We applaud the good nature of people who would go to the other end of the world solely to help those less advantaged than them. It’s a truly admirable trait to give to people and to make their lives better. You might consider volunteering if you fit this generous profile.
However, sometimes our good intentions do not translate to good outcomes. That is the case with most short-term volunteering missions. We will tell you why these humanitarian trips are not always the answer to problems in impoverished communities based on recent research and the opinion of those that the mission seeks to help.
Short-Term Mission Trips and Similar Volunteering Options
A short-term mission is defined as a mission trip that lasts between one week and one year, generally organized by a Christian church or agency. The volunteers tend to be young people, usually those who just graduated high school.
Although Christian missionaries are certainly not a new thing, this specific type of mission trip emerged in the 1960’s and gained popularity in the 1980’s due to groups such as the Peace Corp.
A short-term mission trip intends to introduce American Christians to Christians from impoverished regions in a feat to learn from each other, but mostly to help these less advantageous people by building infrastructure, teaching lessons, or helping out at medical centers.
The same generally applies to volunteering trips that don’t involve the Church or a Christian organization. Nowadays, you can find countless agencies that offer you the opportunity to volunteer for a short period of time.
Why These Trips Might be Harmful
We don’t want to insult anybody who has ever taken part in a short-term mission (whether Christian or not), because they likely had good intentions at heart. However, these trips have been under the radar lately and they have uncovered some harmful consequences to the communities that they meant to help.
First, most of the people who go on these trips don’t usually sign up for long mission trips. That’s how they are marketed, but numbers tell otherwise. Of course, people who volunteer in these short-term trips can lead to some beneficial outcomes, albeit they are rather temporary.
Depending on what exactly you’re doing there, you might be harmful to the communities you signed up to serve.
For instance, many Americans go to South Asia to volunteer at orphanages on short-term missions, which cannot create meaningful relationships between the children, who already experienced trauma, and those that care for them. Imagine you’re a child and your caregivers change every few weeks. This further reinforces the lack of stability you already experience.
Furthermore, many of these children are devoid of privacy as many volunteers come to “learn their story”. In some cases, they are used as mere photo props to those who wish to show that they help them. In the worst-case scenario, some of these children experience physical and sexual violence.
The orphanages also have a financial incentive to keep children in their care, rather than look for ways to have these children returned to their families (many of these children are not even orphans) or adopted.
In terms of building infrastructure such as houses and schools, short-term volunteering costs more than necessary. For instance, volunteers who flocked to Honduras after a devastating hurricane, built houses there that cost $30,000 each. Locals attested that they could have built them for $3000 a piece instead.
This particular problem is so prevalent that grassroots organizations from various low-income countries have spawned and they propose sustainable and cheap infrastructure built by them as opposed to the expensive alternative built by foreign volunteers.
In this case, you should donate to local projects rather than volunteer. This will not only be cheaper and more efficient, but it will also give the local communities a sense of pride that they created these projects and a pathway to achieving meaningful change.
The cost to sustain a whole mission trip is always going to be higher than the cost to achieve the same goal, but using the help of the community in need. Rather than donating to such an organization, you can support the affected communities directly.
Another harmful consequence of short-term volunteering trips comes from the medical sphere. You might be surprised that that’s the case, because you’ve probably heard of the many achievements of Doctors Without Borders. While they are compiled of some of the best specialists with the biggest hearts, there are some medical volunteers who shouldn’t be practicing.
Since some countries do not have tight regulations as to whom can practice medicine, or they are simply ignored, there have been volunteers who do not possess a medical degree, or who have no medical background whatsoever.
The worst offender is Renee Bach. She set up a clinic for malnourished children as a respected American doctor. There’s a catch though – she was a 20-year-old woman with a high school degree. In the next 10 years, she “practiced medicine”, treating 900 kids, 109 of whom died. She’s now being sued in Uganda.
While Bach’s case is a very extreme scenario, there are other volunteers who have performed medical interventions without the proper education and/or license. Fortunately, Bach’s case is prompting countries to strengthen their laws regarding medical professionals.
Thoughts
These are only some of the terrible consequences of short-term volunteering trips. Again, we do not judge every volunteer or organization as they might have people’s best interests in heart, but we implore them to look at better ways to support those in need.