Hello from the depths of the third week into spring semester! Just wanted to check in and share some of my thoughts from all the ideas and material I have encountered through discussions and readings in my pre-Loewenstern Fellowship international service course. Though the class has just begun, I have already exposed to a range of new enlightening perspectives on what the role of an international volunteer should be. These unique perspectives have made me re-evaluate many of my preconceived notions of international service and led me to start developing my own thoughts and opinions towards this topic.
International development work is a complex field. International developers will always have to face pros and cons of the consequences of their actions.There will always be unintended effects of any implemented change, whether they be tangible or not. Because international volunteers come in as strange foreigners to the community, they will inherently lack insiders’ knowledge into the dynamics of the people living there and the problems they face. They thus are more likely to create trouble as they do not know how to best work within the already existing infrastructure of a community or predict how community members will respond or react to their actions.
Furthermore, one of the most dangerous part of international development is coming in with a mindset that you know a community better than its actual residents. The end goal of international service projects is to help improve the lives of the people in the community. However, there is a perilous trend of disconnect between international volunteers and community members perpetuated by a variety of factors including but not limited to cultural misunderstanding or lack of transparency about one’s goals. With the increasing popularity of “voluntourism trips” and widely socially accepted notion that international volunteers should be praised for all work, there is a frightening shift from focusing on the people they are trying to help to focusing on how volunteers can make themselves look better. I have seen cases where volunteers go abroad to see how much they can accomplish. They measure their success by short-term tangibles such as building classrooms or bringing advanced medical technology to hospitals. International development is not a quick or easy fix. They also mistaken in that they think that by trying to implement changes to make communities more like those in the United States is inherently good. Situations in communities abroad are often very different those at home; the people, societal systems, and overall infrastructure are not going to be the same for any two communities. There is a strong need for shifting away from a selfish volunteer-focused mindset or Westernized mindset to a more community-driven approach towards international development work.
In my opinion, international development work should be centered around community understanding. Service volunteers should be more focused on immersing themselves amongst community members to better understand how their society functions and what the community itself feels needs to be improved. I believe that it is of utmost importance to know and be familiar with a community’s people instead of attempting to devise a completely revolutionary idea to end poverty without even visiting the community for which you hope to implement the project.
Up to this point I have not brought up anything distinctly good that I can stem from international development work; however, these above thoughts are only incomplete parts of my feelings and opinions towards international service work. There are several positives to international service work that are not often discussed by analytical scholars. One of such positives is that international development workers have unique perspectives on problems facing community members as well as valuable ideas for how community resources can be moved around and used in new ways. International development workers bring a fresh set of eyes and ideas. They are generally less deterred by power hierarchies to voice for change. The type of refreshing and innovative thinking sometimes might be the catalyst needed for stagnant communities to start improving.
I would like to conclude by reiterating that there are many considerations and precautions volunteers must take in terms of preparing appropriate mindsets towards international work, but also highlighting the value of spreading ideas and innovation through this method of global interconnection.
