In this article, the author discusses "voluntourism", where volunteers travel to other countries for a week or two for a “project” — a temporary medical clinic, an orphanage visit or a school construction. A 2008 study estimated that 1.6 million people volunteer on vacation, spending around $2 billion annually.
Recounting a personal story of watching foreign missionaries attempt to make concrete blocks to build a school in Haiti, the author wonders if volunteers' good intentions are misplaced. He notes that, in the Haiti example, these people knew nothing about how to construct a building and had spent thousands of dollars to fly to Haiti to do a job that Haitian bricklayers could have done far more quickly.
The author also notes the lack of a long-term plan following "voluntourist" projects, such as finding ways to train and recruit qualified teachers after building a school. In addition, these volunteer projects can sometimes cause real harm, especially “orphan tourism” which has become so popular that some orphanages operate more like opportunistic businesses than charities, intentionally subjecting children to poor conditions in order to entice unsuspecting volunteers to donate more money. Many “orphans,” it turns out, have living parents who, with a little support, could probably do a better job of raising their children than some volunteer can. And the constant arrivals and departures of volunteers have been linked to attachment disorders in children.