All Interested Readers!

This space will be dedicated to three decision-making points before you prepare to go on a traveling to volunteer experience: 1) Before you decide, 2) How you decide, and, 3) How we decided, to find those sending organisations you will be partnering with. Subpages will be created to support these three areas related to “Opportunities to Volunteer” soon.

Sending Organisations

For sending organisations, we are compiling a list of best practices that sending organisations will need to meet in order to feature you. Here is a sample of best practices of what we determine is a sustainable, ethical, volunteer tourism sending organisation. Several of these suggestions come from:

Raymond, E. M., & Hall, C. M. (2008). The development of cross-cultural (mis) understanding through volunteer tourism. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 16(5), 530-543.

Best Practices of a Sustainable and Ethical Traveling to Volunteer Sending Organisation.

1. You develop programs of genuine value for local communities. Do you follow a  “top down” or work from a “bottom up” model of community development? How collaborative are you with the local community when planning and developing your project? Are volunteers’ skills matched with the needs of the community project?
2. You understand the importance of approaching volunteer tourism programs as a learning process rather than simply an ‘experience’ and therefore you use experiential learning techniques such as personal reflection (diaries), group discussion, and follow up meetings.
3. You deliberately create cultural exchange opportunities for interaction through volunteer interaction with other volunteers, and volunteer interaction with host community members.

Please contact us through the comment form below to be considered as a feature sending organisation for The Traveling Volunteer. We will be get back to you as soon as possible. Thank you!