This post is part of the Better Volunteering Better Care Initiative’s month-long spread of articles aimed at raising awareness around the issues of orphanage volunteering, under the hashtag #StopOrphanTrips. The campaign ends with a call to volunteer travel organisations to remove orphanage trips from their product offerings. Authors of these blog posts and articles urge people to sign the petition to put an end to orphanage volunteering. You can sign the petition here.
This post is from the blog “Barbie Savor,” a blog started this year as a joke to poke fun at, and expose, “White Savior” images and posts that appear on social media. In the blog’s posts, “Barbie” takes pictures of herself with African children and writes about how rewarding it is to volunteer in Africa. The blog was written by two friends who were themselves involved in orphanage volunteering. “The reason we are able to hit the nail on head with Barbie Savior is because we were her,” says the post. The post explains the harms of orphanage tourism. “Children who are in care have experienced the most traumatic separation: the loss of a family. This is a loss they will carry the rest of their lives. Further exposing these children to separation by allowing a rotating door of volunteers can result in additional harm and unhealthy attachment.”