Volunteer travel didn’t start out as a holiday – but as a chance to work abroad, often for an extended period of time. Projects were run largely by faith-based organisations or by governmental groups, such as the US Peace Corps, which dates back to the 1950s. In the same decade, the UK’s VSO (Voluntary Service Overseas) was founded, in which volunteers were given accommodation in exchange for their time. Both of these programmes involve a serious commitment, however, with most programmes lasting at least two years, and suitable only for skilled applicants. By the 1970s the concept of fee-paying volunteers began to take root, as the environmental movement grew and scientists realised that volunteer fees could help cover the cost of research – while unskilled volunteers could contribute much-needed labour.

By the 1990s, the “Gap Year” had emerged, as more and more young people took a year out before or after university, to travel the world before being tied down to full time jobs. Keen to capitalise on globetrotters able to spend an extended time abroad – and looking to gain work experience while they were at it – travel companies began offering “volunteer vacations” in exotic locations. These seemed to tick a lot of boxes, offering to boost the CVs of inexperienced undergraduates, while offering them a cheap way to stay overseas for longer – and give them the emotional boost of “doing good”. While some volunteer placements were of genuine benefit to local communities and wildlife, it’s also true that many of these opportunities were created by the travel industry (not NGOs, development professionals or the communities themselves) to fill a niche created by the gap year market. The impacts on the ground were questionable.

Today, it is accepted that good intentions don’t always equal good results, and while the industry remains unregulated, volunteers – and organisations – are becoming much more clued up about the pitfalls, and have begun asking many more questions – as have the media. 20 years into the voluntourism experiment we are able to see what has worked, and what hasn’t. Orphanage volunteering, for example, has proven disastrous in many regions, with orphans becoming a “commodity” and places such as Siem Reap – a town of 100,000 – now having 35 orphanages – an increase which directly matches the number of tourists visiting Cambodia.* These institutions are there to cater not for the town’s orphans – but for the endless line of fee-paying volunteers.

Other projects, however, have been a resounding success, with volunteers carrying out – and subsidising – essential data collection, restoring habitats, teaching English and, most importantly, funding local jobs as they go. The face of volunteering is changing too; as tuition fees rise and austerity hits the young hardest, the 20-year-old gap year traveller has been largely replaced by an older, more experienced volunteer – keen to share a lifetime of skills, make the most of an early retirement, or enjoy their independence once the children have left home. As organisations are under greater scrutiny to create genuinely worthwhile placements, so too the volunteers have more to offer. We think this change can only be for the better.

• Source: The Independent