In the last years, there has been a steep rise in the popularity of volunteering tourism and academic interest in it (Guttentag 538): According to a study from 2008, 1.6 million people participate in volunteering activities each year (ibid). Broadly defined as a form of alternative tourism, in which participants utilise their leisure time and private means in order to take part in an organised programme to aid a host community (Benson and Seibert 295, Guttentag 538), volunteering projects take place on all continents, focussing on a diverse range of issues, for instance environmental conservation, language teaching or the care for children or people with disabilities or diseases (Rogerson and Slater 483). These programmes typically involve …show more content…
Furthermore, the host communities of voluntourism programmes commonly depend on the revenue generated by the reception of voluntourists (Guttentag 540). In this essay, it will be argued that in spite of the purpose of volunteering programmes to alleviate poverty and generally improve the economic and social situation of the host community, notions of western power and agency and contrasting passivity of the people in the non-western destination are frequently mirrored in and reinforced through the dynamics of voluntourism. This global phenomenon will be illustrated using the case of groups of European and US-American volunteers working in host communities in the Global South. In perpetuating the generalised image of impoverished non-Western people who depend on westerners to ascend from poverty and backwardness, voluntourism reinforces the 'white saviour complex ', a trope which is already ubiquitous in Western media. The white saviour