Exploitation Vacation - Three Ways Doing Good is Doing Bad

This does not apply to doctors, nurses, electricians, qualified teachers or anyone else with a skilled profession that is in short supply. This is about people who spend two weeks poorly constructing a wall or painting a school in the search for a 'life-changing experience.' Its basic economics - if you are building a wall for free, nobody is going to employ the available unskilled labor to do it. The money that you spend on getting to your exotic location could have paid for a year's wall-building labor, but instead it has gone to the organization that arranged your vacation and the airline that flew you there. Donating money to an organization which is set up to build infrastructure is always going to be more efficient than flying to Africa and building it yourself.

In some parts of the world there are organized excursions for rich people, where they pay money to visit poor people and be shocked by poverty. The wealthy tourists pay up-front to be taken to see the effects their lifestyle has on people in other countries. People on these tours can give gifts to the slum-dwellers as part of the "experience". While there's an ethical question as to whether the tour operators should profit from poverty and despair, allegations of corruption suggest that any opportunity to hand out school supplies or provisions are vulnerable to exploitation. Make sure you do your research before you travel.

Tigers are majestic, captivating, exciting to watch and, above all, cute. With their habitats under threat from all sorts of human activity, and with poaching a huge threat to the species, it's not a good time to be a tiger. The tigers need protection, which requires money. The wealthy people in the West have money, and want to cuddle tigers. Result? Tigers get food and protection; people get cool pictures and a funny smell on their hands. Unfortunately, not all animal sanctuaries are as they seem - in order for them to receive money, they need tigers for tourists to cuddle. That means that the tigers are kept in captivity rather than returned to the wild, and the ones which are returned to the wild associate humans with food and therefore don't last long because they'll wander up to a poacher or they'll be too close to a village for comfort. Often, these rescues have no particular interest in conservation and just milk the animals for tourist money.

There's a great deal of really good scientific work out there which needs doing - usually by scientists. But the legwork element (walking up and down a beach measuring turtles, pinging whelks off rocks with a Newtonmeter etc) can be done by anybody. You won't normally get paid for this, or if you do it'll be in the form of bed and board. You, however, will have to pay a company to arrange it for you and you'll have to pay for your flights.

The problems are much the same as with volunteering on humanitarian projects, in that your voluntary work means that a local person is not getting paid for doing the job. You're obviously going to be more attractive if you're going to pay for the privilege of working there. Also, research the project you're destined to work on to make sure there's an actual need for it, both scientifically and locally. It could have been invented by the marketing department of the company you're buying the trip from. As well as these considerations, remember that the work will probably be repetitive and strenuous.

If you're not familiar with the concept, this is when tourists go to see "primitive" tribes and marvel at their bizarre customs, with an emphasis put on "bonding" with the tribe and reaching a greater "mutual understanding". A lot of this revolves around exotic dances and bare-breasted tribeswomen, but a growing amount of it is put on purely for the benefit of wealthy Westerners. Tourists bring money to tribal areas, affecting the way of life. But more damaging is the effect tourism has on the ancient cultural customs themselves. An example of this is Maximon, an ancient deity whose mannequin forms part of the spiritual tradition near Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. Originally, he appeared only during the annual feast of Semana Santa. Now, thanks to enthusiastic tourists, he appears after an appropriate amount of US dollars are offered. He has apparently been seen wearing a Mickey Mouse bow tie which some Japanese tourists deposited as a gift. This, some feel, cheapens the religious symbol.

Up until the last five seconds of a 24-hour evolutionary clock, humans lived in small, stable, isolated, dependent communities. Now we can be on the other side of the world in half a day. While this expands the scope of how we can help our fellow man, it also extends the area in which we can do damage to humanity. Research every aspect of your trip before you go. Remember to question where your money is going - irresponsible spending could offset any of the hard work you do - and just because you're volunteering doesn't mean you're doing 'good'. Be honest with yourself about your motivation, and consider volunteering in your own country instead.