I liked the conclusion of this article and thought the page raised some relevant and interesting concerns about voluntourism – the kind of travel where you go travel somewhere in the hope of doing good.
Up until the last five seconds of a 24-hour evolutionary clock, humans lived in small, stable, isolated, dependent communities. Now we can be on the other side of the world in half a day. While this expands the scope of how we can help our fellow man, it also extends the area in which we can do damage to humanity. Research every aspect of your trip before you go. Remember to question where your money is going – irresponsible spending could offset any of the hard work you do – and just because you’re volunteering doesn’t mean you’re doing ‘good’. Be honest with yourself about your motivation
This subject is so broad, a few books could be written. I have one
main suggestion for anyone going to “any country” for ANY REASON–check
our govt. recommendations and check the past year news reports for
CRIME in those countries. DO NOT HIKE ACROSS UNKNOWN COUNTRIES, and
I mean ANY COUNTRY (well, guess Switzerland would be safe!! HA!,
not just for safety, but one friend of mine, hiking across South
America (think in Chili) wound up with a horrid disease from a mosquito bite; then she got another desease from drinking the water, even though it was suppose to be precessed, & she did volunteer work at a health clinic in Peru, by the way. Even Hawaii has popular islands where people were killed in the Mts., probably from people growing dope. I HIGHLY recommend traveling in GROUPS, although I’m guilty of traveling alone in many many places, but now that I’m older and WISER, I realize how really stupid I was in many circumstances. So, BE CAUTIOUS, AND TRAVEL WISELY.