White Saviours, Global Inequality and the Unsung Heroes
I have a confession to make. I was what you might call a “voluntourist” as a young man attaining his education. I’ve been out in poor communities in Asia and Africa, teaching English, playing with and taking care of kids and studying the activities of elephants and other animals for wildlife conservation research. For anyone familiar with the terms “voluntourist” and “white saviour”, you’re already familiar with the image of a privileged late-teen with no clue about the harsh realities of life outside their bubble. These romantic youths waltz into marginalised villages and dilapidated slums, they lay some bricks somewhere, paint some walls, take a selfie with some cute children and go home to rave to their friends and families about all the great work they’ve been doing abroad. Meanwhile, this is all done under the subconscious presumption that because they are from the west, they are going to add value to the communities they momentarily penetrate.
Image provided by SAIH Norway
What’s intriguing is that on some level, many (not all) locals actually buy into this presumption and welcome their would-be white saviours with open arms. The voluntourists are treated with hospitality, civility and in some cases adoration! I have no doubt that the emotional weight of these interactions is genuine and real especially for the local children who don’t know any different, it’s a beautiful thing to see people from different cultures coming together and enjoying something universal that can cross language barriers and socio-political differences. However, these positive interactions can have the unwanted side-effect of propagating the deadly assumption that western (white majority) countries are superior. In countries like Thailand, white skin is considered more beautiful, white becomes synonymous with glamorous, intelligent and, most importantly, rich.
Growing up, I can’t help but feel sad about the reality that around the world, people are taught to worship money and excess. We aspire to be like Kim and Kanye; living in luxury, switching off our brains, and perfecting our outward image without any love for what’s underneath. What a sad existence, it still baffles me that so many people want some version of that selfish and frankly meaningless lifestyle. When Kanye West and Donald Trump leave this earth, will they leave it better than how they were born into it? Will they even care?
Trump’s 2018 quote perfectly represents the exclusivity of the rich, looking down on the world’s poorest.
While we’re mentioning POTUS. The Trump administration’s utter lack of responsibility with regard to the climate crisis and the rights of the developing world workers The Trump Organization has exploited for their cheap labour is simply a product of the trends that been shaping the world for decades. Capitalism has always produced social inequality when left unchecked and social inequality is ugly, after the rise of socialism in global politics during the 20th century. Capitalists have undertaken history’s greatest ever PR campaign, protecting the image of capitalism, pushing the ethical problems to the back of the conversation and ensuring that ugly social inequalities are out of sight and behind the more pressing issues like “could your neighbour be a terrorist?” and “Who’s kissing who on Love Island this week?” We no longer have glaring poverty and squalor for the the vast majority of Britons. Instead, we have cheap goods and services that are provided by impoverished third-worlders whose governments don’t protect their human rights or provide their sick and elderly with any kind of safety net. Capitalism has its big winners and its big losers but we’re less concerned for the losers because they live half way around the globe.
It’s okay! I’m not telling you not to wear Nike, it’s incredibly difficult to live in a hypocritical society without occasionally being hypocritical. Please do not forget how lucky you are.
To clarify, labelling myself a Marxist would be completely reductive, every ideology is limited by the fact that it is just that, an ideology. Ideologies will not and have not ever solved our problems as a species. However, in the very necessary task of calling the status quo into question and making our society accountable to the people it’s meant to be serving, Marxism is an undoubtedly useful lens through which we can analyse our rapidly globalising world.
Okay so multi-national corporations are fucking over the poorest populations, but what does this have to do with voluntourism? It’s that voluntourism sometimes makes development more about us than it does about the people we are meant to be helping. Furthermore, the shape that our aid sector has taken since the 1990’s until very recently was one of dependence. We were providing aid when we should have been providing trade! There are talented, creative and passionate people in these countries who are already working hard to make their communities better places and they understand the local problems better than we could ever understand! The UN Sustainable Development Goals that have come into the development field over the last few years are shifting the conversation. Gladly, new development initiatives are more oriented around helping communities to lift themselves up, treating people in developing countries as our equals, with the dignity and respect they deserve.
Thank you for making it this far through my first blog post. I want to finish by talking about my personal experience and about what I plan to do next. I have worked as a volunteer and as a staff member for volunteering organisations in multiple locations around the world. I agree with the criticism that volunteers can only do so much with a few weeks and I wish people had more time to stay somewhere for a year where their impact could be made more sustainable. Volunteering organisations with ongoing projects and long-term staff do make their best efforts to ensure some continuity in the work of their volunteers but at the end of the day, it has to be about the volunteer experience, this is where these companies get their money so the volunteer ultimately must come first.
This is no ideal situation but I think I would be a very different person had I not seen for myself the conditions that some people are forced to live under. I am also shaped by having witnessed the tenacity of the communities that have held on through natural disasters, mass government-mandated evictions, and poverty as a result of unfair power structures and unfavourable locations for farming and other business. I have to thank my experiences as a voluntourist as the main reason I have decided to dedicate my life to international development with a focus on education, child-welfare and environmentalism. Making the world a better place is not some romantic notion for me, it’s a logistical puzzle with thousands of moving parts and obstacles around every corner. The biggest thing I have learned so far in my career is how bloody difficult it is to make international development efforts work. I know now for a fact that I have zero chance of changing the world on my own, but with the help of others and with the prevalence of the right ideas among people who want to do good, I know we can save the fate of our species and the biosphere we inhabit.
18 year old me in Phang Nga, Thailand. Taking a break from lesson planning to play with the local children and eat coconuts while our infinitely generous host On (who was like a mother to me) works tirelessly in the background, cleaning the volunteers’ laundry. I got a chance to return here when I was 21 to see her again and tell On how grateful I was for taking care of a hopeless man child like myself and introducing me to what real spice was!
While I was as self-obsessed as any late teen during my time as a volunteer, I truly was fascinated by the lives and work of others and I was so moved by one particular orphanage in Thailand which began as a refuge for the children who had lost family during the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami that I have now decided to write a biography about its founder; Khun Rojana Phraesrithong. I want there to be less talking about the weeks I spent as a teacher and a lot more talking about the years Rotjana spent as a leader, fundraiser, and surrogate mother for children who desperately needed someone in their corner, looking out for them and giving them a chance in life. Rotjana and her colleagues are just a few of the unsung heroes who have devoted their lives to others for nothing in return but the gratitude of the kids whose lives they have changed forever. This is quite an emotional topic for me so I’ll just leave it there.
For the record: I think everyone should volunteer if they can! Volunteering is a wonderful and selfless thing to do if you have the luxury to do it but it is just that, a luxury.
Thanks again for reading all this
Jack ❤
My hero, my role-model, Rotjana with some of the kids at the Baan Than Namchai Foundation
Image provided by SAIH Norway
What’s intriguing is that on some level, many (not all) locals actually buy into this presumption and welcome their would-be white saviours with open arms. The voluntourists are treated with hospitality, civility and in some cases adoration! I have no doubt that the emotional weight of these interactions is genuine and real especially for the local children who don’t know any different, it’s a beautiful thing to see people from different cultures coming together and enjoying something universal that can cross language barriers and socio-political differences. However, these positive interactions can have the unwanted side-effect of propagating the deadly assumption that western (white majority) countries are superior. In countries like Thailand, white skin is considered more beautiful, white becomes synonymous with glamorous, intelligent and, most importantly, rich.
Growing up, I can’t help but feel sad about the reality that around the world, people are taught to worship money and excess. We aspire to be like Kim and Kanye; living in luxury, switching off our brains, and perfecting our outward image without any love for what’s underneath. What a sad existence, it still baffles me that so many people want some version of that selfish and frankly meaningless lifestyle. When Kanye West and Donald Trump leave this earth, will they leave it better than how they were born into it? Will they even care?
Trump’s 2018 quote perfectly represents the exclusivity of the rich, looking down on the world’s poorest.
While we’re mentioning POTUS. The Trump administration’s utter lack of responsibility with regard to the climate crisis and the rights of the developing world workers The Trump Organization has exploited for their cheap labour is simply a product of the trends that been shaping the world for decades. Capitalism has always produced social inequality when left unchecked and social inequality is ugly, after the rise of socialism in global politics during the 20th century. Capitalists have undertaken history’s greatest ever PR campaign, protecting the image of capitalism, pushing the ethical problems to the back of the conversation and ensuring that ugly social inequalities are out of sight and behind the more pressing issues like “could your neighbour be a terrorist?” and “Who’s kissing who on Love Island this week?” We no longer have glaring poverty and squalor for the the vast majority of Britons. Instead, we have cheap goods and services that are provided by impoverished third-worlders whose governments don’t protect their human rights or provide their sick and elderly with any kind of safety net. Capitalism has its big winners and its big losers but we’re less concerned for the losers because they live half way around the globe.
It’s okay! I’m not telling you not to wear Nike, it’s incredibly difficult to live in a hypocritical society without occasionally being hypocritical. Please do not forget how lucky you are.
To clarify, labelling myself a Marxist would be completely reductive, every ideology is limited by the fact that it is just that, an ideology. Ideologies will not and have not ever solved our problems as a species. However, in the very necessary task of calling the status quo into question and making our society accountable to the people it’s meant to be serving, Marxism is an undoubtedly useful lens through which we can analyse our rapidly globalising world.
Okay so multi-national corporations are fucking over the poorest populations, but what does this have to do with voluntourism? It’s that voluntourism sometimes makes development more about us than it does about the people we are meant to be helping. Furthermore, the shape that our aid sector has taken since the 1990’s until very recently was one of dependence. We were providing aid when we should have been providing trade! There are talented, creative and passionate people in these countries who are already working hard to make their communities better places and they understand the local problems better than we could ever understand! The UN Sustainable Development Goals that have come into the development field over the last few years are shifting the conversation. Gladly, new development initiatives are more oriented around helping communities to lift themselves up, treating people in developing countries as our equals, with the dignity and respect they deserve.
Thank you for making it this far through my first blog post. I want to finish by talking about my personal experience and about what I plan to do next. I have worked as a volunteer and as a staff member for volunteering organisations in multiple locations around the world. I agree with the criticism that volunteers can only do so much with a few weeks and I wish people had more time to stay somewhere for a year where their impact could be made more sustainable. Volunteering organisations with ongoing projects and long-term staff do make their best efforts to ensure some continuity in the work of their volunteers but at the end of the day, it has to be about the volunteer experience, this is where these companies get their money so the volunteer ultimately must come first.
This is no ideal situation but I think I would be a very different person had I not seen for myself the conditions that some people are forced to live under. I am also shaped by having witnessed the tenacity of the communities that have held on through natural disasters, mass government-mandated evictions, and poverty as a result of unfair power structures and unfavourable locations for farming and other business. I have to thank my experiences as a voluntourist as the main reason I have decided to dedicate my life to international development with a focus on education, child-welfare and environmentalism. Making the world a better place is not some romantic notion for me, it’s a logistical puzzle with thousands of moving parts and obstacles around every corner. The biggest thing I have learned so far in my career is how bloody difficult it is to make international development efforts work. I know now for a fact that I have zero chance of changing the world on my own, but with the help of others and with the prevalence of the right ideas among people who want to do good, I know we can save the fate of our species and the biosphere we inhabit.
18 year old me in Phang Nga, Thailand. Taking a break from lesson planning to play with the local children and eat coconuts while our infinitely generous host On (who was like a mother to me) works tirelessly in the background, cleaning the volunteers’ laundry. I got a chance to return here when I was 21 to see her again and tell On how grateful I was for taking care of a hopeless man child like myself and introducing me to what real spice was!
While I was as self-obsessed as any late teen during my time as a volunteer, I truly was fascinated by the lives and work of others and I was so moved by one particular orphanage in Thailand which began as a refuge for the children who had lost family during the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami that I have now decided to write a biography about its founder; Khun Rojana Phraesrithong. I want there to be less talking about the weeks I spent as a teacher and a lot more talking about the years Rotjana spent as a leader, fundraiser, and surrogate mother for children who desperately needed someone in their corner, looking out for them and giving them a chance in life. Rotjana and her colleagues are just a few of the unsung heroes who have devoted their lives to others for nothing in return but the gratitude of the kids whose lives they have changed forever. This is quite an emotional topic for me so I’ll just leave it there.
For the record: I think everyone should volunteer if they can! Volunteering is a wonderful and selfless thing to do if you have the luxury to do it but it is just that, a luxury.
Thanks again for reading all this
Jack ❤
My hero, my role-model, Rotjana with some of the kids at the Baan Than Namchai Foundation
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