1. Responsible Volunteering
The Destination Perspective: a Community Centred Approach

2. Simply, Complex
• Well structured, community centred, volunteer
programmes can make a considerable positive
impact
• Unfortunately, community centred volunteer
Calabash Tours:
Responsible
Volunteering
experiences require a lot more insight into
potential negative impacts, and a deep
understanding of the local context.
• They need strong local partners with good
community ethics and links

3. Who is Talking?
• Communities very often want volunteers
in to assist them, but are unaware of some
of the potential implications.
Responsible Volunteering
Calabash Tours:
• These volunteer experiences must be sold
• But what are we selling?
• What is the level of community consent.
• What are the rights of the children or
vulnerable adults within this.

4. Time for change?
• We must start to question how we are selling volunteer
experiences.
• If we continue to operate with only a “volunteer centred”
approach, volunteer tourism is not sustainable.
Volunteering
Calabash Tours: Responsible
• Most volunteer programmes currently reflect an
extractive quality, where most benefit accrues to
volunteers, and sending organisations in the developed
North.
• There is too little transparency about where the money
goes

5. Commercial Imperative
• Real success requires that volunteer programmes benefit the
community and the volunteer.
• In that order – echoing the Responsible Tourism imperative
“making better places for people to live in, better places for
people to visit”. In that order
Volunteering
Calabash Tours: Responsible
• It is realistic and achievable? Yes!
• Some organisations are already achieving this.
• We have to challenge the current dominance of the volunteer
experience at the expense of the communities.
• As an industry, there are codes of good practice that are
starting to address this.

6. Better Volunteering
• In South Africa, Fair Trade in Tourism has developed an
effective criteria for measuring Responsible Volunteering
certification
• Tourism Concern has developed great set of guidelines for
Responsible Volunteering
Volunteering
Calabash Tours: Responsible
• The International Ecotourism Society (TIES) released a set of
guidelines for commercial tour operators
• The Responsible Tourism Partnership has published guidelines.
• There is sufficient guidelines, certifications, best practice
publications out there. What we need to do is translate that
into ACTION. And we need to expose the exploitative
organisations that abuse vulnerable people and communities.

7. Way forward
• We need to move issues of Responsible Tourism into the
volunteer sector with more haste
• Those of us who engage in communities through volunteering
must empower local communities and encourage them to
become more “rebellious”.
Volunteering
Calabash Tours: Responsible
• Volunteers themselves need to start asking the hard consumer
questions. Many people are consciously choosing what
products they buy, and volunteer experiences need to be the
same. Consumers must be educated.

8. Ask These Questions
• How much of my money will go to the host country, and how
much to the host community?
• Whose idea was this project and who runs it?
• How will my skills be used, and who decided that
Volunteering
Calabash Tours: Responsible
• Will their be continuity when I leave?
• Can I talk to previous volunteers?
• How do I know other volunteers on the project are as
committed as me?
• Can I talk to local people before I travel?
• What kind of support will I receive?
• Please explain again the cost of this experience is broken
down?