Grenada is launching a new voluntourism model. Is that a good thing?

RELATED: What is ‘extractive tourism’? And how can we stop it?

A study by Save the Children in 2005 for example, found that 92 percent of children in Sri Lankan orphanages had a living parent. Likewise in 2006, UNICEF looked at orphanages in Liberia (many of which were funded by voluntourism) and found that 98 percent of the children there weren’t orphans at all. In Cambodia, 40 years after the Khmer Rouge genocide, the number of orphanages has been steadily growing. And according to UNICEF, this isn’t down to actual demand: It’s because of Australian tourists willing to volunteer and, crucially, pay.

“The voluntourism industry is big business for travel companies, unwitting NGOs and, in some cases, corrupt, unregistered organizations. Voluntourists pay big bucks for the privilege of volunteering— sometimes up to $2,000 per week—and the industry is worth an estimated $2.6 billion per year,” says Save the Children. “But while some people are profiting from voluntourism, there’s a very real risk that skilled locals miss out on employment because unskilled volunteers are filling their positions.”

It’s hard to know the exact number of voluntourists out there at any one time (Save the Children estimates 1.6 million of us are volunteering overseas every year). The UN claims that, if volunteering were a full-time job, it would account for 109 million workers. The appeal of voluntourism is obvious—people want their travels to mean more, to help communities, to give something back. It’s an altruistic movement. Unfortunately, that altruism can sometimes be misplaced.

“While my intentions to be helpful and encouraging and to give back came from a good place, my time at the orphanage did not even begin to address their real needs.”

- Pippa Biddle

As author Pippa Biddle wrote in her book, Ours To Explore: Privilege, Power and the Paradox of Voluntourism, when she and a group of young, inexperienced volunteers went to Tanzania, they were assigned to help local workers build an orphanage library (red flag right there, but let’s move on). Eventually, Biddle found that, after the volunteers had left for the day, the local workers were taking apart their dodgy work overnight and re-building it correctly. If anything, Biddle and her colleagues were slowing down the project. They were well-meaning people in the way.

“While my intentions to be helpful and encouraging and to give back came from a good place, my time at the orphanage did not even begin to address their real needs,” Biddle wrote.

So the question remains: will Grenada’s new model be different? Can it turn voluntourism around?

No fees for volunteers is a good start. One program, the Grenada Scholarship Program, does seem to work on a sponsorship model, giving travelers the chance to provide educational funding for marginalized youth. Organisations such as World Vision have been operating a similar program for years, but not without a degree of controversy and criticism.

There are also no orphanages involved in Grenada’s voluntourism scheme, which is an obvious tick (although there are still children’s homes on the island, including the non-profit Bel Air Home for Children and Adolescents). Most of the programs are focused on environmental conservation or rehabilitation. Tree planting, cleaning habitat, monitoring sea turtles, that kind of thing.

There’s the Grand Anse Artificial Reef Project (GAARP), for example, run by Dive Grenada, which is recruiting PADI-qualified volunteers for coral transplantation, counting sea urchins and cleaning up garbage off Grand Anse beach. “Kida as young as 10 are welcome,” according to the website (children won’t be doing any of the PADI dive work, we assume). Volunteer travelers can also assist with fundraising events for Down Syndrome Grenada, teach string band music in Petite Martinique, or plant vegetables in a community garden.  Most of these programs seem fairly non controversial, and potentially beneficial to local communities. They’re all local-run organisations, too, and volunteers are not required to provide any sort of monetary payment.

As always, it comes back to the quality of the programs themselves, the credentials of the people running them, and how much benefit flows through to actual communities. Travelers will need to make up their own minds, and vet each project as best they can. Grenada’s new voluntourism model does appear to be trying to overcome the movement’s exploitative legacy, and yet, despite the change of approach, you have to ask the question: Should voluntourism exist at all?