PRESS
making friends and breaking down barriers
In the money section of The Times (23rd April 2011) there was an article written by Mark Bridge about the leading gap-year companies who, he says, are sending travellers on pointless volunteer placements that cost thousands of pounds but fall short of brochure promise. He goes on to say that may volunteer projects that are intended to help “underprivileged communities often have little or no positive impact and in some cases may do harm. He quotes Dr Kate Simpson of ethical volunteering.org, who says that some organisations sell volunteering like selling safaris where their business is profit driven. Tourism Concern have added that ill conceived projects may take jobs from locals; may benefit only part of the community; may not be needed or wanted at all.
We have heard such stories too, of the same rope bridge being build year after year, of painting the houses of the community leaders, of young people without qualifications teaching local students, of huge sums of money being charged but little getting to the projects. We support Tourism Concern in their quest to bring ethical practices into the travel industry. (We are featured in their Ethical Travel Guide)
The Livingstone Tanzania Trust cannot defend the actions of some of the larger companies but feel it is important to highlight how we work.
We did not have the skills to do this work so we hired a local man who did
All of our projects are needed by the community and/or the schools where we work and are determined through both our community baseline assessment and on-going consultation with community and school leaders. Our volunteers contribute to the cost of keeping the Livingstone Tanzania Trust alive AND pay for the materials and labour costs of the project. We are not builders and nor are our volunteers, so we work with the local builders, hand in hand, spade by spade, bucket by bucket, trowel by trowel and brush by brush. We commission tables, chairs, benches, bookshelves from local carpenters, we buy from local shops and we eat local food from local cafes.
There is a question as to whether it is better that the volunteer send the money for the work and the money for the airfare rather then travel to Babati. Yes, sure it is an argument, but then something is missing. Donors these days are fed up with giving and seeing no progress, getting nothing back themselves, they want to be more involved, they want to see where their money is going, what impact it is having, see if the money is being spent wisely, they want to see and learn more about the people and the problems they face. They want something back for themselves. A person who comes to visit and work with us gets that reward, gets that sense of satisfaction and as a consequence is far more likely to carry on helping after the project is over than those who give just once. So we encourage people to come out and get involved and come and share stories, share cultures, learn from each other.
Kindergarten would not have been built without the funds from volunteers
The impact of our projects is there to see, bright classrooms more educational materials, new ways of learning, motivation for success, more income in the community, farmers learning new skills and seeing new ideas, small businesses learning business skills that will help them become more profitable, greater awareness of health prevention.
As for the community, because we work with the schools as the hub that means that all the households who have or will have families are benefiting and because we work with parent groups these families benefit even more. Our door is open to any community group projects and ideas they may have, we are not imposing our ideas on them.
We are not a volunteer organisation but we use two to help us and both of them work closely with us and share our views, if they didn’t we would not work with them.
But you do not have to believe me, read what the volunteers themselves have to say, and read what our volunteer charter has to say about what we will do and volunteers must do.
