In recent years, voluntourism, volunteering-tourism, has become increasingly popular among over 10 million tourists from the affluent Global North, generating over 2-3 billion dollars annually, according to the Human Rights Research Center. Unlike traditional tourism, voluntourism gives participants a sense of fulfillment by giving back to an underdeveloped community through voluntary service such as teaching, construction, or environmental conservation. One of the most popular forms of voluntourism is orphanage tourism, where foreign visitors devote anywhere from a few hours to a few weeks of their trip to children in living institutions. However, orphanage tourism has unintended consequences for the children involved, negatively affecting their emotional development and well-being.
The appeal is obvious: help children, make their day, and do some good. Yet despite these seemingly great effects, the service does little to help communities. Although visitors may appear to form friendships with the kids, they remain short-lived and often do more harm than good. When such relationships are broken off as tourists leave to never again return, children are left with increased feelings of abandonment and emotional stress which can lead to attachment disorders, according to Cleveland Clinic. Such attachment disorders, the article states, make it difficult to form meaningful connections with people.
The U.S. Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report said, “Volunteering in these facilities for short periods of time without appropriate training can cause further emotional stress and even a sense of abandonment for already vulnerable children with attachment issues affected by temporary and irregular experiences of safe relationships.”
Orphanage tourism, though well-intended, not only harms emotional health, but fuels the orphanage economy that exploits impoverished families for income from volunteers’ donations and the community’s tourists.
The income from tourist visits and expenses, in addition to orphanage donations, fuels many communities’ reliance on orphanages, or their orphanage economy. The exploitation of children for the attraction of unknowing tourists or volunteers creates a financial incentive to keep children in orphanages. One NPR article stated that the generous service and donations from visitors and volunteer programs leads many institutions to promise food, education, and medical attention to impoverished families, which is often convincing to separate parents from their children.
The National Institutes of Health mentions recruiters or “child finders” who “capitalize on parental concerns about poverty, conflicts, natural disasters and a lack of resources for a child with disabilities to convince parents to turn over their children, who are then used to attract lucrative international donations and volunteers.” Australia was the first country to criminalize child recruitment to orphanages in 2018, connecting the exploitation of children for tourist attractions as a form of modern slavery. For the institutions and tourist-dependent businesses in the community to maintain their voluntourism income, they must keep a number of children.
There are ethical and sustainable alternatives to orphanage voluntourism. According to Laurie Ahern from Disability Rights International, up to 95% of children in orphanages have at least one living parent and extended family. Rather than donating to institutions, people can contribute funds to programs that specialize in preventing family separation.
This builds a social network to support children into adulthood. Living with extended family also offers the chance to form long-lasting relationships in a stable, home-like environment that orphanages and similar institutions can’t offer. In a home, children can receive the care and attention they deserve and connect with their community. Large institutions are filled with a surplus of children, which leads to another alternative: foster care. These services allow children to stay with a certified caregiver when the child cannot live with their biological family and work toward a permanent living situation.
While most participants of orphanage voluntourism don’t intend harm, educating tourists on the negative impacts of the service is necessary to protect vulnerable children. Shifting resources away from child living institutions and towards alternatives not only protects children from unsafe conditions, but allows them the chance to grow up in safe, loving homes. The choice is clear: doing good means supporting families, not institutions.
