义工旅行：有意还是有害？你支持哪一种观点呢？

近年越来越流行到发展中国家做短期义工。能够牺牲自己的精神、时间和金钱，为有需要的人作一点贡献，是非常值得鼓励的事情。但是我们有否想过，自己一厢情愿的付出，当地人是否真的受益，还是受害？

一个普通的大学生或者写字楼文员，真的有能力帮当地人建一间稳固的房子吗？

在发展中国家，能够付出劳力的人多的是，你的苦工是否真的有价值，还是剥夺了当地人的就业机会？

孤儿真的每个礼拜需要不同的外国人与他们玩游戏画图画吗？还是这些风车转似来来去去的人，为孤儿们的心理带来更多的不稳定和失落？更何况有资料显示，有些孤儿院是利用儿童欺骗游客？

当然，这些负面的影响不代表我们以后不应该再参与义工旅游，以上的问题，在不同的情况会有不同的答案，但这些问题是有必要思考一下的。既然我们愿意花时间和心血去参加甚至举办这些义工活动，何不再花一点时间多做一点功课，考虑自己的义工活动对当地人真是有益还是有害，然后再作取舍？

你以下观点不代表我个人观点，仅参考：
                 Illustration: Simon Bosch

More Australians are adding a dash of volunteer work to their overseas  holidays in poor countries. Between the trekking and the rafting, they are  building houses in remote villages and working in orphanages.
They want to give back; they are appalled by global inequality; they seek  personal fulfilment through encounters with the destitute and disadvantaged.  Whatever the motive, the impulse to help is commendable. But the impact on the  locals is not always beneficial.
At this time of year, students are planning - or embarking on - gap-year  adventures that may combine mountain climbing with manual labour; and  middle-aged professionals and new retirees are pondering how to have fun but  spread goodness.
Before setting off, here is a question worth consideration: what consequences  flow when an 18-year-old from Sydney's privileged suburbs goes to a village to  build a house with a bunch of similar volunteers? Given their last encounter  with bricks was with their Lego set, it is possible the youngsters won't build a  sturdy house. More likely, the locals could teach them about unskilled manual  labour.


Quite possibly, the young people are taking jobs from the locals. The  youngsters benefit from the feel-good factor, their confidence and self-reliance  grow. But manual labour is what is in abundance in the developing world. Who  gains most here?
Being good is not as easy as it looks when the uninformed stumble naively  into the complex world of international development. Experienced aid and  development professionals are urging Australians to do their homework before  they become "voluntourists". Decent impulses need to be channelled in useful  ways.
The multimillion-dollar gap-year industry, for example, has come under recent  scrutiny for its programs. Private operators charge hefty fees to provide the  young with travel and volunteering experiences, but an ill-thought-out program  can be bad for communities and for relations between rich and poor  countries.
A report last year from the British research body Demos said the gap-year  industry could be seen as a new form of colonialism, a new way of the West  exercising power in the Third World.
One in five people who took one of the gap-year packages said they believed  their presence in the place they visited made no positive difference to the  lives of those around them, with one respondent in the study saying, "I felt  that the local community could have done the work we were doing; there were lots  of unemployed people there …"
But a good program, the Demos report said, ensured the young people had  relevant skills to offer and gave them opportunities to continue their work once  they returned home.
Another popular way to volunteer abroad is to work in orphanages for a short  stint.
Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Australians have visited orphanages in  Cambodia and Bali, bringing gifts, money and their skills. So common is this  practice that it now has its own name, "orphanage tourism". But are the children  helped or harmed by the stream of tourists who move in and out of their  lives?

Friends-International,  a Cambodia-based development organisation, has called on tourists to stop the  practice.
"Orphanages must be a safe place for children, not a tourist destination," it  says. It claims the number of orphanages has proliferated in order to milk  tourists of money; in Cambodia they are a booming business.
An official study showed just a quarter of the children in the orphanages had  lost both of their parents. The most unscrupulous operators sent children to  tourist haunts to do song and dance routines in order to lure rich Westerners to  the institutions. A recent BBC radio documentary showed some of the orphanages  in Bali were effectively rackets, exploiting the children and tourists  alike.

Child development experts, such as the South African professor Linda Richter,  co-author of the paper AIDS Orphan Tourism, have pointed out the  psychological damage on very young children of a string of broken attachments  with short-term caregivers passing through their orphanage

A volunteer may believe her or his contribution to be valuable but, in the  wider scheme, it may be harmful.
We don't allow a parade of volunteers in Australian child-care centres. Apart  from safety concerns, we know children need to form secure attachments to  regular carers.

Volunteers are needed abroad but mainly those with specific, often technical  or high-level skills.  Once nurses were needed, now midwife trainers are needed,  for example.

Reputable organisations such as Australian  Volunteers International respond to formal requests for skilled  volunteers from organisations in developing countries. Applicants are put  through a rigorous and competitive process of selection.
TEAR Australia, a  Christian development and aid agency, has harnessed the enthusiasm of  Australians who are demanding the overseas aid experience. It has done this by  setting up educational tours of development projects to bring Australians into  contact with local communities. This is less about Australians "doing" the work  and more about "learning" what the locals are doing.

Some people can't empathise unless they have first-hand experience and, once  touched, they become lifelong ambassadors for a fairer global economic order;  they become significant donors, letter writers and lobbyists.
But, if the first-hand experience is a pit stop between climbing mountains  and riding elephants, you have to wonder who is benefiting from the  experience.

The volunteer might find it "awesome" at the time and be chuffed by the  locals' "gratitude".
But they may learn no lasting lessons about rights and justice and even,  unwittingly, do more harm than good.
For help in finding reputable opportunities for overseas  volunteering, see the federal government site: ausaidvolunteers.gov.au
Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAU

什么事情都不是简单的非黑即白

确实存在种种问题，这是双向的