Saturday, 4 April 2015

The bad side of volunteering.

I believe we all had our shares of doing community work, volunteering at a nearby NGO, volunteered internationally or even helped in feeding impoverished homeless or less privileged people.


I can totally understand the fact that doing “charity work” is the society’s repay for all their extravagant living lifestyle, and some do it for the sake of religious duty and hoping for a divine payoff (believe me, we are all in this together, guilty as charged). Egyptians (specifically, and the majority of Middle East in general) are used to “giving the poor” concept since it’s one of the main pillars of Islam under the name “Zakat” or “Sadka”; most of it is done during the Holy month of Ramadan, feasts, or generally as an act of repenting. But what happens next? We leave these people, trying to convince ourselves that we tried but their conditions need more financial assistance or more higher level intervention. And here comes the NGOs, right? That is their role. But what I have against most NGOs is that their vision which was once attached to fulfilling the gaps households need to sustain their living; turns to making the underprivileged always in need of the spoon, which is actually very good for most of the non-profits as they make sure these cases turn to hundreds of thousands worth of media campaigns and ways to pull more funds and donations.

Some take this to the next step; the overwhelming need to travel and why not volunteer, right? Actually it is a very good idea; you don’t only gain a cultural outlook on different societies, but you also get the chance to consider your way of living. Unfortunately, we are now facing what is called the “white volunteerism”. A lot of reports had been conducted recently to highlight the frenzy of white people volunteering in Africa or Asia; which sometimes their whole experience does more good to their Facebook profile and their pretentious selves rather than the good for the people they try to help/ serve. Most of the people who travel to these continents don’t really speak the language of the people or even comprehend the concept of what their needs are.


I once read a story of an American girl who went on a volunteering program to Sierra Leone. The program required those volunteers to help build a school, which most of them didn’t know how to. So there were local people showing them how and helping them through the process. But one night, the volunteers found that there were other construction workers trying to fix what the volunteers were doing all morning!! Yes, that’s what actually happens when we are so happy getting to volunteer abroad. More harm than any good. Let alone, the numerous happy pictures with black children or Chinese kids or beautiful Indian little girls that we pose with and upload on social media, leaving the fact that we don’t really know their names, that these kids will never see the pictures and that this picture will bring no prosperity to their families.


I am not saying that we don’t have to volunteer, but we can choose to help those abroad NGOs using our excellence in academia or skills that they can’t acquire; i.e fundraising, writing proposals, graphic designing, developing curriculums, doing TOT, connecting to international donor organization, strategic planning or any other form of management.  Period. 

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