Manifesto This position paper focuses on the relatively recent phenomenon known as voluntourism and determines the incentives of industries to become involved, as well as the effectiveness of the methods used. This recent entity is an attempt to create an equitable balance between the individual’s charitable work, as well as their ability to travel into foreign lands in order to appreciate what each distinct culture has to offer (Vincent, 2009). This booming industry has an outstanding total of 1.6 million volunteers every year, spending around 2 billion dollars on travel expenses (Kahn, 2014). Despite the flourishing of the industry, the involvement of volunteers has been fleeting. Frequent participants of voluntourism decide to get involved for seasonal …show more content…
Several of the volunteers that were involved were either travelling with their schools, or getting a chance to get involved in something during their summer break following graduation since they didn’t have any immediate jobs lined up. Theresa Higgs who runs the United Planet out of Boston provides a deeper insight to this in her statement to NPR, although she is heartened by the altruism of volunteers what needs to be taken into account is the host community (Kahn, 2014). This inevitably leads to the inquiry of whether or not they are benefiting from the pretense of a symbiotic relationship, and in turn results in the assessment of the objectives of voluntourism. Is it to see these nations as partners through aid, or is it “a means to an end, a learning objective, somebody’s desire to have fun and do something different on a vacation (Kahn, 2014)?” If the end goal of making a meaningful a lasting impact in these nations is deterred for the sake of constructing an impressive resume than the volunteers have the ability to create detrimental