Comments

Hi SvM, Thank you for your thoughtful comment. Your reference to the Peace Corps made me wonder what the assault rates are on Australian volunteers? This info is not publicly released as far as I can find and I have (once again anecdotally -- I know a lot of volunteers) heard of this happening among the Australian cohort. Like you, I found the 'pastoral care' offered by Austraining to be lacking and unresponsiveness to feedback, particularly when it came to safety and security of volunteers. Often if you were involved in an incident you were scolded instead of supported -- no matter if you had been doing the right thing or not. There also seemed to be a lot of buck passing to the on-call Australia-based psychiatrists -- while that is a useful service for volunteers to access professional counseling to deal with emotional fallout/stress/etc, it isn't a substitute for in-country assignment support -- both are needed.

Hi, Thanks for your comment. So much of it comes down to the in-country management team. My housemate was an AVI in Dili and thankfully I received the information I wasn't receiving from my own ICM on security and other issues via her, because she was being regularly updated by AVI. She felt much more supported than I did and had a successful assignment. This lack of support is particularly concerning because Austraining looks after the youngest cohort -- the youth ambassadors -- so they should be providing the most support. In Dili at least, most of the AVIs were older and their assignments seemed to have more focus and clarity. But all this is only anecdotal.

Ashlee - you're correct. It costs approximately $70,000 per volunteer for 12 months.

Hi Ashlee, Great piece. Being a returned volunteer myself and reading your proposal points for improvement, I thank God that I volunteered through AVI and not Austraining. Almost ALL of your proposed changes are being implemented by the AVI ICMs in Indonesia (we still have a problem with the time lag between ad and assignment though). We had a joint AVID conference in Bali last year and heard the experiences of many AYADs and AVIDs and I'm more than convinced that when I volunteer again I will only ever go through AVI. Now I know that this sounds like a plug for AVI but it really shows when you consider that AVI has been around since 1951 and Austraining only since the 2000s. It's all about support!!! 🙂

Hi Ashlee - Very good article. I was caught in this orphanage tourism con/scam, it is a major issue in Cambodia. We have to look at what the Khmer Rouge period did to this people and the societal loss of parenting skills, the abject failure of the UN in the eighties and nineties in dealing with rebuilding Cambodia and basically handing the nation over to a gangster and his cronies. In receiving aid the Cambodian Government is held to very little accountability from the large NGOs or the wealthy nations that give money. The orphan industry is not only a Khmer issue but one of Westerners who establish orphanages for nefarious reasons, or just because they are looking for a place in the world themselves. I have actually just published <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cambodia-Orphan-Tourism-Me-ebook/dp/B00CR0N1JI/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1369474713&sr=1-1&keywords=ron+hawkins" rel="nofollow">an ebook</a> on my experiences in Cambodia, I spent a year there and I was taken to school and received an education. I would implore all tourists to refuse to go to these places, children are not for performance or dollies to be played with. We do it with the best of intentions but the issue is that we are supporting a system that is essentially slavery, that is enforced institutionalization (even the so-called good Western run ones), that is not supportive of Khmers learning ongoing parenting skills that are handed down through generations. I'm starting to get angry again at myself and at Cambodia, so I will finish. Please all, do not support orphan tourism in any part of the world. Regards Ron

I'll echo the thanks to Ashlee. This is a brave piece, I'm glad you had the confidence to write it. I'm about to finish a year as an AVID with a national NGO in a developing country. I've been similarly disappointed. I had high expectations that I would be able to use my skills and apply them to real problems.The first few months were quiet, and because I'd been advised that the country I've been posted to has a rather laid-back way of doing things, I didn't really push for changes; though I asked for more work, and ability to engage, nothing was forthcoming. By the time 6 months had rolled around, things hadn't improved greatly, and my excellent counterpart (who supplied me with most of my work) had left for a government position. Unlike Roger O'Halloran's claims above, at this stage I felt even less empowered to negotiate after half a year; expectations had been set and power relations determined. My country manager was overwhelmingly positive, in line with the propaganda we'd been given prior to departure. I was quite depressed about everything at that stage, but decided to stick it out - unlike some other people, being early career in this field (though with some experience from a previous one that helped in this position), I doubted my ability to jump ship successfully. I felt trapped. I also felt that dropping out would turn this from a tick on my CV and a wonderful recommendation (which will happen anyway, my counterparts get well with me) into a black mark. I'm in a narrow field where experience is valued, and interviews are hard enough to get in any case. I'm coming to the end of this program now, and definitely feel like this has been a program of small victories. Every day, I ask what I can help with, and what projects need assistance. In between occasional requests to translate a document into English there's been a lot of teaching people how to do simple things like attach a document to an email. While this isn't anything at all relevant to my skills and background, it's something, right? In the last couple of months I've been mostly without work in my office, and instead have taken to learning skills that could conceivably be used in this job were I ever asked to do so, but will be useful in future positions I take. This week's work has been writing a large grant application - for a different organisation, and helping a member of management write his masters thesis. My next job is in another developing country where I'm taking on an *actual* $0 volunteer position, funded through savings from this assignment, and living on rice and beans in the cheapest housing possible. And hopefully I'll be building on and using the skills I didn't get to exercise in my current role. Any achievements made in this role will be the legacy of my AVID position.

I am a little late to this discussion so I may not have anything to contribute that has already been better expressed by others, although I would like to add my voice. I have had two experiences as an Australian volunteer, once as an AYAD in 2006 and as an AVID in 2011. I agree wholeheartedly with Weh Yeoh in that there is a real problem in the way expectations are built in volunteers before they depart. Particularly as AYADs, we were repeatedly told how we were the leading young people in our respective fields etc. I think there needs to be a significant readjustment in the way these assignments are framed toward prospective volunteers. I used to get quite annoyed hearing all the young volunteers complaining about how they were not achieving their objectives after three to six months. There seemed to be little self-reflection among many volunteers about the fact that they were often younger, less experienced and in most cases couldn't speak the same language as their colleagues. Yet they still expected their ideas for at times quite significant organizational change to be implemented by their colleagues. I also agree with Ashlee and others that the term "volunteer" is problematic. In addition to the points made by others it can lessen the contribution you are able to make in your host organization due to a lack of formal status within your host organization. At the same time, however, I have seen many cases where volunteers have fallen back on the term when it suits, ie. turn up late, take extra leave days and so on because they are "just a volunteer." Is it that much of a problem if we consider the volunteer program as a well-supported internship program? The program provides the opportunity for volunteers to gain great experience in a) international organizations that would normally only accept expats in senior positions or b) local NGOs that would only been able to pay around $200 per month. Ultimately I think the benefits in terms of intercultural exchange far outweigh the moderate capacity building outcomes.

Paul you are so right, pre-departure preparation and training is undervalued, not so much by the volunteer who may not know what is required, but by the sending agencies who should know better. You cannot fit the minimum required into the four day (maximum) briefings provided by agencies sending under the government's AVID program. It would seem that in the four days there is some emphasis on risk management and one would expect other practical advice on staying physically healthy. Given one is bound to engage many new and various characters in a placement the course I facilitate also has sessions dealing with psychological and interpersonal health. There is a responsibility to ensure that people engaging in a culture so completely different from their own know not only about the culture in which they will live, but have a sense of how different cultures function (including their own) and have a framework for processing what is happening to them when they feel they may not to be accepted, or able to operate within the culture. Are volunteers heading to Timor Leste given tools to assist working with people still suffering from the experience of extreme trauma? How much work is done on theories of development and the importance of analysing the assets a community already has for the development and capacity building they seek to undertake? The volunteer may have skills in the area for which they have been recruited , but it does not make them good development workers. Good development will have a toolkit containing many processes on which one can draw in different circumstances. In programs I have coordinated over 15 years the evaluations both on completion and after six months into the placement have helped to shape future sessions and as a consequence they are most often rated as very relevant and useful. I am happy to have my email shared with anyone who might want an outline of the content and outcomes for the various sessions. Oh, there is one thing I will question about what you suggest Paul. It does not need to be boring. With a variety of learning styles including simulations, presentations, discussions, workshops and a cross-cultural field trip there is something for everyone and valuable supportive inter-generational relationships to be had over nine days with the staff and other participants, which ultimately provides a great cohort of support while people are in the field.

Interesting to hear "the whole careerist push" get mentioned. Dr Nichole Georgeou's <a href="http://booko.com.au/9780415809153/Neoliberalism-Development-and-Aid-Volunteering" rel="nofollow">book</a> raises some serious concerns about volunteering being framed as a career development path for the privileged. Sadly, it has not been included on the ODE's volunteer evaluation literature review, despite being the most salient research on the topic that I've read. Let's hope the obvious nerve you've hit amongst returned volunteers gets their attention.

The essence of the issue of overseas aid is often a cultural impasse of perception. People who come from a so called ‘western’ culture that has evolved over hundreds of years and have a relatively easy life may, through their own compassion, decide to offer their services to others in foreign countries where the contrasted poverty and lack of resources is the norm. Likewise, those who sit in high rise, sterile apartments can’t or won’t see that their ‘café latte’ lifestyle is only enabled by others who labour to produce their food, clothing and material goods. These people are susceptible to supporting wonderful and warm hearted programs and policies that sound great in theory without possibly understanding the reality of practice. Warm hearted people in so called ‘developed’ countries often seem compelled in some way to try and change the world by donating money and resources to ‘good’ causes. Just as long as they don’t actually have to get down in the mud and flies and suffer the same as those who they believe they are trying to help. Therein lies the imbroglio of foreign aid and assistance programs. When many of these genuinely concerned people discover the reality that many aid programs don’t achieve any long term benefits for those who they are intended to help, they find it very difficult to understand why? Why don’t those who have now been offered the opportunity to ‘improve’, aspire to change their way of life? Why don’t the governments who have apparently allowed the calamitous situation to occur now change their ways and adopt a more egalitarian approach? What’s the answer? Well the first hurdle that must be faced is one of understanding what is achievable and what is not. In order to view what is achievable, the potential donor has to take off their own possibly rose coloured glasses and put on those of the society and culture they are aspiring to assist. But that’s easier said than done. Preparation and planning is often dull and boring when one is raring to get out in the field and change the world. Unfortunately, all too often each new wave of bright eyed and terribly keen aid workers become disillusioned when they finally come face to face with reality. Many of us have been there. The real problem is one of a lack of an over-arching training and information program about the issues, problems, culture and previous knowledge and training that should be available and studied before any initiative actually commences. Unfortunately, this often doesn’t sit well with those institutions whose bread and butter may be to promote overseas aid programs and various political viewpoints, both at home and overseas, that see the chance for a short term, quick fix to provide a convenient and easy response to genuine community concerns.

Hi Les, Thanks for your contribution to this very interesting debate. Your perspective on capacity building from within UN agencies is an interesting one -- I was by no means implying that capacity building doesn't take place within a UN context (that's a whole other debate really, it was a very hot debate among NGOs in Dili). I was questioning the overall lack of clarity within the volunteer program and the inconsistency in the 'counterpart' based approach. As for your views on broken people volunteering, I have to say that I find your suggested approach advocates for the same entitled and self-important behavior that you seem to resent. It implies that foreigners always have something to offer a developing country and know best. It implies that volunteers shouldn't try to work within the organisational or social context of the HO and should instead force change without cooperation. Quite frankly, I didn't feel I had the right to tell people how to do things. I could only make suggestions (initiative?) and identify paths forward and try to work with people to make these changes and offer my support. But if the people didn't want it or weren't interested in my suggestions, why do I have the right to push it upon them? You can't help someone that doesn't want to be helped. As a volunteer, I was not a manager -- it wasn't my right to call the shots or set priorities in the HO or to performance manage staff who were not contributing. So I disagree with you on that. I would say that it is important to remember (as SvM mentioned) how different it is to operate in a national NGO or country office context compared to a more established/resourced organisation. I will admit that my two years of experience in Indonesia didn't prepare me as much as I thought it would for Timor-Leste -- the challenges in a LDC were far different from a MIC. Just like working in a multilateral is worlds apart from working in other organisations and communities.

Thanks for your comment Michael. I gave Austraining the opportunity to respond, in the spirit of dialogue and conversation, and to correct any inaccuracies in my post prior to publication. I received no corrections, so take from that what you will. I am sure Austraining are reading the comments etc on this, and they are more than welcome to participate in the discussions. Ashlee