CAE READINGS

 CAE READING

PART 2

Which writer takes a similar view to writer A on the likely impact of voluntary work on local people’s lives?	_______
expresses a different view from the others on why people do international voluntary work?	_______
has the same opinion as writer A about the possible long-term effects on the volunteers?	________
shares writer C’s concern about who the volunteers tend to be?	_________

Volunteer tourism

Four academic writers discuss the topic of international voluntary work.

A It is hard to argue that the actual contribution to development amounts to a great deal directly. Whilst volunteer tourists can get involved in building homes or schools, they have usually paid a significant fee for the opportunity to be involved in this work: money that, if donated to a local community directly, could potentially pay for a greater amount of labour than the individual volunteer could ever hope to provide. This is especially so in the case of gap years, in which the level of technical skill or professional experience required of volunteers is negligible. Hence, it is unsurprising that many academic studies allude to the moral issue of whether gap year volunteering is principally motivated by altruism – a desire to benefit the society visited – or whether young people aim to generate ‘cultural capital’ which benefits them in their careers. However, the projects may play a role in developing people who will, in the course of their careers and lives, act ethically in favour of those less well-off.

C At its worst, international volunteering can be imperialist, paternalistic charity, volunteer tourism, or a self-serving quest for career and personal development on the part of well-off Westerners. Or it can be straightforward provision of technical assistance for international development. At its best, international volunteering brings benefits (and costs) to individual volunteers and the organisations within which they work, at the same time as providing the space for an exchange of technical skills, knowledge, and cross-cultural experience in developing communities. Most significantly, volunteering can raise awareness of, and a lifelong commitment to combating, existing unequal power relations and deep-seated causes of poverty, injustice, and unsustainable development.

B Volunteering may lead to greater international understanding; enhanced ability to solve conflicts; widespread and democratic participation in global affairs through global civic society organisations; and growth of international social networks among ordinary people. In this scenario, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, an outcome where benefits accrue to volunteers and host communities, and contribute to the global greater good. However, if volunteering is largely limited to individuals of means from wealthier areas of the world, it may give these privileged volunteers an international perspective, and a career boost, but it will do little for people and communities who currently lack access to international voluntary work. Those who volunteer will continue to reap its benefits, using host organisations and host communities as a rung on the ladder of personal advancement.

D Volunteer tourism seems to fit well with the growth of life strategies to help others. Such limited strategies, aimed at a humble ‘making a difference’, can appear positive and attractive in an anti-political climate. The personal element appears positive – it bypasses big government and eschews big business. Yet it also bypasses the democratic imperative of representative government and reduces development to individual acts of charity, most often ones that seek to work around rather than transform the situations of poor, rural societies. Cynicism at the act of volunteering is certainly misplaced. The act of volunteer tourism may involve only simple, commendable charity. However, where volunteer tourism is talked up as sustainable development and the marketing of the gap-year companies merges into development thinking, this is symptomatic of a degradation of the discourse of development. The politics of volunteer tourism represents a retreat from a social understanding of global inequalities and the poverty lived by so many in the developing word.