To go, or not to go......?

I visit Uganda as a volunteer, but it seems to me that ‘volunteering abroad’ can have very different meanings.  And…. sometimes I’m challenged to justify spending money visiting a project rather than on the project itself.  If it costs trip fees plus funds to say, run a children’s camp, how do we know the local team couldn’t have found better use for that money investing it in local projects? 

Maybe the biggest problem is the difficulty in assessing the value of volunteer projects – how do you measure them? 

Is a camp judged ‘successful’ or ‘worthwhile’ if the children seem to enjoy it?

Or if the local staff say it is? 

Or if it means 160 children have good food for a week? 

What about less concrete outcomes of a foreign visit like communicating esteem or increasing international understanding? 

Do the parents have a say? Maybe its harvest time and the children are needed at home, or there’s a new classroom needed at a school or toilets, or a community garden, or more local staff to run a project…Lots of volunteer trips involve building or renovating.  Once I ‘helped’ paint a classroom.  I’m sure the local people repainted it after we left. They were perfectly capable of doing it themselves – and much better!  

How many times have you been asked to sponsor someone for a volunteer trip only to discover at least 75% of the money goes on funding trip costs?  

In 2008 we took a play parachute and helped local staff learn ways to use it. In 2015 it comes out most weekends for a community children’s club and goes to schools. Games have evolved to be ‘more Ugandan’ and it’s used for Bible studies and counselling.  Children’s eyes lit up when it appeared this year and it brought squeals of laughter.  Sometimes simple things make a trip ‘worthwhile’. In a culture where adults and children don’t have time to play together, I think that parachute has made a difference.  

At the request of local staff at different projects, the 4^th one went out this year (thanks Rachelle).

Actually I also have a different attitude if I think a trip will be potentially life-changing for the volunteer. After all, spending 2 weeks in Uganda 7 years ago took my life on a very different course, helping me understand the value of child sponsorship and of supporting local staff in sustainable community partnership projects.

The Internet provides seemingly hundreds of opportunities, not only for volunteering abroad, but also for ‘ethical volunteering’.  I think my thoughts align to some extent with the http://www.ethicalvolunteering.org/ guide.  Even better, the Global Care trips I’ve been on provided information and suitable answers to the guide’s 7 questions for volunteers.  Global Care works with local staff to identify suitable volunteer projects aimed at supporting sustainable projects.  We had good trip briefings, knew what was expected of us, and there was clarity about our own expenses - which were separated from camp costs.

However, I hope my love of Uganda and the people I’ve met, for the children we’ve sponsored over the years and for the staff who work with them, will never cloud my judgement.  I hope I’ll always ask ‘is this the right way to spend our money?’… and I’ll hope the answer will be ‘yes’!!