I would quite cheerfully, never write another blog post about short-term mission; it’s a subject that we’ve covered fairly regularly over the years and I keep thinking that there is nothing new to add on the subject.
How wrong can I be?
J. the author of the excellent Missionary, Mercenary, Mystic, Misfit, has just written a blistering blog post about short-term volunteers in the aid and development world. I don’t think everything he says is immediately transferable to the Christian mission world, but much of it is very, very relevant. I’ll put a few highlights here with some of my own comments, but I strongly urge you to go and read the whole article along with the comments.
From the start of his post, J. doesn’t leave us in any doubts about his thoughts:
Let’s not split semantic hairs. I don’t care what the title, designation, or salary package is. I’m against untrained, unqualified people dropping in for a few days/weeks/months to have an adventure or have a “good experience” while making some nebulous contribution to some alleged greater good.
Aid and development are professions, not hobbies. It takes specific knowledge, skill and experience to get this right. Aid is hard and complicated–getting it right is tough, even for professionals. If the point is helping for real, then leave that helping to those who know what they’re doing. The continued fixation on volunteers (or unqualified people with some other title traipsing around the field) speaks to a fundamental lack of respect for aid and development as actual professions.
I will probably return to this at some point in the future; but cross-cultural communication of the Gospel is also very complicated. It concerns me that an increasing number of people are heading into cross-cultural mission (both short and long term) with very little training or orientation. We have accumulated hundreds of years of experience in this sort of work; it seems highly irresponsible that people would not wish to learn from that.
Yes, but the local people really liked our volunteers! This is a common one. Local people the world over are hospitable nice to outsiders. Just because volunteer aid workers won’t get sued for malpractice or driven from the field in the dead of night by angry villagers with torches and pitchforks doesn’t mean they are either effective or appreciated. You have to get past the smiles and look at the evidence of what gets accomplished for real.
This one rings so true. Hospitable people will make you feel welcome, it’s what they do.
But surely there is something volunteers can do? Grunt labor, maybe? The dirty work? In more than two decades of humanitarian aid and development work, I cannot recall a single real-world instance where it really made more sense to bring international volunteers than to simply hire local people.
This doesn’t just apply to ‘grunt-work’. I know of well trained Christian professionals in African cities who find it difficult to get work because they are priced out of the market by volunteers from abroad who will come and do their jobs for nothing.
One area in which the aid and development industry is much stronger than most Christian mission work is in the area of measuring impact. They are generally much better equipped than we are to demonstrate the effectiveness of their programmes and to assess the impact of short-term volunteers.
These issues should not be avoided when we consider short-term mission (though all too often, they are). This doesn’t mean that we should stop short-term work, but it does mean that we need to do it well and we need to do it responsibly.
24 replies on “Issues with Voluntourism”
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Some good points here Eddie but isn’t there a fundamental difference between mission work and secular development? Namely that we are merely servants of the most High God and therefore, in some senses, we are not professionals either.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I agree with the description of first world idiots blundering in, ignoring all the expertise around them, and yet thinking they are making a difference. Most voluntary work should be called what it is – a holiday. However, in my (not so) humble opinion the benefit of short-term mission work has never really been to the country visited. I have never thought there is much / any net contribution. The benefit is almost entirely to those who go – thrown into the deep end and forced to trust in God rather than their professional expertise.
HI John, Yes, I do agree that there is a difference between mission work and secular development, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn lessons from each other. As I said in my post, I don’t think we should stop all short term mission work, but I do think we need to constantly be challenged to do it better.
The original post that I linked to commented on the issue that short term trips are mainly for the benefit of the person doing the trip, rather than for the people doing the receiving; but Jamie said it rather better, if more controversially!.
Fair call Eddie – you got me – I hadn’t read the original article, only your one.
I usually leave reading the original article to the professionals.
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the problem is our culture. I had a sauna recently with some friends and we were discussing the pros and cons of allowing people to come her with, say, just half of the required, recommended, and useful training they may need. We were all “baby boomers”, and therefore, apart from me, every one of my colleagues thought is vital to have “pre-loaded” training. So, particualrly the German speakers were all (again, apart from me) in favour of a home country based “apprenticeship”. However, our culture now is all for “let’s try and see”. Now there is NOT the expectation (unlike all the “baby boomers” I chatted with) that you finish your career, or your life’s work in the same job, profession, calling as the one you started off with. So, society’s “answer” is what I would call “taking a short dip”. Just to get the feel of things. To a certain extend (and I do NOT want this to be seen as a criticisim, more of an observation) churches, Christians encourage this: we say “You need to go with where the Spirit leads”, rather than: “This is the work that God has given you, and you ought to try it for a considerable time, or until that becomes impossible”.
Interesting. One major issue we have had is with people who come in with no training or cultural orientation who create major issues. We had one group that was not associated with us at all but staying in our guesthouse. They had zero prep and we found out that they had 1) No info about malaria prophylaxis or treatments. and 2) had this wacky idea of doing a) coed volleyball as a “ministry” in a village setting – can’t think of anything less appropriate and b) doing medical work – though they were all college students and not premed, nor did they speak the language.
ah… I did not get into that, either: the other part of the culture we are in, and are influenced by: “I want it NOW.” Don’t start me on that one.
Jens H Meyer liked this on Facebook.
Interesting reading. I have often expressed the desire to go on mission, specifically in East Africa, heard much about short mission trips in various churches and know that if I went I would want to stay. However, despite much encouragement from those who have been or run such things, I have held back simply because I don’t think I have the resources to do what needs to be done. To commit to something is a serious business in my mind, and if you are not wholehearted and fully prepared to put your all into such things, then stay away. Having said that, I do know that there are some who go and go again and again and have done some amazing things…their commitment is to that particular area and although not there 24/7 support throughout the year through contact, prayer and aid.
When I organized short-term Transform Teams as a partnership between Wycliffe UK and Tearfund I had no expectation that the teams would do anything useful while they were there. The goal was to turn those short-term voluntourists into lifelong prayers, givers and goers. It’s now a decade later. Maybe it’s time to evaluate how successful we were.
Dave, that’s an interesting example… It would be good to have some way to measure how successful that kind of short-term visit is. I suspect it depends a lot on how the participants are recruited, and what kind of follow-up is done…
Dave, there is also the moral question which is raised in the original article about how legitimate it is for us to use the experiences of poor people to enrich the lives of rich ones. Even if it were successful, we would also need to ask whether or not it was appropriate.
I haven’t read the article but your phrase “use the experiences of poor people” makes me wonder where the dividing line lies between serving poor people and using them.
I would agree that short-term mission is of more SHORT-TERM use to the person going than the community they go to, but I know of several people whose ‘short-term’ trip has ended up with them going home for training & then returning for years or even decades. Also, if short-termers come home inspired by mission and spend the rest of their lives praying, giving and encouraging others to support mission, their ‘short-term’ trip could have a fairly long-term impact!
That issue is a huge one in the mission world at the moment, Dave.
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I’m getting back to blogging after a break. This might give you something to think about re. short-term mission trips http://t.co/uIZDpoLmGH
RT @kouya: I’m getting back to blogging after a break. This might give you something to think about re. short-term mission trips http://t.c…
Yes we all need each other…. and serving each other in love… Its not from here to there its from everywhere to everywhere!
Betty JoAnne Wilder liked this on Facebook.