitor centre were swept away. Besides
running the volunteers’ homestay, he provides transport and accommodation
for extracurricular weekends exploring the island. He also decides where and
when to deploy the volunteers’ labour.
Herein lies part of the problem, because Kosgoda is on the outer fringes of
the damaged areas, where most of the clear-up is completed. As we travel
south, the need for help is clearly greater.
Ditto with the teaching in the refugee camp in the afternoons. The camp is
almost empty, and of the increasing numbers of children who attend the
session, many are coming from outside. There’s nobody to regulate whether
these students merit volunteer assistance, the sessions are unsupervised and
it is even up to the volunteers to buy their own materials.
And as time passes, the volunteers become more annoyed by the idea that they
are donating their labour and time while i-to-i is making money.
I put these concerns to i-to-i’s UK head office in Leeds. “We feel the project
location at Kosgoda is still valid,” says Sarah Horner, head of
communications. “There is work to be done there and we have had good reports
from volunteers. As for the teaching, this is something that we are looking
at.”
The money issue is more complex: “We have always made it plain that we are a
commercial organisation. We offer volunteer holidays and don’t claim to be
in aid distribution. The payment is for the support network, the security
blanket if something goes wrong, not for the volunteering itself.”
Ultimately, the value of unskilled voluntourists is not just in the work that
they do but also in the spending money they bring, which permeates stricken
areas more effectively than if they were on a package tour, staying at an
international hotel.
And finally, the experience gives voluntourists a sense of fulfilment that
they would never get lying on a beach. It allows the likes of Wilma to
return home feeling excited, exhilarated, compassionate and motivated — as
well as itchy, scratchy and desperately in need of a bath.
Need to know
Getting there: Andrew Eames travelled with SriLankan
Airlines (020-8538 20001). Return fares start at £520.
Volunteering: A volunteer fortnight in Sri Lanka on tsunami
relief with i-to-i (0800 0111156) costs
£795. This covers for airport pick-up, meals, insurance, accommodation,
insurance, in-country support and emergency cover. Flights areextra. Manual
labour may require extra insurance cover. There’s a comprehensive list of
voluntourism organisations, their projects and their destinations on the website
(click on‘Gap Year Abroad’ and then‘Volunteering’). And a discussion page on
some of the issues on Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree
Choosing your trip
Justin Francis, of the online travel agency Responsible Travel, has this
advice:
Be sure that there is a need for volunteers. Some companies run programmes
that they know will get bookings, despite the need being greater elsewhere.
Ask for research reports to prove how efficient the programme has been.
Ensure that the project is run and managed in conjunction with locals.
Contacts: www.responsibletravel.com; www.gap-year.com;
www.tsunamivolunteer.net; the Imaginative Traveller (0800 3162717,
www.imaginative-traveller.com); Go Differently (01799 521950,
www.godifferently.com); Global Vision International (0870 6088898,
www.gvi.co.uk).
Alternatives: The Adventure Company (0870 7941009,
www.adventurecompany.co.uk) combines a few days’ volunteering with trekking
or sightseeing. The Different Travel Company (02380 669961,
www.different-travel.com) uses at least three-star accommodation.
Check the volunteering website People
and Places.
